Good Question

Thank the Goddess that Froomkin is back. He is on target today and taking apart the lies as only he can do.

A skeptical view on what Bush said yesterday suggests that under the cover of some impressive-sounding but fragmentary and in some cases dubious disclosures, the president was actually making some very controversial demands.

He was, in fact, calling for the CIA to continue to be allowed to use interrogation tactics that many people would reasonably consider torture; he was demanding retroactive legal immunity for American interrogators who used tactics that many people would reasonably consider torture; he was calling for the unprecedented admission of coerced evidence in an American legal proceeding; and after all those years of refusing to give Congress any role in this matter, he was insisting that they take action in a matter of days.

I especially liked the section of quotes from military lawyer types.

Richard Simon writes in the Los Angeles Times, quoting Brig. Gen. James C. Walker, U.S. Marine Corps staff judge advocate: "I'm not aware of any situation in the world where there is a system of jurisprudence that is recognized by civilized people, where an individual can be tried and convicted without seeing the evidence against him. And I don't think that the United States needs to become the first in that scenario."

David Welna of NPR reported the following priceless exchange between Rep. GK Butterfiled (D-N.C.) and Steven G. Bradbury, the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel's acting chief.

Butterfield: "Would the administration find these procedures that you've put forward to be acceptable to one of our members if they were being tried by a foreign government?"

Bradbury: "I think probably not."

I guess the question that I have is why this question isn't the first question always asked when we start discussing the prisoners being held in Gitmo?