http://voanews.com/english/2007-06-23-voa10.cfm

US Army Officer Raises Doubts About Guantanamo Tribunals
By VOA News

23 June 2007

Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen Abraham took part in the hearings at the U.S. military base for six months starting in late 2004. In papers filed with a federal appeals court in Washington, the Army reservist and lawyer says officers conducting the hearings relied on incomplete intelligence sources to determine if detainees were enemy combatants. He says the arbitrary process failed to review evidence about the detainees that could have proved their innocence.

The lawyer says he decided to come forward after learning that the officer who oversaw the program, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral James McGarrah, asserted in a sworn statement the military carefully considered the status of each detainee.

« Il suffit d'ajouter « militaire » à un mot pour lui faire perdre sa signification. Ainsi la justice militaire n'est pas la justice, la musique militaire n'est pas la musique. »
- - attributed to Clemenceau and/or (in slightly different form) to Groucho Marx, who may have said, "Military justice is to justice as military music is to music."

(A funny line but not really fair because, unlike military justice, military music has some fine moments. And what would football be without military music, and without 14 year old boys and girls dressed for the Napoleonic wars?)

Anyway, as Andrew Cohen reports, this morning, at his blog at washingtonpost.com,
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/benchconference/2007/06/gitmo_hearing_long_outed_as_fa.html

We have long known, therefore, that military officials, to use the words of William Glaberson in this morning's Times, "relied on incomplete and outdated information" and that they were "under intense pressure from their commanders to conclude that the detainees should be held." The only bit of news here is that one of the officials who participated in these kangaroo courts finally had the courage and the integrity to step forward and speak out about a "haphazard and arbitrary" practice that surely is beneath us as a nation.

[ . . . ] The presiding tribunal officer accuses Idr of associating 'with a known Al Qaeda operative.' The detainee says, reasonably enough: 'Give me his name.' The tribunal president says: 'I do not know.' Idr understandably asks: 'How can I respond to this?

Abracadabra! In a puff of smoke, Mister Idr becomes "al Qaeda" because he didn't prove that he hadn't associated with an unidentified person.

The principal objection to pulling out has long been 'but there'll be a genocidal bloodbath." But this latest spin is designed to grant us leeway to provide exactly that: a killing field of our own.

No more concerns about the deaths of Sunnis or Shias. All the deaths will now be Al Qaeda and the collateral damage will remain unfortunate but necessary.

It thus becomes vitally important that the few journalists and NGOs operating there keep methodical track of who's really dying in the current and coming offensives.

It's all tied to the September progress reports. Claiming we killed a few thousand Al Qaida, Bush will stand up on September 11 and insist that we must not surrender to the terrorists who attacked us.

The question is, will anyone but the 26 Percenters hanging with Bush still play a gullible Charlie Brown when Lucy holds that ball again?

Maybe. But only if they're Al Qaida.

And the despicable bloodbath will stain their hands, too.

I ask myself every day, every single day, "What has happened to us? Where are our poets? Our artists? Our writers? Where has our soul gone to? Why has reason abandoned us?"

But at least we have Glenn and Digby and a few others.

And Bebop-o!

you would have noticed the role that al Qaeda has been playing in the past months, and you would have seen the distinctions between Sunni-Shiite paramilitant attacks and those perpetrated by al Qaeda. Clearly, al Qaeda is public enemy #1 in Iraq right now, as Gen. Petraeus stated well over a month ago, and that the terrorist group has chosen Iraq as its main front in this War Against Militant Islamism. Operation Phantom Thunder is designed to degrade al Qaeda, which happens to be the most unreconcilable group out there. To get a picture of al Qaeda's involvement, see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bombings_in_Iraq_since_2003.

And this is the piling swivel

Americans call it the stacking swivel.

Today in the Washington Post, Ricks wrote an (as always) clear-eyed article about the inadequacy of the 'surge'. The only time the term "Al Qaeda" appears in the article is in a quote from Lt. Gen. Odierno (read Fiasco if you want to know the unpretty details about Odierno as a military leader), who states that the target of the 'surge' is "the accelerants of Al Qaeda": "I mean the truck bombs, the car bombs, the chlorine bombs that they try to do in order to harass the population and try to affect the confidence in the government of Iraq. These are the attacks that we are trying to prevent." That almost seems a could-be-true statement, even if it still describes a fool's errand with way too much of the collateral damage Odierno's "style" causes. But Ricks is knowledgeable of the military and the whole Iraq misadventure, and he's clearly skeptical of official pronouncements.

AND he writes for the Washingtonpost Post. Go figure.

The GOP Base is starting to get very restive. Calling every sectarian fighter in Iraq *Al-Qaeda* keeps the Base happy. Remember, all along the ignorant 30% has bought the Bush line in its entirety. They all really believe that Al Qaeda is who we're fighting in Iraq (most of the 30% probably still doesn't get the difference between Shi'ites and Sunnis...hell, half the *Administration* still doesn't understand that one.)

In short, this change in nomenclature is desperation borne of political reality: the 30% may be starting to peel away, and the GOP would do just about anything to prevent that...

You can bet that this change in nomenclature was thoroughly focus-group tested before they started it.

What astounds me is how MSM is letting them get away with it. What the hell is WRONG with the Washington press corps? Are they all complete idiots?

I know, I know. But still. They all have to know they're being idiots, right?