WikiLeaks announced it will be revealing details on each detainee every day over the coming month. According to National Public Radio, the new information was made available to the The New York Times by another source, on the condition of anonymity; the two media outlets are reporting on the information in tandem.

In this latest secret documents release, WikiLeaks, headed by Julian Assange (who last week made TIME’s 2011 list of most influential people in the world), says it is “shining the light of truth on a notorious icon of the Bush administration’s ‘War on Terror.’”

All told, WikiLeaks released details on 758 out of 779 total cases of detainees at the Cuba prison — details obtained from thousands of pages worth of memoranda from the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay to the U.S. Southern Command in Florida, from January 2002 to February 2009. Details include prisoners’ personal information, capture information, prisoners’ health assessments, given reasoning for detainment, detainees’ accounts, ‘enemy combatant’ status and photos of most of the 171 prisoners still held in the prison. In addition, the organization has released summaries of evidence and tribunal transcripts on the first 201 prisoners released between 2002 and 2004, which, according to WikiLeaks, have never before been made public.

Wikileaks says these documents reveal evidence that the U.S. detained innocent men by mistake and offered “substantial bounties” to allies for al-Qaeda or Taliban suspects.

From WikiLeaks:

Crucially, the files also contain detailed explanations of the supposed intelligence used to justify the prisoners’ detention. For many readers, these will be the most fascinating sections of the documents, as they seem to offer an extraordinary insight into the workings of US intelligence, but although many of the documents appear to promise proof of prisoners’ association with al-Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, extreme caution is required.

The documents draw on the testimony of witnesses — in most cases, the prisoners’ fellow prisoners — whose words are unreliable, either because they were subjected to torture or other forms of coercion (sometimes not in Guantánamo, but in secret prisons run by the CIA), or because they provided false statements to secure better treatment in Guantánamo.

As details on detainees — and the evidence against them — makes its way to the public, The New York Times, The Guardian, and National Public Radio have provided varying insights on what this information tells us about the how the U.S. government has handled Gitmo.

From The New York Times:

What began as a jury-rigged experiment after the 2001 terrorist attacks now seems like an enduring American institution, and the leaked files show why, by laying bare the patchwork and contradictory evidence that in many cases would never have stood up in criminal court or a military tribunal.

[...]

The government’s basic allegations against many detainees have long been public, and have often been challenged by prisoners and their lawyers. But the dossiers, prepared under the Bush administration, provide a deeper look at the frightening, if flawed, intelligence that has persuaded the Obama administration, too, that the prison cannot readily be closed.

[...]

The dossiers also show the seat-of-the-pants intelligence gathering in war zones that led to the incarcerations of innocent men for years in cases of mistaken identity or simple misfortune.

[...]

[F]or all the limitations of the files, they still offer an extraordinary look inside a prison that has long been known for its secrecy and for a struggle between the military that runs it — using constant surveillance, forced removal from cells and other tools to exert control — and detainees who often fought back with the limited tools available to them: hunger strikes, threats of retribution and hoarded contraband ranging from a metal screw to leftover food.

From The Guardian:

The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89-year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim.

[...]

The range of those still held captive includes detainees who have been admittedly tortured so badly they can never be successfully tried, informers who must be protected from reprisals, and a group of Chinese Muslims from the Uighur minority who have nowhere to go.

One of those officially admitted to have been so maltreated that it amounted to torture is prisoner No 63, Maad al-Qahtani. He was captured more than nine years ago, fleeing from the site of Osama bin Laden’s last stand in the mountain caves of Tora Bora in 2001. The report says Qahtani, allegedly one of the “Dirty 30″ who were bin Laden’s bodyguards, must not be released: “HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” The report’s military authors admit his admissions were obtained by what they call “harsh interrogation techniques in the early stages of detention.” But otherwise, the files make little mention of the widely-condemned techniques that were employed to obtain “intelligence” and “confessions” from detainees such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and prolonged exposure to cold and loud music.

