Life in Hell

I was surprised to see that WaPo put up this op ed from not just one, but both of the only two Guantanamo detainee attorneys whose interviews were so extensive that they took two days, Brent Mickum, whose interview is posted here, and Joseph Margulies, whose interview has not been published. Brent and Joe happened to be among the earliest attorneys ever to visit detainees at Guantanamo, and have been at the forefront of the Guantanamo litigation since its earliest days.
The subject of the WaPo op-ed concerns their representation of Abu Zubaydah, one of the “high value” detainees at GTMO, an alleged 9-11 mastermind, who, after years of torture at the hands of our government (no other word for it), is probably beyond the point of being able to assist in his defense, if not beyond any semblance of sanity.
While it was Dostoevsky who quipped that a society’s degree of civilization can best be found in its prisons, in the case of how we have treated everyone detained in our so-called war on terror, whether Taliban footsoldier, wrong-place-wrong-time taxi driver, or actual “worst of the worst”… we have not acquitted ourselves well. The whole point of being the world’s mightiest constitutional republic is that we are governed not by the passion of mob-rule and desire for revenge, but by the rule of law. And we have just not done that with GTMO… our government officials have behaved much more in the tradition of Soviet commisars than what we would have expected of American officials.
Apropos, Bruce the Veep sends along this note about the kerfuffle likely caused by the testimony on behalf of detainees by former Guantanamo prosecutor Col. Morris “Moe” Davis. There’s just no telling what Davis will testify about, particularly about what the goal of “100% convictions” apparently imposed by his commanders might have led to.
Just part of the ongoing mockery of justice and everything that this country standsd for, about which only m’self and a few other crackpots seem to be concerned with. One hopes that it’s not as few as I fear it is.