WaPo:

The Pentagon is invoking emergency authority to expedite funding of a war-crimes-court compound at its Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England has informed Congress.

Defense spokesmen would not say when, if ever, the Pentagon had last invoked similar authority. Nor would they specify which military construction already approved by Congress would be frozen to fund the court project, which could cost as much as $125 million, according to U.S. government documents.

The move was prompted by "national security implications and extreme urgency," England wrote several Republican and Democratic senators and House members said in a Nov. 17 letter.

England's letter cited "Section 2808 of title 10, United States Code" as authorization for the fast-track authority. The Pentagon would not elaborate, but it appears to be relying on a National Emergency Construction Authority Executive Order, which President Bush signed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Well, it's not to get show trials going in time for the election, so what could it be?

My guess is that it's a desperate form of jurisdiction shopping. The criminal Bush regime wants to get some trials into the MCA system pronto, before there's any chance of getting them into the legitimate court system. Certainly as a means of consolidating their authoritarian gains; probably as a means of concealing war crimes, or gaining immunity for them.

NOTE As always, let's remember that the prisoners at Gitmo are very few in number, compared to the total numbers in the Bush gulag, and that it's likely that many of these prisoners have simply been "disappeared." So, in the codex of Bush crimes against humanity, Gitmo may, in fact, rank rather low.