The files also detail how many innocents or marginal figures swept up by the Guantánamo dragnet because US forces thought they might be of some intelligence value.

A few key findings outlined by National Public Radio:

• A former detainee, Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda Bin Qumu, who is believed to be training rebel forces in Libya, has closer ties to al-Qaida than previously understood publicly.
• Tariq Mahmud Ahmad al Sawah, who claimed to have designed the prototype for a shoe bomb that failed to ignite on a U.S. plane in 2001, was recommended for release from the prison.
• Shaker Aamer, also known as Sawad al-Madani, said he had no connection to al-Qaida. His military assessment says he was Osama bin Laden’s personal English translator.
• Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected plotter of the USS Cole attack in Yemen, reported directly to Osama bin Laden.
• Guantanamo officials were aware that they had innocent men in captivity, yet it took months to return them to their home countries.
• One detainee from Yemen informed on so many of his fellow detainees that authorities decided the reliability of his information was “in question.”
• A Russian detainee was transferred to the control of Russian authorities, on the basis of assurances that he would be incarcerated back in Russia, only to be released from Russian custody a short time later. A Saudi detainee threatened to arrange the murder of “four or five” Americans in revenge for his imprisonment but offered not to follow through on the threat if he were paid $5 million to $15 million in compensation.

The Times and NPR have created a database featuring government documents, court records and media reports on the 779 detainees at Guantánamo.

Afghan relatives wait outside a hospital in Kandahar. (EPA/ZumaPress.com)

A very disturbing — and disturbingly vague — announcement came early this morning from the U.S. military command in Afghanistan. According to Army Lt. Col. Joseph “Todd” Breasseale, a command spokesman, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division is investigating whether an unknown number of American soldiers are responsible for the “unlawful deaths” of “as many as three” Afghan civilians.

[Security1]Breasseale’s statement leaves many key details vague, including how many soldiers are involved in whatever incident CID is investigating; specifically where it took place; and when it occurred. But whatever occurred was serious enough to get additional soldiers from the same unit to come forward to their chain of command with knowledge of the incident earlier this month. The statement makes it sound as if the potential criminal act was planned in advance of its commission, as allegations of “illegal drug use, assault and conspiracy” are involved, although it isn’t clear if those allegations have to do with the incident or with the cohort of soldiers under investigation more generally.

One of the soldiers in question is being held in pre-trial detention. No charges have been filed yet.

Breasseale said in an email that he couldn’t discuss further detail about the case right now. “The bottom line is that we are executing this investigation by the numbers and will not compromise our ability to gather and maintain evidence,” he said. He added that more specificity about the case will probably be available “once the charges are preferred,” an indication that CID’s investigation has progressed to the point where it is more likely than not that the soldiers involved will face charges.

It is unfortunately difficult to infer what incident this case involves. Over the past few months, despite the restrictions on rules of engagement that Gen. Stanley McChrystal issued last year to minimize civilian casualties, there have been several high-profile cases of civilian deaths at the hands of NATO forces. A so-called “night raid” earlier this month in Nangahar Province left locals saying 11 civilians were killed by U.S. troops, even though NATO considers all to be insurgents, and their anger led to a violent protest in which Afghan police killed someone. On February 12 in Gardez, also in Afghanistan’s east, U.S. Special Forces killed two men and three women — two of whom were pregnant — during a house raid, and had to correct an initial mistaken announcement that attributed the women’s deaths to insurgents. And although this incident doesn’t sound like the one under investigation, a misunderstanding at a Kandahar checkpoint led soldiers to open fire on a passenger bus, leaving four civilians dead.

Before McChrystal took command in Afghanistan, he said that the perceptions of the Afghan people that the NATO coalition is interested in protecting them from harm and the Afghan government is interested in enriching their lives would be “strategically decisive” in the nearly nine-year war. His counterinsurgency guidance instructs his troops to assume additional risk to their own lives in the interest of preventing civilians from being accidentally killed. After the Paktia incident, McChrystal consolidated his hold over Special Operations Forces operating in Afghanistan.

