LT CMDR Kuebler Attacks Pentagon's Legal System:An Unlikely Antagonist in the Detainees’ Corner

[babylonsister]

An Unlikely Antagonist in the Detainees’ Corner

By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: June 19, 2008


When he speaks publicly, Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler, a military lawyer for a Guantánamo detainee, is careful to say his remarks do not reflect the views of the Pentagon.

As if anybody would make that mistake.

In his Navy blues, the youthful commander could pass for an eager cadet. But give him a minute on the subject of his client, a terrorism suspect named Omar Khadr, and he sounds like some 1960s radical lawyer, an apple-cheeked William Kunstler in uniform.

The Bush administration’s war crimes system “is designed to get criminal convictions” with “no real evidence,” Commander Kuebler says. Or he lets fly that military prosecutors “launder evidence derived from torture.”

“You put the whole package together and it stinks,” he said in an interview.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/us/19gitmo.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1213881478-6qoHZlXquz1xuVay2W7h6A

[Peace Patriot]

1. These military lawyers like Kuebler are some of the greatest heroes in the U.S.

They have put themselves and their careers on the line for the rule of law, for the Constitution, for the Geneva Conventions and for decency and human rights in the treatment of all prisoners.

The rest of us can descry the torture of prisoners--one of the most heinous crimes of the Bush Junta--and do whatever we can to get it stopped, and to punish those who ordered these crimes to be committed. But we risk very little--except getting our names on 'Homeland Security' "watch lists" for future persecution. That is not a small risk. But it is not front and center in most our lives.

Getting demoted, losing career advancements, suffering ostracism, and being targeted by Bushites who have powers of life and death over military personnel, and zero ethics as to the use of spying, blackmail, dirty tricks set ups, treason, illegal detention, torture and murder, in furtherance of their goals, represent far greater risks than the rest of us endure, for simply telling the truth, and acting honorably.

I have admired these jag lawyers from the first time I heard of them, back 3 or 4 years ago. That was even a more perilous time to be asserting the rights of Bushite 'detainees.' They were fighting an internal battle at grave risk to their careers, is what I gathered at the time, from scattered reports. I can't think of anything more difficult than the anxiety they must have felt for themselves and their families, and for our country, in that obscure, internal battle with Bushite criminals, while most Americans were still unaware of these crimes. Probably only the prisoners themselves have suffered more acutely.

Whatever one may think of the U.S. military--and, personally, I'm for cutting their budget by 90%, down to a true defensive posture (no more wars of choice!), and am still appalled at their failure to defend our nation's capital on 9/11 (though that was likely just Rumsfeld and a small cabal)-- the kind of moral courage that Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler and other military lawyers have shown is stunning and beautiful. They deserve our highest honors.