archy

A question
I’m puzzled about something. We keep hearing on the news that the “contractors” at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in our war zones are not subject to the Military Code of Justice. Okay, I have no trouble believing that, but what about American civilian law. Are we to believe that in all of the territory that the US has had under military rule in the last century—from Germany and Japan after WWII, to the Panama Canal bases, to bases in Germany, Okinawa, the Philippines, and Korea—that no civilian employee has ever committed a crime? Are they really saying that there are no relevant precedents under which to deal with these perps? Or is the problem that this administration does not want to admit that civil law has sway in overseas military territories like—oh, say—Guantanamo Bay?

Any lawyers out there want to chime in?