The Journal and Buchanan somehow overlook the five different wars — or five fronts in the “Terror War” — that Glenn Greenwald aptly points out today. We are, after all, engaged in consistent deadly bombings and raids aimed at terrorists and their sympathizers in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq.

Still, The Journal’s editors are wringing their hands over the administration’s decision to “treat terrorists like routine criminal suspects” with a right to a lawyer and a defense, rather than classifying Abdulmutallab as a “illegal enemy combatant who should be interrogated first with the goal of preventing future attacks and learning more about terror networks rather than gaining a single conviction.”

Here we have another version of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s “torture works” argument — notwithstanding all the evidence to the contrary.  The Journal and Buchanan apparently believe that the U.S. government ought to have grabbed Abdulmutallab and whisked him away to a secret prison where we could interrogate him under torture, what Cheney and The Journal’s editorial board would call “enhanced interrogation techniques” — even though the FBI, which conducts lots of interrogations, has argued in memos that such tactics are unlikely to yield useful information and make prosecution of actual terrorists impossible. U.S. military leaders and at least one Republican senator have also agreed they may aid terrorist recruitment to boot.

It’s worth noting that the Bush administration treated Richard Reid, the so-called “shoe bomber” who similarly attempted to blow up a plane shortly before Christmas in 2001, as a criminal. Reid was convicted in federal court and is now serving a life sentence in a federal prison.

In contrast, most of the suspects — including 520 Guantanamo Bay detainees — that the Bush administration treated as “enemy combatants” ended up being transferred or released. The Bush administration failed to collect any usable evidence against them, and as a result could neither try them nor continue to hold them without charge. As Republicans are quick to point out, some of those people have since joined terrorist groups back home. Indeed, reports are emerging that some may have been behind last week’s bombing attempt.

Actually, The Journal is right that, as I noted yesterday, the Obama administration’s handling of Abdulmutallab is inconsistent with the treatment of some other alleged terrorists, whom the administration has insisted it will try in military commissions rather than ordinary civilian courts. But rather than highlight the need to interrogate Abdulmutallab under torture, it underscores just how wrongheaded the warrior approach has actually been.

As Greenwald points out, our five-front war is “constantly delivering death to the Muslim world,” leading many Muslims to believe, not surprisingly, that we’re at war with Muslims, not just with terrorists.

However, prosecuting terror suspects as ordinary criminals — who, just like suspects in drug gangs and other organized crime often provide valuable information and rat out their criminal colleagues — shows Muslims and others that unlike the terrorists, we do believe in and adhere to the rule of law.

I know this isn’t a new idea, but it’s one that the Obama administration keeps getting attacked for trying to address. At a recent rally in New York against Attorney Eric Holder’s decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his suspected Sept. 11 co-conspirators in federal court, for example, anti-Obama protesters denounced the administration’s decision to accord the defendants the rights that come with a federal court trial, all the while vigorously waving the American flag and citing “our freedoms” protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Street protesters riled up by conservatives with a political agenda may be forgiven for forgetting what’s actually in the Constitution or what the flag is supposed to stand for. But The Wall Street Journal — and even Pat Buchanan — surely know better.

As Carol Rosenberg at The Miami Herald reports, though, the charges were dropped last Thursday “without prejudice” — meaning the same charges could still be re-filed against him.

The government had originally accused al Rabia of providing “material support” to al-Qaeda by running a supply depot at the battle of Tora Bora during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. But after imprisoning him for eight years, a U.S. District Court judge in September ruled that the evidence against him was “surprisingly bare” and not credible. Even government interrogators hadn’t believed it, the judge noted. She also ruled that al Rabia had been coerced and abused into “confessing” to activities which likely had been committed by someone else with a similar nickname.

