The Big Picture and the Closeup

There can be no such thing as “constructive treason.” It must be the real thing. And the facts of the Edward Snowden case highlight why the Framers’ narrowing of the definition is important.

Just Following Orders   [I]t can never be maintained that a military officer can justify himself for doing an unlawful act, by producing the order of his superior. Chief Justice Taney, Mitchell v. Harmony, 54 U.S. 115, 137 (1851)[1]              Last time, we started with the premise that the MPs who abused the detainees […]

Various Circles of Hell Jack L. B. Gohn               Because of the agonizingly slow leakage of information concerning the previous administration’s practices of internment and interrogation of Muslim men, it is only recently that the Central Intelligence Agency component has come into focus.               When the Abu Ghraib photos were first leaked to […]

Decommissioning Guantanamo, releasing or trying its inmates: Not so complicated as it may appear.

The Boumediene case was another “win” for the Guantanamo detainees. But with nobody leaving Guantanamo without permission on Bush and Cheney’s watch, the Administration is the real winner.

To read the groupthinkers’ policy statements from the decade preceding 9/11, it appears that they believed it was time for the U.S. to establish that it had the military power to do anything it pleased in the Middle East. Somehow this would guarantee our access to oil, assure Israel’s survival, and perpetuate our ascendancy over what the hawks’ fellow-traveler journalist Christopher Hitchens has called “Islamo-fascism.” And apparently Iraq was to be the showcase for this program. But within the echo-chamber that was the hawks’ ruminations, the fundamental truth is that there is no fundamental truth.

But we had better be prepared for the consequences. Someone, somewhere, is going to try us, quite seriously, for war crimes. And somewhere else, someone is going to commit war crimes against our soldiers because we fail to recognize their own combatants as POWs. And it won’t be pretty.