From congressional testimony by Air Force Lt. Col. David Frakt, a Judge Advocate General (JAG) and former lead defense counsel for the Office of Military Commissions, in July:
It was the hope and deliberate strategy of the [Bush] administration that if the military commissions were well underway by the time the next Administration assumed office, with several trials completed and convictions duly rendered (the Administration did not foresee or accept the possibility of acquittals), the commissions would be difficult to derail.
This "spray and pray" strategy might have succeeded but for one factor the Bush Administration never anticipated: many of the military lawyers assigned the roles of prosecutors, defense counsel and judges in the military commissions refused to put aside their ethical obligations and their training in the rule of law. Many of these judge advocates, officers with decades of expertise in the law of war, considered the military commissions an affront to the military justice system to which they had devoted their careers …
Professional military judges refused to be bullied into endorsing the Administration's strained interpretations of the law of war. Tenacious military defense counsel challenged the government at every turn, exposing the many flaws in this concocted legal system and the disgraceful brutality with which their clients had been treated.
Shame on the media for being too lazy to explore further these explosive charges. Sure, the stories of these stalwart military lawyers have found their way into exhaustive but well-written features in glossy magazines like Vanity Fair and GQ, in law school journals and legal blogs – and especially by dogged investigative reporters like Andy Worthington – but they never transcend to the next level: saturating the mainstream news, where their resistance in the name of the Rule of Law, of ethics and the Constitution, really could have affected the debate more than any human rights advocate or ACLU champion. Even more than the fevered hyperbolics of Dick Cheney or Peter Hoekstra.
It is only fair that this discussion move beyond the squared circle and into what the news media ought to be doing – informing the public. Devoid of all that, the patented Cheney Method – aggressive and sustained, if not crude and ill-mannered attacks directly on the president and vice president (heavy on the lizard brain scare tactics and chest-thumping) seems to be working.
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