A Way Towards The Rule of Law – An Answer to Cap’n Jack

/in , , , /by

Justice, what do you care about justice. You don’t even care whether you’ve got the right men or not. All you know is you’ve lost something and someone’s got to be punished. The Ox-Bow Incident.

Nine years after September 11 and eight years after the CIA provided a memorandum to the White House explaining that at a minimum, one-third of the detainees at GITMO were “mistakes” who had been purchased in bounty transactions. Nine years after the Department of Justice covertly elevated the President of the United States as a power above the Constitution and the laws of the United States and seven years after the Department of Justice assisted in allowing the torture of Ibn al Shaykh al-Libi to be laundered through Colin Powell to the UN and to America. So many years after so many incidents, our nation is still being flimflammed over what to do with so-called terrorist detainess. 

Enter Jack Goldsmith with his recent op ed titled, “A way past the terrorist detention gridlock.”  While Marcy and Spencer have already weighed in, I whined until Marcy let me have my own go at this too, because I wanted to provide an alternative route to deal with the “gridlock.”  

Goldsmith’s advice to Obama is to:  (i) keep GITMO open because closing it is hard, (ii) forget civilian criminal actions because they are hard, (iii) forget military commissions because they have no international crediblity and are hard, (iv) get Congress to give the President unchecked and unsupervised powers to engage in forever detentions without respect to guilt or innocence, and (v) use the reality of  forever detentions for the innocent as well as the guilty and other coercion to get detainees to offer up confessions and plea deals and thereby get around the hard parts of civilian criminal suits.   Part (v) includes the caring-compassionate touch of only being recommended if Obama takes the death penalty off the table.  

Despite such awesome[ly bad] advice, GITMO has not proved hard to close because there are not Read more →

Trash Talk: Big Blue v. Golden Domers, Other Football & F1

/in , , /by

Okay, as promised, here is the real Trash Talk for the weekend. Not sure what other football games and sports there are after the Geezer’s debut Thursday night, but I will try to find some to talk about……

Hey, turns out there is a game in South Bend today! That’s right Wheelers and Wheelettes, it’s the Wolvereenies versus the Flighting Irish. Emptywheel versus Masaccio. Just like when they had the battle of the unvictorious and untieds in 2007 – except better! Both teams appear to be resurgent this year and, all joking aside, that is good for college football. Bothe teams come in at 1-0 and are desperate to get to 2-0 to make a run at a prime bowl spot. Michigan is keyed by Denard Robinson, the super soph quarterback. Last week against UConn, Robinson threw for 186 yards and ran for another 197 as the Wolverines rolled to a 30-10 victory. Thankfully, after last year’s fiasco, Rich Rod seems to have seen the light and made Tate Forcier permanent number two.

Notre Dame seems already to be much more disciplined and cohesive under new coach Brian Kelly. Look for QB Dayne Crist to go deep to Michael floyd, maybe the best receiver in the country, especially considering Big Blue’s defensive secondary is beat up. The real test in this game will be whether Notre Dames defensive front and linebackers can stop Robinson and Michigan’s running game. If they do that, Notre Dame wins, and that is what I expect, although it should be a pretty good game. If Robinson gets loose again like last week, however, the Wolverines will win easy.

There are a lot of other really good games on the bill too. First and foremost is The U at the Ohio State Sweatervests. We will see if Jacory Harris and the Canes are back enough to nip the Buckeyes in the Horseshoe. Also, Georgia at South Carolina, the newly Bowdenless Florida State Seminoles at Oklahoma, Penn State at Bama, Oregon at Tennessee and in an unusually early Pac-10 matchup, Stanford at UCLA. That is a hell of a lot of really good games.

PROS: The big tilt is of course on Monday night when Ray Lewis and the Ravens travel to the Jets Jets Jets and their loud coach and new stadium. That ought to be really something; two nasty defenses, both coached up at one point by Rex Ryan. Revis Island, Bart Scott and Jim Leohnard along with a solid line provide the Dee in the Jets’ fence. They will show up. So will Ray Lewis, although the other superstar ball hawk for the Ravens, Ed Reed, is out. Really, this game will come down to how the two offenses perform. In that category, you have to take the Ravens all the way with Flacco and Ray Rice over Mark Sanchez and a worn out LaDanian Tomlinson. Ravens get the job done

