Wednesday, Mar 3, 2010 09:06 EST
By Glenn Greenwald
(updated below)
As I noted yesterday, the group run by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol released what is certainly one of the more repugnant political ads of the last decade, if not the most repugnant. It's the type of McCarthyite act which would, if we had any minimal standards in our political culture, result in the shunning of Cheney and Kristol by all decent people (instead, it will likely land the Vice President's daughter on multiple Sunday talk shows where she can pose as an expert on national security). The ad brands Eric Holder's DOJ the "Department of Jihad" because it employs 9 lawyers who previously represented Guantanamo detainees (including Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who successfully represented the Guantanamo-plaintiffs in the 2006 Hamdan case before the U.S. Supreme Court). The ad darkly asks of these lawyers: "whose values do they share?," and labels 7 of those unidentified DOJ lawyers "The Al Qaeda 7." The premise of the ad is as clear as it insidious: any lawyers representing accused Terrorists are of suspect loyalties and allegiances, are devoted to "jihad," and are sympathetic to, if not part of, Al Qaeda (this profoundly ugly smear campaign began with the always-unhinged Andrew McCarthy in National Review, who branded such lawyers "terrorist sympathizers").
This slander encompasses scores of American military lawyers, who have vigorously, passionately and often successfully defended numerous Guantanamo detainees, including those accused of being Al Qaeda operatives. Adam Serwer and Spencer Ackerman both have excellent pieces on this ad, featuring quotes from several military officers who have defended accused Terrorists, including retired Col. Morris Davis, who was once a lead prosecutor in Guantanamo's military commissions only to became a vocal critic of that system. Watching as their integrity and character are smeared by the likes of Dick Cheney's daughter and Bill Kristol is really revolting.
But that disgusting duo is also smearing countless civilian lawyers whose work since 9/11 has been nothing short of heroic: representing the most demonized and despised group of individuals, and devoting massive amounts of time, energy and resources to doing so, almost always for free and -- particularly in the early aftermath of 9/11 -- at substantial risk to their reputations and professional relationships. They did so to defend the most basic Constitutional liberties of all of us -- as Lt. Col. David Frakt told Serwer: "What we have seen over and over and over is that the vast majority of detainees at Guantanamo are innocent" -- and there are no words in the English language sufficient to describe how low and odious are the people responsible for this "Department of Jihad/Al Qaeda 7" campaign.
As it turns out, one of the lawyers who has successfully represented Guantanamo detainees, Jonathan Hafetz of the ACLU, co-edited a newly released book, The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison, Outside the Law, which documents the sacrifices made and the indispensable value of those who have fought against the system of lawlessness and brutality represented by Guantanamo. Hafetz himself represented Mohamed Jawad, a boy no older than 15 at the time he was detained in Afghanistan and shipped to Guantanamo, falsely accused of throwing a grenade at American soldiers who had invaded his country, and put in a cage for 7 years with no trial (where he twice tried to commit suicide), until finally being released last year after a federal judge granted his habeas petition on the ground of insufficient evidence.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/radio/2010/03/03/hafetz
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