Al Rabiah’s lawyers, meanwhile, demanded an investigation into their client’s treatment by U.S. officials, but as in the case of Mohammed Jawad, whose defense lawyer similarly sought an investigation into his abuse, the lawyers received no response.

Although the government did not appeal the district court’s order that the government was detaining al Rabia unlawfully, the Pentagon still refused for months to drop the military commission charges against him.

His return to Kuwait appears to have forced the military’s hand. Although he’s not likely to be charged again, the dismissal “without prejudice” may be the military’s way of avoiding an implicit admission that U.S. officials picked up the wrong guy in the first place.

Ahmed al Darbi, the brother-in-law of one of the 9/11 hijackers, supposedly plotted a never-realized 2001-2002 attack on an unnamed ship in the Strait of Hormuz. He also allegedly met Osama bin Laden and trained at an al-Qaeda camp. And he’s been imprisoned by the U.S. military since 2003 waiting to be tried on the charges.

On Wednesday, a military judge yielded to the Obama administration’s request to put off Darbi’s trial once again, postponing till January Darbi’s opportunity to present his defense.

Darbi claims the evidence against him consists of statements elicited through beatings, threats of rape, sleep and sensory deprivation, and sexual humiliation, first at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan and then at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay.

If he’s convicted as an al-Qaeda conspirator, Darbi, 34, could face life in prison.

This is the third time the Obama administration has won a delay in Darbi’s trial on charges of a crime he allegedly committed 9 years ago.  The administration has sought to delay all military commission trials while it decides whether it should proceed with the cases in military court, drop the charges or shift them to federal civilian courts.

The Washington Post reports today that President Obama’s Guantanamo policy is in some disarray, as the administration has faced more obstacles than it expected in shutting down the detention center and deciding what to do with the 220 or so detainees still imprisoned there.

Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's alleged driver, was held in Cuba at Guantanamo Bay prison camp like these detainees. (Department of Defense photo by Petty Officer 1st class Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy)

New documents obtained by TWI related to the case of Mohammed Jawad, an adolescent tortured by Afghan police and then abused again by U.S. interrogators, suggest that not only certain CIA interrogations, but interrogations by the Department of Defense demand a broader investigation as well.

Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he would investigate only CIA interrogations that appeared to have violated the agency’s rules and guidance from the Department of Justice. The Jawad case, however, reveals that U.S. military interrogations also violated well-established laws and appear to have violated the Justice Department’s legal guidelines as well. The newly obtained documents also reveal that the Department of Defense repeatedly failed to follow up on complaints by Jawad’s lawyers that its officers were breaking the law.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Jawad, who was about 12 years old when he was captured and accused of throwing a hand grenade at U.S. soldiers, endured “cruel and inhuman” treatment and possibly “torture” while in U.S. custody, a U.S. military commission judge ruled last year, determining that his supposed “confessions” to the crime were therefore unreliable. A federal district court judge later similarly refused to admit the confessions in ruling on Jawad’s habeas corpus petition, and announced that without Jawad’s statements, the government’s case was “riddled with holes.” She eventually granted Jawad’s petition, and Jawad was released on Aug. 24 after nearly seven years in captivity, most at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

Despite the court’s rulings that Jawad was mistreated in U.S. custody, however, no one has ever been punished or otherwise held accountable. His lawyers say that despite repeated requests, the Defense Department never investigated whether its officers had violated the law. Jawad’s lead military lawyer, Air Force Maj. David Frakt, has released to TWI some of the details of how and why he asked the Defense Department to investigate, and how his repeated complaints about Jawad’s treatment went ignored.

Jawad now plans to sue the United States for his mistreatment, which included such extreme sleep deprivation that it appears to have violated even the rules governing interrogation tactics issued by the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which issued the now-infamous “torture memos.”  A military judge in Jawad’s case excluded his “confessions” in part on the grounds that he endured 14 days straight of sleep deprivation (by means of what came to be known as the “frequent flyer” program), which may well have amounted to torture. Justice Department memos approved up to 96 hours of sleep deprivation, although some make reference to 180 hours, which would be 11 days. But 14 days exceeds the guidelines of all of the legal memos regarding interrogations that have been revealed so far.