In other key games, the Boys and Romeo visit McNabb and the Skins. Everybody is high on the Boys this year, but I dunno. Still McNabb is banged up, so I will take the Boys this week; later maybe not so much. Pack at Iggles could be interesting. If Kevin Kolb is what he has looked to be in preseason and a couple of games last year, this might be interesting. Might, but won’t; Pack easy. Bengals at Pats; if the Bill Bels can muster any defense at all, they win – I think they will. I think the Lions at Bears may actually be pretty interesting just to see what happens. Lions should be MUCH improved, and who knows what the hell is up with the Bears, they could be good or horrible – who knows? I’ll take the Lions in what I guess is an upset. I saw some cluck on MSNBC website predict the Texans will beat the Peyton Mannings; nuh uh, Peyton scores too much for the Texans. Broncos beat the Jags, Stillers eke out a win over the Dirty Birds, Fish beat the Bills, Browns over the Bucs, Raiders upset the Titans, Eli and the Gents take the Panthers, Cards beat the Rams, SeaSquawks somehow over the Niners, and the Bolts kill the Chiefs.

US Open: Federer pulls one last major win over Nadal and Kim Clijsters wins another Open over Vera Zvonareva.

F1 Circus: This weekend the Circus sets down at the Autodroma Nationale de Monza for the one and only Italian Grand Prix. Monza is the fastest circuit on the tour and is a great track that always provides great racing. Not surprisingly, fast, good teams go fast at Monza, and so they did at practice. Sebastian Vettel led the way for Red Bull followed closely by the two home town heroes in red, the Ferraris of Alonso and Massa. The two Mclarens of Hamilton and Jenson Button followed with Mark Webber trailing with mechanical difficulties. This is another critical race with only three points separating Webber from Hamilton for the driver’s crown and only one point between Red Bull and McLaren for the Constructor’s Championship. The big chattering for the weekend has been over the use of team orders. FIA hit Feerrari with a $100,000 fine for the incident at Hockenheim. I have no clue why this is always so shocking in today’s F1, team orders have been a part of the Circus for over six decades; that is just the way it is and the way it is going to be. Ecclestone should give up the ghost on this one. The race goes off at 7:30 am EST and 4:30 PST Sunday morning on SpeedTV.

With Kagan On SCOTUS, We Are Still Down A Justice

/in , , , , , , /by

With the long anticipated retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens, it was important for President Obama to appoint and get confirmed a new justice so there would not only be a full compliment of justices on the court, but to insure the ideological balance of the court was maintained. By selecting Elena Kagan, Obama certainly did not pick the most qualified person for the job, nor did he maintain the ideological balance particularly as Kagan undoubtedly moved the court to the right at least to some degree.

Now, it turns out, by appointing Kagan Obama did not even give the Court a full compliment of justices. From the Blog of Legal Times:

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan this week quietly recused herself in 10 cases that will be argued in the term beginning Oct. 4, bringing to 21 the number of cases in which she will not participate.

That represents more than half of the 40 cases the Court has already agreed to hear in the new term — a number that will grow in coming months as the justices agree to hear arguments in more new cases.

During her confirmation this summer, Kagan already indicated she would recuse in 11 cases in which she was counsel of record as solicitor general. The new batch appears to reflect a determination that her participation at earlier stages — even where her office did not file a brief — required her to step aside.

So, as it stands today, Kagan will not be participating in over half the cases on the Supreme Court docket for the coming term. Lovely. A full list of the cases Justice Kagan has recused on to date can be found at the BLT link.

What is more distressing, however, are the cases to come that Kagan will also undoubtedly be recusing on. For instance the al-Haramain, Jeppesen and Jewel cases from the 9th Circuit. There are a whole plethora of Executive/Unitary power, Habeas, Gitmo, Detainee and other critical war on terror cases Kagan either did have, or may have had, her fingers on as head of the Solicitor General’s office. At this point, it looks like she plans on recusing herself from anything and everything that was in her vicinity, no matter how nominally. As should be well known by now, there is no necessity for a justice to recuse from everything they have ever known about, no less an authority than Antonin Scalia proved that.

Now, quite frankly, I have no problem with Elena Kagan recusing from consideration of Vaughn Walker’s decision in al-Haramain, I think the case would be better off without her toadying for the Obama Administration’s view of supreme Executive power and covering of crimes through assertion of state secrets, but what about the Prop 8 Perry v. Schwarzenegger case? In case you have forgotten, a portion of that case (the cameras in the court issue) went to the Supreme Court; if Elena Kagan decides she has to recuse herself, or is looking for an excuse to avoid such a controversial matter, that is going to be a HUGE blow to the chances of success on appeal.

I wonder how many people really understood they would be getting a part time justice for such a critical period over the next couple of years? And for all those on the liberal end of the political spectrum that carped about the fundamental dishonesty of John Roberts when he swore he was just a “balls and strikes” kind of guy “respectful of precedent”, I wonder what they think of the same type of deception from Kagan when she ridiculously understated the depth of her anticipated recusal problem to the Judiciary Committee?

