A lawyer tells why he defends Gitmo detainees

I thought we had learned from the McCarthy era, from the Nixon era from all the egregious inanities of the recent past. But apparently we have not. We will look back on the Bush era as a parade of inanities. One of the latest is the statement by deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs Cully Stimson, who apparently doesn't believe in the venerable principle of "innocent until proven guilty." His rank stupidity got the megaphone of a radio program recently, and then the media firestorm following it, when he flatly characterizes lawyers who defend detainees as representing "terrorists." One of those lawyers, Anant Raut, published an open letter to him that attempts to educate him on the law - and on what justice is all about. Apparently it had some effect because he shortly published an apology. Here is an excerpt from Raut's letter:

During the course of an interview on Federal News Radio, you named my law firm and 13 others whose attorneys have clients in Guantánamo and urged our corporate clients to take their business elsewhere. "You know what, it's shocking," you told your audience. "I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms." You then said our efforts might be funded by "monies from who knows where."

Mr. Stimson, I don't defend "terrorists." I'm representing five guys who were held or are being held in Guantánamo without ever being charged with a crime, some of them for nearly five years. Two have been quietly sent home to Saudi Arabia without an explanation or an admission of error. The only justification the U.S. government has provided for keeping the other three is the moniker "enemy combatant," a term that has been made up solely for the purpose of denying them prisoner-of-war protection and civilian protection under the Geneva Conventions. It's a term that was attached to them in a tribunal proceeding so inherently bogus that even the tribunal president is compelled to state on the record, in hundreds of these proceedings, that a combatant status review tribunal "is NOT a court of law, but a non-judicial administrative hearing."

Full text of letter here.

(via Salon.com)