THE QUESTION

In the wake of Abu Ghraib, how will these proposed military commissions affect national security? Will this plan expose our troops, now deployed around the world, to similar treatment?

Posted by Amar C. Bakshi on September 9, 2006 5:09 PM

FROM THE PANEL

Another Leap Backward

Lahore, Pakistan - President Bush's proposed legislation to try foreign terrorism suspects before military courts is another quantum leap backwards for rule of law. U.S. interests would be far best served if it upheld its own judicial and constitutional standards, and respected human rights and international humanitarian law, at home and abroad.

Samina Ahmed | 19 COMMENTS
Sep 13, 2006 at 10:26 AM
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff is a Senior Director at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a transatlantic public policy and grant-making foundation. He overseas the fund's policy programs. He was previously the Washington bureau chief of the German newsweekly, Die Zeit.

Guantanamo and My Wehrmacht Uncles

Germany - When I was about 14, I first saw a picture of my uncle in uniform, a Wehrmacht uniform. I was shocked. It had never occurred to me that my family could have had a role in Hitler's dictatorship. Anybodies family, but not my family.

Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff Germany | 37 COMMENTS
Sep 11, 2006 at 2:00 AM
Saul Singer is Editorial Page Editor and author of the weekly column “Interesting Times” for the Jerusalem Post. He is the author of Confronting Jihad: Israel's Struggle and the World After 9/11. Before moving to Israel from the Washington area in 1994, Mr. Singer served for ten years as an advisor on the personal and committee staffs of the United States Congress, including the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Senate Banking Committee, and Senator Connie Mack.

Torture, Unlike Terror, Can Be Justified

Jerusalem, Israel - Torture is the flip side of terrorism. Some justify terrorism for the right cause, others say its always unacceptable. Similarly, some support torture under certain circumstances, others are always opposed. But there is a profound difference in...

Saul Singer Jerusalem, Israel | 129 COMMENTS
Sep 10, 2006 at 3:41 PM
Masha Lipman is the editor of the Pro et Contra journal, published by Carnegie Moscow Center. Lipman is also an expert in the Civil Society Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. She served as deputy editor of the Russian weekly newsmagazines, Ezhenedel’ny zhurnal from 2001 to 2003, and of Itogi magazine from 1995 to 2001. She has worked as a translator, researcher, and contributor forMoscow bureau of The Washington Post and has had a monthly op-ed column in The Washington Post since 2001.

U.S. Human Rights Abuses Embolden Authoritarian Regimes

Moscow, Russia - It is highly unusual for a leader of a great nation to publicly justify torture, but this is pretty much what President Bush did last week. Talking about the interrogation of a terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah the...

Masha Lipman Moscow, Russia | 35 COMMENTS
Sep 10, 2006 at 3:38 PM
Aboubakr Jamai is the publisher of Morocco's groundbreaking weekly newspaper Le Journal Hebdomadaire and its sister publication, Assahifa al-Ousbouiya. Since they were founded in the late 1990s under the names Le Journal and Assahifa, the papers have boldly staked out new terrain in Moroccan journalism through tough investigative reporting on government corruption, corporate impropriety, and taboo political topics. For many Moroccan journalists, the publications are the first truly independent newspapers in the country.

Denounce Torture Everywhere: Words Can Work

Casablanca, Morocco - The Bush administration's announcement of new rules governing interrogations of prisoners is a step in the right direction. A major lesson can be drawn from the decision: public denouncements can work. To be sure, not all regimes...

Jamai Aboubakr Morocco | 7 COMMENTS
Sep 9, 2006 at 5:27 PM
Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist. He was born in Jerusalem in 1955. Presently he is a visiting professor at Princeton University in the United States. Mr. Kuttab is the former director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah, Palestine and the founder of AmmanNet, the Arab world's first internet radio station. His personal web page is www.daoudkuttab.com

Torture's Three I's: Illegal, Immoral, Ineffective

Amman, Jordan - Whenever we hear Americans trying to argue why they should not approve torture, they give the argument that this could backfire in the future when Americans might be arrested. While this argument might be convincing to some...

Daoud Kuttab Princeton, NJ | 28 COMMENTS
Sep 9, 2006 at 4:56 AM
Former Washington-based columnist for The Hong Kong Standard, The New York Sun, and Insight on the News, an online weekly published by The Washington Times. Covered economic and political relations between the United States and East Asia, with an emphasis on China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists' Association. Currently a business executive at a Chinese-language newspaper in Hong Kong.

To Stop A Ticking Bomb, Torture

China/Washington DC - Five years after 9/11, a major reason why no such atrocity has been repeated in the U.S., I believe, is because the Bush administration has applied "tough, safe, lawful and necessary" interrogation methods, as President Bush called...

Kin-ming Liu Hong Kong | 15 COMMENTS
Sep 9, 2006 at 3:00 AM

Add PostGlobal To Your Site

PostGlobal is an interactive conversation on global issues moderated by Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria and David Ignatius of The Washington Post. It is produced jointly by Newsweek and washingtonpost.com, as is On Faith, a conversation on religion. Please send your comments, questions and suggestions for PostGlobal to Lauren Keane, its editor and producer.