There were a lot of things needed from President Obama’s choice to fill the seat of Justice John Paul Stevens; none of them have been fulfilled so far by Elena Kagan.

Cap’n Jack’s Crackerjack Logic!

/in /by

Here’s where Jack Goldsmith’s op-ed, purporting to offer a solution to the Gitmo problem, breaks down (see Spencer’s take on it here).

Civilian trials for terrorists have also proven difficult. They gathered disfavor when Attorney General Eric Holder said he would prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other alleged Sept. 11 plotters in civilian court in Manhattan. Disfavor grew when the failed Christmas Day plotter, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and the Times Square suspect, Faisal Shahzad, were placed in the civilian criminal system and read Miranda rights rather than detained and interrogated in the military system. The Bush administration prosecuted scores of terrorists in civilian court with little controversy. But the charge that the Obama administration is insufficiently tough on terrorists has made it harder for this administration to try terrorists in civilian court.

Difficulties with trials have left the Obama administration, like its predecessor, relying primarily on military detention without trial to hold terrorists.

Granted, Goldsmith uses the lawyerly trick of hiding the agency in his statement–substituting “disfavor grew” for “Republicans drummed up disfavor because it polled well”–to hide his faulty logic. But what he’s basically saying is that: (1) there’s no big deal with civilian courts, as the Bush experience shows, (2) nevertheless a bunch of fearmongerers who just happen to come from Goldsmith’s own party have been bad-mouthing civilian trials for crass political reasons, and therefore (3) civilian trials are just too difficult to pull off.

The rest of Goldsmith’s op-ed follows from this artificially created difficulty.

The correct response, for someone in Goldsmith’s position, would be to say, “stop being such cynical assholes, Republicans, this is about law, not your political stunts!” But instead, he wrings his hand and invents a new legal system to work around the difficulty created by his colleagues in the Republican party.

Which offers him the ability to make this move, which addresses an issue that has nothing to do with closing Gitmo:

Courts have given their general blessing to military detention as a legitimate form of terrorist incapacitation. But military detention still raises hard legal questions, about which Congress has said practically nothing. As a result, unaccountable judges are making fateful detention decisions, demanding release of some whom the administration thinks are dangerous terrorists.

[snip]

Second, acknowledge that military detention will remain the primary basis for holding terrorists, and strengthen the system. The president will eventually need Congress’s help, not only to put Guantanamo detentions on firmer footing but also to support the growing global fight against terrorists beyond traditional battlefields. The main legal foundation for targeting and detention in places such as Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen is the September 2001 congressional authorization to deal with the Sept. 11 attacks. But as dangerous terrorists have ever-dimmer connections to Sept. 11, the government is bumping up against the limits of what this authorization permits.

Again, Goldsmith hides his logic here. But what he’s actually saying is, “those mean judges on whom our entire legal system relies have pointed out that we’ve illegally been holding people who have nothing to do with 9/11” (and in fact have been doing so since the Bush Administration collected a lot of people who they called terrorists but weren’t tied to al Qaeda), “so we need to invent some means to hold them and more like them even though we have no legal basis to do so.” Sure, he, like John Bellinger, notes that the Obama Administration is pushing the legal limits of what the AUMF for Afghanistan legally authorized. But what he’s really calling for is some new legal authorization to just pick up anyone anywhere in the world and hold them indefinitely and maybe give them a civilian trial if we feel like it.

In the process he ignores the larger logical problem with this argument. Yes, the international community recognizes military detention as legal during times of war.

But what Goldsmith is advocating for is that Congress create some legal justification for military detention of those we are not at war with.

Now, Cap’n Jack isn’t really a big fan of international law binding US actions, which may be why he introduces this idea with so little thought, the same way he dismisses the symbolic value of closing Gitmo.

But if Congress were to pass a law granting the Executive the authority to unilaterally declare organizations terrorist groups, and on that basis, to indefinitely detain those alleged to be members without even the guise of war as a time-limiting factor, my guess is the international community would look none too fondly on it. It would be a new stain on our international reputation, added to the still-oozing sore of Gitmo.

And Jack Goldsmith, whose entire op-ed is premised on allowing his party to do anything it wants for political gain, doesn’t see where this kind of unilateral Executive power might lead.

Who We Are: Zeitoun and Camp Greyhound Five Years On

/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

In a country founded on “self evident truths” such as life, liberty, equality, and due process of law, the timeless quote from Ben Franklin speaks to the peril imposed when the founding principles are discarded or compromised:

Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.

