US defense official shocked by law firms defending Guantanamo detainees

This is simply unbelievable.

A senior Pentagon official responsible for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said he finds it "shocking" that top US attorneys are rushing to defend "terrorists" locked up there.

"The major law firms in the country ... are out there representing detainees," Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, said in a Federal News Radio interview Thursday, available online.

"And you know what, it's shocking," he said.

"I think quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms."

So, under the Bush administration, the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" has now officially been abandoned. Indeed, any lawyer who dares to suggest that these men deserve a fair trial and offer to represent them at such a trial should be forced to choose "between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms."

In other words, people who dare to represent Guantanamo Bay prisoners should be boycotted.

Even the Nazis were allowed a defence team at Nuremberg. Is Cully Stimson seriously arguing that were these men actually ever to be charged with any crime- which to this day the vast majority have not - that any charges brought against them would be more repugnant than the Holocaust?

Is it acceptable to allow the Nazis a defence team but argue that persons held in Guantanamo Bay are somehow not worthy of any form of defence? (Despite the fact that over 400 of them have now been released back to their own country's without facing any charge of any kind.)

Even by the disgraceful standards of the Bush administration, this individual has hit a new low.

He is now saying that certain detainees do not deserve to be defended. And anyone who tries to defend them should be punished. They are guilty by the very fact that the government is holding them.

His remarks were blasted on Friday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and in a Washington Post editorial, described as an attack on the role of lawyers and the rule of law.

"What Mr. Stimson condemns are precisely the values we should be trying to defend in the war on terror," the ACLU said in a statement.

According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is coordinating the legal defense of detainees, more than 450 civil rights lawyers volunteered to defend the prisoners.

Only 10 of 395 Guantanamo detainees face charges and have been assigned a military defense lawyer to represent them. Washington hopes to prosecute 60 to 80 before military tribunals, while another 86 more could soon be repatriated.

The US government has meanwhile reserved the right to keep the remaining 230 in jail indefinitely and without charges.

Asked how the situation has changed since the first detainees arrived at the US naval base in Cuba five years ago, Stimson responded: "The world has essentially gone to Guantanamo now, over 2,000 journalists, 500 media outlets ... It's certainly, probably the most transparent, open location in the world."

In any society, which respected the rule of law, this man - especially considering his duties to look after the detainees at Guantanamo - would be fired.

Only in the Bush regime would such views be tolerated.

People no longer have the right to expect to be defended. There are some charges from which lawyers should simply back away.

That's scary stuff.

If the Bush regime have any last remnant of decency, they will fire him. But watch this space, they won't.

He's only articulating what they secretly believe.

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tag: Guantanamo Bay, terrorists, terrorism, Geneva Conventions, enemy combatent, Taliban, Afghanistan, foreign policy, Habeus Corpus