THE DEFENSE WILL NOT REST (GQ)

[tbyg52]

I still can't get over how the serious reporting has mostly gone overseas or to GQ, Vanity Fair, Hustler, etc.

Two U.S. military officers are jeopardizing their careers to protect the legal rights of those held at Guantánamo Bay. The way they see it, justice should be blind—for everyone
By Sean Flynn; Photograph by Gillian Laub

William Kuebler, a navy lieutenant with clippered hair and a round face, sat in his crisp summer whites at a heavy wooden table in the courtroom at Guantánamo Bay. To his left, at the other end of the table, was a young Saudi named Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi, who was reputed to be one of the most dangerous terrorists on the planet. Al Sharbi was about to be tried for war crimes, and Kuebler was supposed to defend him.

The problem was, al Sharbi did not want to be defended. Kuebler knew that, of course: Al Sharbi had refused to even meet with him for the past five months, finally acquiescing only four days earlier and then only long enough to tell Kuebler to go away. And really, who could blame him?

By April 2006, al Sharbi had already been locked up for almost four years at Guantánamo, where the military had declared him an “enemy combatant.” President Bush had claimed the authority to continue holding him—along with hundreds of men already in custody, as well as any other foreign national he might decide was an enemy combatant—until the end of the war on terror, a sentence that worked out to somewhere between indefinite and forever. His cell was eight feet long and not quite seven feet wide, with a bunk and a sink and, on the floor, a hole for a toilet and a painted arrow pointing toward Mecca. The lights were kept on around the clock, and he was allowed out only in shackles to shower and exercise for a half hour a few days a week. Al Sharbi had also almost certainly been subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” some of which until recently were considered torture and, according to the State Department, still are when practiced by Iran, Libya, Turkey, or any of a dozen other countries.

[MannyGoldstein]

1. NY Times Today

Unlikely Adversary Arises to Criticize Detainee Hearings

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Stephen E. Abraham’s assignment to the Pentagon unit that runs the hearings at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, seemed a perfect fit.

A lawyer in civilian life, he had been decorated for counterespionage and counterterrorism work during 22 years as a reserve Army intelligence officer in which he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. His posting, just as the Guantánamo hearings were accelerating in 2004, gave him a close-up view of the government’s detention policies.

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Some lawyers say Colonel Abraham’s account — of a hearing procedure that he described as deeply flawed and largely a tool for commanders to rubber-stamp decisions they had already made — may have played an important role in the justices’ highly unusual reversal. That decision once again brought the administration face to face with the vexing legal, political and diplomatic questions about the fate of Guantánamo and the roughly 360 men still held there.

“Nobody stood up and said the emperor’s wearing no clothes,” Colonel Abraham said in an interview. “The prevailing attitude was, ‘If they’re in Guantánamo, they’re there for a reason.’ ”

[kansasblue]

2. Also the New Yorker is great and....

I think Atlantic Monthly is good.

[tbyg52]

3. You're right, my bad for not including The New Yorker. nt