To the editor:

As with domestic criminal proceedings in the United States, one of the reasons for having international war crimes trials is to serve as a deterrent to future such crimes. It is in keeping with this and other important reasons that they be openly held. Now we are faced with the spectacle of the Bush administration interfering with the normal proceedings of the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosovic in The Hague for the apparent partisan political purpose of censoring the testimony of Democratic presidential candidate and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Gen. Wesley Clark.

Although this has received some coverage in other news outlets, I haven’t seen anything about it in the Journal-World yet. I would hope that you would cover this important story and, indeed, take an appropriate editorial position against what the Bush administration has done. The United States should be supporting the war crimes trials, not, as the Chicago Tribune recently reported, balking at sharing intelligence, thwarting attempts to call senior U.S. officials as witnesses, or as in the case of Gen. Clark, requiring their testimony be made in secret and that the Bush administration be allowed to censor transcripts before release.

Gil Zemansky,

Lawrence