WASHINGTON?Brushing aside criticism, President Bush defended his authorization of military tribunals and the questioning of Middle Easterners in the United States. “We’re an open society, but we’re at war,” the president said Thursday.

“We will act with fairness, and we will deliver justice, which is far more than terrorists ever grant to their innocent victims,” the president told federal prosecutors visiting the White House.

The speech was Bush’s most forceful defense of the administration’s investigation tactics after the Sept. 11 attacks. The tactics include authorization of military courts to try non-citizen suspects, interviews with hundreds of people of Middle Eastern descent, secret detentions and the monitoring of jailhouse conversations between lawyers and clients.

Military tribunals can hold closed-door trials and afford fewer rights for the accused than civilian U.S. courts.