The 5th Anniversary of Gitmo arrived this week. Not the kind of anniversary you have a party to celebrate, unless of course you’re a rightwing nutjob who enjoys pulling the wings off butterflies and setting cats on fire with lighter fluid. Is that too violent a visual for you? Well, I hope to hell it was, because the crap we do in the name of truth and justice down there is friggin disgusting by any stretch of the imagination. One of the head jokers at the DOD actually had the cojones this week to come out in public and state that it’s outrageous that the best law firms in the U.S. are doing pro-bono work on behalf of the detainees. This Federal Fuckwit goes by the title of “US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Charles "Cully" Stimson”, and he actually uttered this quotable sound bite regarding legal representation for detainees this week:
"when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line in 2001 those CEO's are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms."
Now, Mr. Stimson might be an intelligent man..but the only thing I have to judge him on are his words and frankly my dear reader..the man can’t rub two brain cells together. His lack of ethics is astounding, his lack of vision expected and the total absence of even a hint of blind, legal justice just made my blood run cold. The presumption of guilt on his part just gave me an Excedrin headache, the likes of which I haven’t had in over a week. Then the worthless bag of batshit actually started naming off the firms doing the work, just to make sure that all the CEO’s who were listening could call up their legal office and ask if any of these firms worked for them..whereby, at least in Stimson’s meager mind, said CEO would summarily fire the firm and look for other legal minds to do their bidding.
The legal eagles did not sit on their asses, and allow this shot across their bows..nope. At least one, David J. Cynamon, felt the need to respond to this horseshit by publicly stating:
“Apparently, the Bush Administration has no good answers to the legal and moral travesties at Guantanamo, so they have decided to fall back on good old-fashioned lawyer bashing in a desperate effort to change the subject. It is bad enough that they have consistently flouted the Supreme Court's 2004 ruling that the detainees are entitled to habeas corpus. Now they are attempting to prevent the detainees from having legal counsel at all. It is truly incredible that Stimson, an attorney himself, does not appear to understand or care about the fundamental obligation of lawyers to represent unpopular and indigent clients.
We and the other habeas counsel are very proud of the work we are doing on behalf of the Guantanamo detainees, and we are confident that the vast majority of our corporate clients feel the same way. The true "news story" here is not that prominent law firms are trying to get the detainees a fair hearing but that the Bush Administration is trying to deny them one.”-emphasis mine btw.