According to Judge Stephen Henley, the U.S. Army colonel who ruled on Jawad’s military commission case, Jawad was “moved from cell to cell 112 times from 7 May 2004 to 20 May 2004, on average of about once every three hours.” Jawad was shackled but not interrogated; “the scheme was calculated to profoundly disrupt his mental senses.”

The alleged purpose of the “frequent flyer” program, Judge Henley wrote, was “to create a feeling of hopelessness and despair in the detainee and set the stage for successful interrogations.” But by the time Jawad was subjected to it, he “was of no intelligence value to any government agency,” Judge Henley ruled. “The infliction of the ‘frequent flyer’ technique upon the Accused thus had no legitimate interrogation purpose.” (Significantly, interrogation experts say sleep deprivation doesn’t produce useful information even if the subject does know something.)

When Frakt, Jawad’s appointed military defense lawyer, learned about how the frequent flyer program was used on Jawad, he became so concerned that, as a military officer, he felt obliged to report to his superiors what he believed was evidence of a war crime. So on May 29, 2008, Frakt sent a memo to the chief defense counsel at the Office of Military Commissions.

“I am reporting a suspected LOAC [Law of Armed Conflict] violation that I have uncovered in the course of my duties as a defense counsel assigned to the Office of Military Commissions Defense,” Frakt wrote. Frakt wrote that after an exhaustive review of the facts and relevant law, he believed Jawad had been tortured — in violation of the Geneva Conventions, U.S. and international law, and Defense Department regulations. “Accordingly, I believe I have an affirmative obligation to report the incident to my chain of command,” he wrote. Frakt cited several provisions, all of which require reporting of suspected war crimes to a supervisor.

Records provided by the government in the course of the case before the military commission reveal that from May 7, 2004 until May 20, 2004, Jawad, a teenager at the time, was subjected to the program.

“During this 14 day period, Mr. Jawad was moved from cell to cell 112 times, an average of every 2 hours 50 minutes,” Frankt wrote in the memo. “There were eight extra moves of very short duration between the hours of midnight and 0200 to ensure maximum disruption of sleep.”

After sending that memo, Frakt expected to receive a response. At least, eventually. But he received nothing.

So on Oct. 7, 2008, he followed up with an e-mail to the Commander in charge at the U.S. Southern Command post, Joint Task Force for Guantanamo Bay, or SouthCom-JTFGTMO. He cc’d four lawyers in the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel.

In his email, Frakt wrote:

On 29 May, I filed this LOAC violation memo with the Chief Defense Counsel, COL David. He forwarded the memo to your office on or about 1 June. Presumably your office forwarded it to SOUTHCOM. I have never received any information about the investigation.

The military judge in the Jawad case recently found that Jawad was subjected to the frequent flyer program, and that it constituted “abusive conduct and cruel and inhuman treatment.” (see attached ruling) He found it unnecessary to decide whether the conduct rose to the level of torture but did find that the action was intended to seriously disrupt the mental senses, which is one of the elements of psychological torture. He recommended disciplinary action for this “flagrant misbehavior”. [Confidential testimony from Guantanamo officer indicated] that the program was standard operating procedure, was carried out on many detainees as part of the camp “incentives program” and was personally approved by Col Nelson Cannon (now Maj Gen) and Brig Gen Jay Hood (now Maj Gen). Please provide me with an update on the status of the mandatory LOAC violation investigation or direct me to the appropriate officials who can respond to this inquiry. If you need any further supporting documentation to assist you in the investigation, please let me know. Thank you very much.

Frakt received no response. In January of this year, he sent another e-mail to the same Commander and a Captain at Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, and the same set of lawyers in the Pentagon’s General Counsel office.

