The courtroom battles for the upcoming Warren Jeffs trial in St. George, Utah, set to begin in mid-September, are starting to heat up. Defense lawyers are adamant about keeping Jeffs' inflammatory comments, made to his brother during a jailhouse confession last January, out of the trial, while the prosecution is lining up witnesses to talk about Jeffs' alleged reign of terror as the head of the FLDS church in recent years. As Utah goes through the time-consuming and tedious steps to prepare its case against the defendant, who's being charged with conducting his own form of religion terrorism, it occurs to me that during the past six years, no significant criminal trial has yet taken place in relation to America's War on Terror. We haven't heard testimony from those being held who might want to harm the United States or had a public airing of their mindset. We haven't seen the evidence against these kinds of suspects tested in the courtroom or made subject to cross-examination. The due process of law has played virtually no role in fighting this war. As a result, the public doesn't know much about the enemy or who should be locked up for crimes against the state and who should be set free. Everything has been done in secret and in the end that only generates more fear and more ignorance. We will learn more about Warren Jeffs, both good and bad, during his trial and that is how it should be. Winston Churchill said that democracy was without a doubt the worse form of government in the world -- except when compared to everything else. The same is true of our legal system. With all its flaws and problems, it 's an excellent alterative to condeming the accused without the benefit of a public trial -- or using violence to solve differences. It's a shame we don't know more about those we've declared war on.