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--> --> Don't confuse bad guys with `our' bad guys By Roger Simon WASHINGTON - You usually don't get a lot of excitement at meetings of the Republican Governors Association. Republican governors are not the wildest and craziest bunch in the world, but Gov. William J. Janklow of South Dakota decided to put an end to that stereotype the other day, when the group met in Las Vegas. While other governors droned on about budget cuts and deficits and redistricting, Janklow decided to talk about something relevant: killing people. "If airplanes were to fly over America today and paratroopers jumped out and started machine-gunning people, we would track them down and kill them until they surrendered, and when they did they would be put in a prisoner of war camp. "Now we are talking about arresting them and giving them lawyers and giving them their Miranda and Escabedo warnings! These are soldiers, and they will kill us if we don't kill them! "We're in a war, with people who want to kill us. And somehow we're still talking about 'arresting' them and 'bringing them to justice.' I don't get it. We need to kill them until the rest surrender. No lawyers and no courts. Then we need to capture their leaders. We can try them - and then kill them. "And if somebody kills one (i.e., a terrorist) in my state, I will pardon them so we don't have a problem!" The other governors applauded. Interestingly enough, Janklow's father was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials following World War II, but Gov. Janklow clearly does not want such a civilian tribunal for any of the terrorists who took part in the terrible incidents of Sept. 11. And neither does President Bush. On Tuesday, Bush signed an order allowing the creation of military tribunals to try foreigners accused of terrorism. Bush, alone, would determine who is an accused "terrorist," and the trials might not be public. U.S. citizens would be exempt from such military tribunals. Such tribunals have not existed since World War II, when foreign saboteurs arrested in the United States were tried this way. And those who allegedly took part in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln were also tried by military tribunal (even though they were U.S. citizens). While some civil libertarians expressed outrage over Bush's order, military tribunals might actually be an improvement over what Bush originally wanted to do with suspected terrorists, which was dispense with trials altogether. As I wrote in October, Bush was very angry with the Taliban one Sunday and said of Osama bin Laden: "Turn him over. Turn him over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over, destroy all the terrorist camps. There is no need to negotiate. There's no discussions. I've told them exactly what they need to do." Then he went on to say: "And there is no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty. Turn him over." I wrote that all accused criminals deserve a trial to establish innocence or guilt, and we had no trouble giving Timothy McVeigh a trial after he killed 168 people by blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. (McVeigh was executed this June.) Even the mass murderers of World War II, who committed "crimes against humanity," were given trials at Nuremberg. So it didn't seem to me that if we captured bin Laden, we should just line him up against a wall and shoot him because "there is no need to discuss innocence or guilt." The administration didn't want bin Laden to get a regular criminal trial, Slate magazine reported, because "Colin Powell is allegedly telling people that he prefers not to capture bin Laden alive, on the grounds that the man would 'get Johnnie Cochran to be his lawyer' if he were put on trial in the United States." Whether Powell actually said such a thing or not, Bush has found a way around this: a special military tribunal where even Johnnie Cochran might have a tough time presenting a defense. And, once again, Bush seems to be reading the public mood correctly. A recent poll by the Christian Science Monitor shows 60 percent of Americans now support the assassination of foreign leaders, 32 percent would support government-sanctioned torture of terrorists, 27 percent would support using nuclear weapons and 10 percent would support using chemical or biological weapons against terrorists. One of the big problems, however, is just who is and who is not a "terrorist." We know anybody who supported the crimes of Sept. 11 is a terrorist and so is anybody who harbors them, like the Taliban. But at a White House press briefing Wednesday, Ari Fleischer, Bush's spokesman, was asked if those members of the Northern Alliance who allegedly committed atrocities against the Taliban this week would be tried by the new military tribunals that Bush might create. Fleischer said they would not. In other words, even if some members of the Northern Alliance turn out to be bad guys, they are our bad guys. Roger Simon is a syndicated columnist for the Baltimore Sun. Email your... Technical questions & comments to: WebMaster Daily Tidings editorial comments & questions to: Editor Visit our other Oregon Newspapers... | Albany Democrat-Herald | Ashland Daily Tidings | Corvallis Gazette-Times | | Lebanon Express | Newport News-Times | Springfield News | Cottage Grove Sentinel | Ashland Daily Tidings 1661 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Telephone 541-482-3456 © Copyright 2001 Lee Northwest Publishing