If you thought the military commissions in Guantanamo Bay couldn't get any uglier, you were wrong. On Friday, the judge presiding over the Salim Hamdan case, Capt. Keith J. Allred, disqualified a top Pentagon official from any more involvement in the case. The reason? His aims seemed too political, his cheerleading for the prosecution too obvious to allow him to remain involved.
The official is Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, the Legal Advisor to the Convening Authority. That office oversees the whole process, meaning both prosecutors and defense attorneys. But as the judge's ruling makes clear, Hartmann wasn't anything close to impartial:
(b) Telling the Chief Prosecutor (and other prosecutors) that certain types of cases would be tried, and that others would not be tried, because of political factors such as whether they would capture the imagination of the American people, be sexy, or involve blood on the hands of the accused, suggests that factors other than those pertaining to the merits of the case were at play. [my italics]
You can read the judge's ruling, which was first reported on by The New York Times, in full here. The judge requires that Hartmann be replaced on the case by someone outside his office.
TPM has a nice timeline created there as well covering the entire sordid affair. What this all means, of course, is that it will be much, much harder to achieve legitimate convictions of those who are actually terrorists. It is yet another example of Bush policy directly making America less safe.
12 May 2008
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