"We're All Mad Here"

I’m sure this story will be remembered primarily because, as stated here…

A federal appeals court reviewing evidence at Guantanamo Bay compared a Bush administration legal argument to one made by a hapless, dimwitted character in a 19th century nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll.

However, I’d like to emphasize not just the rather original sourcing used by the court to chastise our ruling cabal (“I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true,” according to “The Hunting Of The Snark” written in 1876), but the fact that, for the first time, “a court…reviewed the military's decision-making and considered whether a detainee should be held.”

The detainee in question is Huzaifa Parhat; the story continues…

Parhat is one of a group of Chinese Muslims, known as Uighurs, being held at Guantanamo Bay. Their case has become a diplomatic and legal headache for the U.S., which has tried to find a country willing to accept the Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs) even as it defended its decision to hold them as enemy combatants.

The Justice Department concedes that Parhat never fought against the U.S. and says it has no evidence he was planning to do so. The case hinges on Parhat's connection to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a militant group that demands separation from China. Parhat says he considers China, not the United States, the enemy.

The Justice Department says the U.S. has classified intelligence that ETIM is affiliated with al-Qaeda, though officials did not identify the source of that intelligence either to the judges or to the military reviewers.

...

The judges said there's credible evidence the source of (the) intelligence (that led to Parhat’s imprisonment) is the Chinese government, “which may be less than objective with respect to the Uighurs.”

So great; our “friends” in China decide to get rid of some of their “undesirables” by just spreading the word through channels that they’re affiliated with al Qaeda, and we’re just supposed to take that at face value? Can you say “Mariel Boat Lift”?

(And by the way, anybody out there who has either voted to effectively abolish the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution through support of the FISA “compromise” pertaining to judicial review of search and arrest warrants – I hope you’re reading this, Patrick, and I’m not too thrilled by some of the statements from Barack Obama on this either – should take heed of Bushco’s laughable interpretation of “due process” here.)

All of this brings to mind another Lewis Carroll quote, I should point out:

Sentence first, verdict afterwards.