It read, in part:

It has now been over seven months since this report was filed. I have never received any update on the status of the mandatory LOAC violation investigation. In the interim, the Military Commission has determined that the violation did, in fact, occur and that “under the circumstances, subjecting [Mr. Jawad] to the ‘frequent flyer’ program from May 7-20, 2004 constitutes abusive conduct and cruel and inhuman treatment.” In other words, Mr. Jawad was abused, in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. The commission has specifically recommended that “those responsible should face appropriate disciplinary action.” (See attached Ruling D-008)

Upon receipt of a LOAC violation report, a formal investigation is mandatory and should be done by the most expeditious means available. However, it does not appear that the DoD Directive was followed because I have never been contacted by anyone regarding my report. Please confirm whether JTF-GTMO or SOUTHCOM investigated this incident, and provide me with an update on the status of this investigation or direct me to the appropriate authority at USSOUTHCOM who can answer this query. If I do not receive a satisfactory explanation, I intend to pursue this matter with the appropriate Inspector General offices. Thank you very much for your prompt attention.

V/R

David J. R. Frakt, Major, USAFR

To this day, says Frakt, he has not hear back from the Defense Department as to whether anyone investigated the abuse and potential war crimes violation.

The Defense Department and US-SOUTHCOM-JTFGTMO did not respond to TWI’s request for comment. TWI has other outstanding requests for comment from the the Defense Department, including an explanation of why the department stopped reporting the deaths of detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a statement of the current policy of reporting those deaths. Despite at least half a dozen requests, TWI has never received an answer.

Yoo, of course, is the author of the infamous “torture memos” that justified the abuse and torture of terror suspects held abroad in U.S. custody, and authorized the suspension of the Bill of Rights on U.S. soil.

The Associated Press reports that campus police arrested at least four people who refused to leave the university’s law school building.

Yoo reportedly ignored the demonstrators and. after police removed them from his classroom, began teaching.

Yoo returned to UC Berkeley yesterday after spending the spring semester at Chapman University School of Law in Orange County, where his friend John Eastman is the dean.

According to the AP, Berkeley law students are divided over Yoo: while some think he’s a war criminal who should be fired, his classes are still among the most popular at the law school.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility is expected to release a report any day now analyzing the conduct of Yoo and his colleagues at the Office of Legal Counsel under the Bush administration, and determining whether he violated ethical rules.  The report has been delayed for months while its subjects and the Department of Justice review and amend its contents.

Jawad, as I’ve explained before, was a teenager (possibly just 12-years-old) when he was arrested in Afghanistan by local police in 2002 and charged with throwing a grenade at a U.S. military vehicle. He “confessed” to Afghan authorities after they threatened to kill him and his entire family if he didn’t admit to the crime. A military commission judge ruled that his subsequent confession to U.S. authorities was also coerced, unreliable and inadmissible.

The transcript of last week’s hearing, where the government said it needed time to think about how to proceed with the case, reveals that now even the federal courts are losing patience with the Justice Department and its handling of Guantanamo habeas cases.

“I have now suppressed every statement attributable to the defendant as the government has failed to oppose,” said Huvelle, noting that that’s about 90 percent of Jawad’s statements. “So what is there to think about?”

The Justice Department lawyer, Kristina Wolfe, responded that the government lawyers are “consulting internally” on how to proceed.

Huvelle: “There are 11 statements attributed to Afghanistan officials and to the Americans. The Americans did not see anything and there may or may not be an Afghani who saw something. You can’t prevail here without a witness who saw it. I mean, let’s be frank. You can tell your superiors that. You can’t. There is no evidence otherwise.”

Huvelle goes on to point out that the former prosecutor in Jawad’s military commission trial, Lt. Col. Darryl Vandeveld, was unable to find any witnesses to the crime and ultimately resigned from the case — and from the military commissions — in protest. He also submitted a 20-page affidavit in the habeas case outlining his failed efforts to find evidence of Jawad’s guilt.

