Wake Up, America
The order is described as if it is aimed only at Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders. A former deputy attorney general, George J. Terwilliger III, said the masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks "don't deserve constitutional protection."

But the Bush order covers all noncitizens, and there are about 20 million of them in the United States — immigrants working toward citizenship, visitors and the like. Not one or 100 or 1,000 but 20 million.
And the order is not directed only at those who mastermind or participate in acts of terrorism. In the vaguest terms, it covers such things as "harboring" anyone who has ever aided acts of terrorism that might have had "adverse effects" on the U.S. economy or foreign policy. Many onetime terrorists — Menachem Begin, Nelson Mandela, Gerry Adams — regarded at the time as adverse to U.S. interests, have been "harbored" by Americans.

Apologists have also argued that the Bush military tribunals will give defendants enough rights. A State Department spokeswoman, Jo-Anne Prokopowicz, said that they would have rights "similar to those" found in the Hague war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

To the contrary, Hague defendants like Slobodan Milosevic are entitled to public trials before independent judges, and to lawyers of their choice. The Bush military trials are to be in secret, before officers who are subordinate to officials bringing the charges; defendants will not be able to pick their own lawyers. And, unlike the Hague defendants, they may be executed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/30/opinion/30LEWI.html?todaysheadlines