Guantanamo Chief Prosecutor on Guantanamo

In case anyone missed the NYT Op-Ed ten days ago by Col. Morris Davis, formerly chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, the opening paragraph speaks more volumes, more movingly, than I could ever hope to achieve:

Unforgivable Behavior, Inadmissible Evidence
TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, in the final days of the Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A.’s Tehran station chief, Tom Ahern, faced his principal interrogator for the last time. The interrogator said the abuse Mr. Ahern had suffered was inconsistent with his own personal values and with the values of Islam and, as if to wipe the slate clean, he offered Mr. Ahern a chance to abuse him just as he had abused the hostages. Mr. Ahern looked the interrogator in the eyes and said, “We don’t do stuff like that.”

The Times has a piece on Col. Davis today:

Former Prosecutor to Testify for Detainee
Col. Morris D. Davis, once chief prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and still with the Air Force, is now a chief critic.

Until four months ago, Col. Morris D. Davis was the chief prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay and the most colorful champion of the Bush administration’s military commission system. He once said sympathy for detainees was nauseating and compared putting them on trial to dragging “Dracula out into the sunlight.”

Then in October he had a dispute with his boss, a general. Ever since, he has been one of those critics who will not go away: a former top insider, with broad shoulders and a well-pressed uniform, willing to turn on the system he helped run.

I don’t think I need to comment.