Defying the Principles of Law and the Rules of Evidence

On November 13, 2001,  George W. Bush, acting as President and Commander-in-Chief, signed a military order concerning the "Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism." Suspected terrorists who are not citizens of the ;United States were to be ":detained at an appropriate location designated by the Secretary of Defense." If brought to trial, they were to be tried and sentenced by a military commission. No member of the commission  need be a lawyer, nor would the ordinary rules of military law  apply. In the language of the order, "It is not practicable to apply in military commissions under this order the principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized in the trial of criminal cases in the United States district courts." Suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without charges, denied knowledge of the evidence against them, and, if tried, sentenced by courts following no previously established rules. [1]

Initially, prisoners were housed at Camp X-ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.   More camps were built, eventually housing 779 detainees from forty-eight countries. The U.S. dropped a blizzard of flyers onto Afghanistan, offering bounties for information about men with ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Detainees told of being sold for bounties of between $5,000 and $25,000. Those detained weren't called criminals, because criminals have to be charged with a crime. They couldn't be called prisoners, because prisoners of war have rights. The Bush administration invented a new category of detainee, called "unlawful combatants." [2]

The 50-page Department of Justice memo, signed by Jay S. Bybee -- but probably written by DoJ lawyer, John Yoo -- in August 2002, attempted to draw a distinction between acts that are "cruel, inhuman, or degrading," and acts that constitute torture. The Bush administration envisioned creating for the first time a permanent legal structure under the president's sole command.

In 2006, a team from Seton Hall School of Law released a study of the 517 detainees still at Guantanamo, that according to Department of Defense data,  only five percent of the detainees had been captured by U.S. troops and at least 47 percent had been captured by Pakistan or Northern Alliance troops, when the U.S. began offering bonuses.

ADDENDUM:
A History of Violence - Mass Shootings Are Becoming More Common -- And Deadlier
* The frequency of mass shootings has tripled since 2011.
* Between 1982 and 2011, a mass shooting occurred in the United States every 200 days.
* Between 2011 and 2014, a mass shooting occurred every 64 days.
* Of the 13 mass shootings with double-digit death tolls over the past 50 years, 7 took place in the last 9 years.