With preparations begun for the first military-commissions trial for detainees at Guantanamo - six "high-level" prisoners who could get the death penalty - the customary attacks on the fairness of the proceedings there are mounting here and abroad.  

Adding to the discord is the refusal of Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, legal adviser for the military commissions, to exclude any evidence against the defendants that has been extracted through waterboarding. 

Particularly troublesome to the Bush administration's continued insistence that there are careful standards of due process at Guantanamo Bay was the resignation last October of Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo. In an article for the Los Angeles Times (Dec. 10), he wrote he had "concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system." 

Precipitating Davis' act of conscience was the supervisory appointment over him of Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes, long criticized for having been instrumental in authorizing what are euphemistically called "coercive interrogation techniques" on terrorism suspects, some of which are purportedly torture.  

Guantánamo Trials Fail The Nuremberg Test