Military leaders object to administration policy on terror detainees

By Frank Davies
Knight Ridder Newspapers

	Don Guter
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"I would have done anything that day, and I fully support the war on terrorism," said Guter, who served as judge advocate general, the Navy's chief legal officer, until he retired last year.

Nonetheless, he is joining his predecessor and a retired Marine general with expertise on prisoner issues to challenge the Bush administration's indefinite detention of suspected terrorists at the Navy base in Guantánamo, Cuba.

Guter, Rear Adm. John Hutson and Brig. Gen. David Brahms worry that lengthy incarcerations at Guantánamo without hearings will undermine the rule of law and endanger U.S. forces.

"For me it's a question of balance between security needs and due process, and I think we've lost our balance," Guter said.

The three retired officers recently filed a Supreme Court amicus brief on behalf of 16 detainees held for almost two years. The government contends that all are enemy combatants, most captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and have no legal rights, prisoner-of-war status or access to federal courts. Early next year, the Supreme Court will hear the case in a potentially historic clash between presidential authority and judicial oversight.

Former federal judges, diplomats and even American POWs from World War II also have filed briefs urging the Supreme Court to reconsider lower-court rulings on the detainees that favored the administration.

In early discussions, Guter favored holding prisoners at Guantánamo, but he thought their detention would be temporary.

"We would be safe, the detainees would be safe from reprisal," Guter said. "But many of us expected some sort of hearings by now for some of these people. The crux of this is, how long can we hold people without anything? It's now two years, and that's troubling."

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