Robert Jackson was one of the exemplary figures in American history, not to mention one of the nation's greatest patriots and one of its greatest jurists.  

Here was the last of the great bootstrap lawyers like Clarence Darrow who did not attend law school but picked up their educations working under skilled lawyers and judges and achieved lasting greatness.

When it came time to pick someone to lead the U.S. team in prosecuting Nazi Germany at the Nuremberg Trials the ideal choice was then Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Robert Jackson.  Those were the days when we had judges who were capable of independent thought and were not hacks pushed through the Washington process by the Federalist Society.

A basic principle enunciated by Jackson at the historic Nuremberg tribunal was that individuals were responsible for their acts and could not slide by with a variation of the Flip Wilson "The devil made me do it", which the late great comic meant as a joke and not something to be emulated.

Eric Schmitt and Tim Golden of the New York Times revealed the latest Bush administration plan for a larger prison for suspected terrorists.

A New York Times syndicated article appeared in the May 17 Seattle Times containing these revealing facts:

"The Pentagon is proceeding with plans to build a new 40-acre detention-complex on the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan.

"Officials (of the Pentagon) said in a stark acknowledgement that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come."

That was the shocking headline in USA Today on May 8.

Gregg Zaroya wrote the story from Washington, D.C.  It read:

"More than 43,000 U.S. troops listed as medically unfit for combat in the week before their scheduled deployment to Iraq as Afghanistan since 2003 were sent anyway, Pentagon records show."

Zaroya continued, "The reliance of troops found medically non-deployable is another sign of stress placed on a military that has sent 1.6 million servicemen to the war zones."