I love the NY Times because they produce editorials like this.
The Bush administration’s plans for military tribunals to try suspected terrorists are less troubling now than they were when the idea was first announced four months ago. But there is still no practical or legal justification for having the tribunals. The United States has a criminal justice system that is a model for the rest of the world. There is no reason to scrap it in these cases.
Here is how it works, from the NY Times handbook on how to bash anyone to the right of Nader.
1.) Before any action of your opponents, make wild exxagerated claims. Claims like, ‘Bush and Ashcroft want to suspend habeus corpus with secret military trials’
2.) When the guidelines come out, and they are not as onerous and awful as you have screamed from your editorial pages, do not admit sheepishly that all along you were wrong. INstead, pretend that is was your oversight that ‘moderated’ the administration.
3.) Continue to insist the action is a bad idea anyway.
4.) In the future, refer back to point #1 so that you may paint your political opponents as fascists running a secret government, but do not repeat or mention steps 2-3.