Earlier today, former Attorney General John Ashcroft admitted at a Conservative Political Action Conference that civilian trials for terrorists have "use and utility."

Sam Stein on Huffington Post points out that the statement "throws a wrench in Republican talking points" which lately have dismissed the civilian justice system as irrelevant to the war on terror.

But Ashcroft is hardly the first Republican to acknowledge the civilian courts' important role. In fact, there may be no better response to Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham's latest campaign to militarize terrorism investigations and prosecutions than the comprehensive White Paper on U.S. Counter-terrorism produced by the Justice Department - under George W. Bush.

Senator Graham, meet Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general who signed off on that 2006 Counterterrorism White Paper.

The 2006 White Paper is a 68-page document that extols "the impressive success of the Department of Justice in the war on terrorism," and documents "how the criminal justice system operates effectively as an element of national power."

In fact, the document effectively rips apart every one of Senator Graham's recent argumentssupporting his proposed legislation to require Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators in military commissions. It also undermines his even more expansive statements since the failed Christmas Day bombing suggesting that all terrorism cases from now on should be handled by the CIA and the military rather than the criminal justice system.

"Civilian trials, which the Obama Administration has proposed, will be unnecessarily dangerous, legally messy, confusing to our own troops who fight and capture terrorists on the battlefield, and very expensive," Graham said recently, promoting his proposed legislation.

Oddly, not once during the Bush administration's eight years did Lindsey Graham complain about the successful prosecutions of accused terrorists in federal courts. Hundreds of them.

According to the 2006 Department of Justice, the criminal justice system has been so successful - it reports winning more than 300 convictions of terrorists since 2001 - by relying on its vast power to conduct transnational investigations, and on a broad range of criminal statutes, such as those outlawing "material support" to terrorists and broadly defining "weapons of mass destruction." Meanwhile, DOJ has aggressively used charges of "immigration fraud" and "false statement offenses" to arrest and imprison suspected terrorists before they can commit a terrorist act.

So what about Senator Graham's claims that terrorism suspects don't talk in civilian prosecutions?

Actually, "our successful prosecutions have produced cooperating defendants who have, in turn, provided intelligence information to investigators, prosecutors and national security officials, leading to further investigation, disruption and prosecution," says the 2006 report.

Moreover, "cooperation with our foreign partners has led to counterterrorism successes in foreign courts as well as in our own..."

Then there's Graham's concern that civilian prosecutions will inevitably lead to the release of classified evidence.

Here's the Bush administration's answer: "Criminal cases that utilize classified intelligence information are a challenge, but the Classified Information Procedures Act, combined with strategic charging decisions, enable us to appropriately handle this intelligence in criminal cases while protecting both the classified information and defendants' due process rights," the 2006 paper reads.

True, the 2006 paper acknowledges that some cases have presented "unique questions, such as how to deal with evidence purportedly available from detainees abroad, how to balance enemy combatant status with our ability to bring criminal charges, and how to authenticate evidence collected by a foreign intelligence service without disclosing that services' sensitive sources and methods." But the government's focus was always on making better use of the criminal justice system's tools and powers. At no time did the government consider abandoning it altogether.

"We aggressively investigate and prosecute in order to protect our national security, protect our cherished rights, and vindicate the rights of victims of terrorist activity and terrorist acts," the paper concludes.

The military commissions simply cannot do the same thing. For one thing, this new, untested system doesn't have prosecutors with decades of experience trying terrorism cases, as Clarence Page pointed out at the Chicago Tribune the other day.

That may be one reason the track record on prosecuting Jihadist terrorists is far stronger in federal court - which has prosecuted 195 since September 11, 2001 -- than in the military commissions, which have prosecuted only three. And two of those have already been released.

John Walker Lindh, for example, the American Muslim convert arrested in Afghanistan, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in a federal court. David Hicks, on the other hand, an Australian convert also fighting for the Taliban, was sentenced to just nine months plus time served by a military commission.

Aside from which court is harsher, on a practical level, military commissions just don't have the same breadth of law to rely on. Created by the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the court's jurisdiction is only over the crimes listed in that law, and over traditional crimes of war. Because crimes like "material support for terrorism," "conspiracy," and even the killing of enemy soldiers have never traditionally been considered war crimes, though, a military commission can't legitimately prosecute any of those crimes that occurred before the MCA took effect. That's a huge limitation - particularly if we're talking about prosecuting the September 11 suspects.

Lindsey Graham apparently thinks that trotting out "military commissions" as the answer to terrorism is going to make him look like a tough guy - "military" just sounds tougher than "civilian."

Recent reports suggest that the Obama administration is considering moving the 9/11 trial, apparently at the urging of Lindsey Graham. But surely the administration doesn't buy his arguments.

Will the fact that even the Bush administration under Dick Cheney was saying the same thing about the critical role of federal courts in fighting terrorism make any difference? I can't believe I'm touting the Alberto Gonzales Justice Department, but on this point, it was right. Someone send that White Paper to Lindsey Graham.

On Tuesday, John Ashcroft came to Knox College to give a speech.  Afterwards, students were given a chance to ask questions.  I asked about the case of a Japanese soldier, Yukio Asano, who was sentenced to 15 years hard labor for waterboarding American soldiers, and then diaried his response as I remembered it on both DKos and MyDD, which led to it being mentioned on Countdown's "Worst Person in the World" segment and being spread all around the progressive netroots.

Now, due popular request, the local newspaper has posted the exchange on YouTube.  Check it out for yourselves:

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As you may already know, John Ashcroft addressed the subject of whether waterboarding is torture at Knox College on Tuesday.  Although most of his defenses were tripe, he actually had a valid point with this remark:

Congress has defined it [torture], the law has the definition.  I don't believe the law has been violated--and if the law needs to be changed, you should talk to your congressman, not to me.

It's worth thinking about.  Why has Congress done nothing to stop Ashcroft and his ilk?  And why haven't we stepped up to the plate and forced our legislature to do their job?

I got a lot of emails and comments yesterday from people who wished they could have done what I did.  To all of them, I say this: you and I together can do something better.  We can make waterboarding and "enhanced interrogation" explicitly illegal once and for all.

We can pass Senate Bill 1943.

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(Cross posted at DKos)

Earlier tonight, I attended John Ashcroft's speech on "Leadership in Troubled Times" at Knox College.  So, while it's still fresh in my mind, here's how it went--including the question I asked that made him lose his cool completely.  (I apologize for the lack of pictures--I don't have a digital camera.  As my friends post their pictures of the event online, I'll try to add them into this diary.)

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I'm packing for as trip to Eastern Canada so I have to keep this breif.
ABC News broke the story that the members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee signed off on "enhanced interrogation techniques" Members included Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and others who's involvement is already known:

Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time --on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

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