“I’m not putting it off,” said Huvelle of the habeas trial. “This guy has been there seven years — seven years. He might have been taken there at the age of maybe 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. I don’t know what he is doing there. Without his statements, I don’t understand your case. I really don’t. You cannot expect an eyewitness time of account to rely on the kind of hearsay you have here.”

Daniel Barish, the senior justice department lawyer on the case, stepped in. “There is additional evidence that we’ve identified that we wish to include in an amended statement of facts if that’s how we choose to do so.”

That seemed to exasperate Huvelle even more.  “Then you’ll have to move faster than you are planning,” she said. “They have a right to have this habeas decided. If you are not relying on the gentleman’s statements anymore, face it, this case is in trouble. I’m not going to wait to grant a habeas until you gear up a military commission. That’s what I’m afraid of. Let him out. Send him back to Afghanistan.”

Adding that the case has been “gutted” without Jawad’s confession and that the government still hasn’t produced a single witness, Huvelle added: “If you have to go to Afghanistan to take a deposition, fine. But seven years and this case is riddled with holes. And you know it. I don’t mean you. The United States Government knows it is lousy. If you can’t rely on the guy’s statements, you have a lousy case.”

“This case is an outrage to me,” Huvelle said. “I’m sorry. This is an outrage. I’m not going to sit up here and wait for you to come up with new evidence at this late hour. There is only one question here, did the guy throw a grenade or didn’t he throw a grenade. That’s the issue. Right? If he didn’t do that, you can’t win. If you can’t prove that, you can’t win. I’m not going to have people running around trying to figure out a way to get this case out of the Court’s jurisdiction for some other reason. You have to come to grips with your cases.”

Noting that “the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing” in these cases, Huvelle refused to postpone the hearing to accommodate Barish’s family vacation, given that Jawad has been in prison for seven years and the government knew the case was in trouble since Vandeveld resigned last year.

“This is a case that’s been screaming to everybody for years,” she said. “The U.S. Government has certainly known about the problems through the military commission. This was months ago.”

Judge Huvelle said the government must advise the court of any new evidence it intends to introduce by Aug. 24 (two days after Barish returns from vacation), and she set the hearing on the merits for Aug. 5.

–

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After excusing the Bush administration’s torture and abuse policies, Graham noted that he had a meeting yesterday with administration officials about what should be done with the detainees held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. “It’s my belief that they may ask for another continuance regarding military commission trials” to continue reviewing and consider reviving them, he said.

“President Obama in my opinion has made some very sound decisions,” Graham said.

As Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News puts it:

The Inquirer thus handed Yoo a loud megaphone on what was once a hallowed piece of real estate in American journalism — to write on the very subjects that have now led Justice Department investigators to reportedly recommend disbarment proceedings against Yoo and has led international prosecutors as well as millions of politically engaged Americans to consider the Episcopal Academy graduate worthy of charging with war crimes.

Here’s the Inquirer editorial page editor’s response:

John Yoo has written freelance commentaries for The Inquirer since 2005, however he entered into a contract to write a monthly column in late 2008. I won’t discuss the compensation of anyone who writes for us. Of course, we know more about Mr. Yoo’s actions in the Justice Department now than we did at the time we contracted him. But we did not blindly enter into our agreement. He’s a Philadelphian, and very knowledgeable about the legal subjects he discusses in his commentaries. Our readers have been able to get directly from Mr. Yoo his thoughts on a number of subjects concerning law and the courts, including measures taken by the White House post-9/11. That has promoted further discourse, which is the objective of newspaper commentary.

Uh, maybe. But I tend to agree with Bunch on this:

[W]hile promoting public discourse is a goal of newspaper commentary, it should not be the main objective. The higher calling for an American newspaper should be promoting and maintaining our sometimes fragile democracy, the very thing that Yoo and his band of torture advocates very nearly shredded in a few short years. Quite simply, by handing Yoo a regularly scheduled platform for his viewpoint, the Inquirer is telling its readers that Yoo’s ideas — especially that torture is not a crime against the very essence of America — are acceptable.