By Florence Gold

It was the brilliant Russian writer Dostoyevsky who said that one can judge a society by its prisons and sadly that is one of the important areas by which the world will now judge the United States. Even though fallaciously we are told that we represent the struggle between good and evil, Americans certainly know that brutality and torture are frequently used in American prisons.

"Last year Congressional Democrats allowed the Bush administration to ram through one of the worst laws in the nation's history, The Military Commissions Act of 2006," read a New York Times editorial. The Democrats have since pledged to repair the damage that the law has done to our justice system and to our global image, but disturbing political tactics and typical administrative evasions seem to be frustrating that effort.

The sharpness of the above criticism and the frankness of the denunciation in a recent New York Times editorial demonstrate national anxiety over our administration's decision to inhibit and destroy basic human rights. Prisoners caught in the so called "war on terror" never had the right to challenge their detentions in a court of law. A recent unequivocal ruling by the Supreme Court concerning the importance of the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law as applied to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay injected a cautious note of optimism. The Military Commissions Act destroyed that faint hope because it substituted military personnel for legal attorneys and negated the sense of the Supreme Court decision.

Congressional promises to restore habeas corpus have melted away. Habeas corpus, the right of detainees to challenge their detention, is one of the most basic tenets of a democracy, a cherished principle that has been honored for hundreds of years. But President Bush has decided that these prisoners do not deserve hearings. Those who question these tactics are accused of supporting terrorism.

Four retired military chief prosecutors from the Navy, the Marines and the Army have pointed out that "withholding prisoners' access to courts feeds the Al Queda propaganda machine and gives other governments suggestions for imprisoning