WaPo: Gitmo Prosecutions “in Chaos”?

That’s what an article by Peter Finn in tomorrow’s Washington Post claims. The statement that “the system of handling evidence against detainees at Guantanamo Bay is so chaotic that it is impossible to prepare a fair and successful prosecution,” comes from Lt. Col. Darrell Vandeveld, a former Military prosecutor who resigned last year citing “a crisis of conscience.” Vandeveld filed a declaration in federal court yesterday supporting a petition to have the charges against Gitmo detainee Mohammed Jawad withdrawn because he had been “tortured” while in Afghan and subsequently US custody. Jawad was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 after severely wounding two US soldiers and their interpreter in a grenade attack. Military officials have rejected Vandeveld’s claims. Finn cites e-mail correspondence with chief military prosecutor Col. Lawrence Morris who has this to say:

“I am happy to respond under oath to any of the allegations,” Col. Lawrence Morris, chief military prosecutor, said in an e-mailed statement. Vandeveld, he said, “was disappointed when I did not choose him to become a team leader, and he asked to resign shortly thereafter, never having raised an ethical concern during the 9 months I supervised him. I relied on his representations to me about Jawad and other cases I entrusted to him (which included his advocacy of a 40-year sentence for Mr. Jawad the week before he departed).”

According to Finn, military judges in this case as well as in the case of Omar Khadr, have requested to be briefed on the supposed disorganization of evidence in Gitmo prosecutions, and a verdict in Jawad’s case is expected within 30 days.

Seems like Bush Derangement Syndrome stuff to me. It seems liberals and anti-Americans like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are obsessed with this, but no one else is writing about it. As I see it anyone who throws a grenade at US soldiers only deserves the worst. Andrew McCarthy of National Review makes what I think is a pertinent comment while discussing Obama’s plans to close Gitmo at the NYT blog:

[...]the purpose of holding enemy combatants in wartime (which the Supreme Court has repeatedly validated, as recently as the 2004 Hamdi case) is not to prosecute them but to remove them from the battlefield and derive intelligence. Prosecution is incidental to that purpose, and often not practical. If your first imperative in detaining people is the right one (i.e., to defeat the enemy and protect Americans), you are going to detain many people who cannot be prosecuted at all, let alone “swiftly.”

Check back in the morning for updates.