Yet, of course, since 9/11 that is exactly what the United States has done and what has resulted in return. Fareed Zakaria has a piece up at Newsweek speaking to the senseless and destructive madness that has consumed the US since the 9/11 attacks:

The error this time is more damaging. September 11 was a shock to the American psyche and the American system. As a result, we overreacted.

….

Some 30,000 people are now employed exclusively to listen in on phone conversations and other communications in the United States. And yet no one in Army intelligence noticed that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had been making a series of strange threats at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he trained. The father of the Nigerian “Christmas bomber” reported his son’s radicalism to the U.S. Embassy. But that message never made its way to the right people in this vast security apparatus. The plot was foiled only by the bomber’s own incompetence and some alert passengers.

Such mistakes might be excusable. But the rise of this national-security state has entailed a vast expansion in the government’s powers that now touches every aspect of American life, even when seemingly unrelated to terrorism.

…..

In the past, the U.S. government has built up for wars, assumed emergency authority, and sometimes abused that power, yet always demobilized after the war. But this is a war without end. When do we declare victory? When do the emergency powers cease?

Conservatives are worried about the growing power of the state. Surely this usurpation is more worrisome than a few federal stimulus programs. When James Madison pondered this issue, he came to a simple conclusion: “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germs of every other … In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended?.?.?.?and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual war,” Madison concluded.

Indeed it is a chilling picture we have allowed our political “leaders” to paint us into, and Zakaria does not even hit some of the most disturbing impingements on due process and the rule of law such as the government arrogating itself the right to summarily execute American citizens with no judicial trial or due process whatsoever and the legal black hole that is Guantanamo and the Obama Military Commission and indefinite detention program. That is, as a nation, who and what we are today and it has bought us nothing except world scorn, geometrically more enemies, a plundered treasury, ignored and dilapidated domestic infrastructure, swelling joblessness and exploding income inequality.

But, hey, at least we have increased security and all those oppressive terrorist modalities are only for al-Qaida and the bad foreigners, right? No. The rot is now who we are, towards ourselves in addition to “them”. And that is where we finally get to the subject of the title of this post. Nothing demonstrates the deadly rot virus that has been injected into the blood of the American ethos than the story of Zeitoun. (more after jump) Read more →

EW’s World Famous Trash Talk: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

/in , , /by

Can you feel it? It is almost here. Real football is just over the horizon. The excruciatingly long preseason slate of games has thankfully ended with the obligatory fourth game of scrubs on scrubs, and now all that is left is the mandatory roster cutdowns which always serves up some interesting big names hitting the street. I’ll get back to that in a minute, but first there is the rather large issue of…..

Helen of Troy Palamalu has insured his hair for one million large. Holy flowing locks Batman! Actually, hair products company Haead & Shoulders, who Polamalu shills for, took out the policy from Lloyds of London. Pretty smart PR ploy actually. But the extreme value of Polamalu’s mop does raise the question of the relative value of Tom Brady’s new Justin Bieber look. Seriously, what’s up with that? Man, if the head Patsy gets any closer to his feminine side, he is gonna be strutting down the Victoria’s Secret catwalk with his wife.

Now, back to some of the comings and goings. Of local note here, it seems pretty clear that the Cardinals are going to cut bait with Matt Leinart. The guy has been given every opportunity, but has just never come to grips with the speed of the pro defenses and has been often aloof as a teammate and leader. Oh well, no loss, and the Cardinals have a rather impressive history of wasting high first round picks on quarterbacks that go bust (one of them, Kelly Stouffer, who in spite of being a complete bust in the NFL, nevertheless is forever known for refusing to play for the Cardinals after they used the number six overall pick on him).

T.J. Houshmandzadeh has been cut by Seattle after signing a big free agent contract last year. The Cowboys have dumped former fan favorite Patrick Crayton on the Bolts (who need a receiver because they seem unable to deal with Vincent Jackson). It may well be that Byron Leftwich’s knee injury last night earns him being dumped by the Steelers. Pittsburgh really only wanted Leftwich for the period of Big Ben’s suspension anyway and that has now been reduced to four games, which is how long Leftwich looks to be laid up. Hard to believe Pittsburgh will pay the money to keep him on the opening day roster under those circumstances.

In other news and notes, the student athletes have already started play. Sort of. USC ran up the score on Hawaii; the Trojans offense looked decent, but their defense looked very un-Trojan like. And not very Monte Kiffin like either. I dunno, could be a long year in for the scarlet and gold in Watts. However, there was one pretty good game last night, Utah and Pitt, with the Utes pulling out an overtime win. It will be pretty interesting to see coach Kyle Whittinham and Utah in the Pac-12 next year; the guy is a very good coach and Utah always seems to have solid players. They may make some waves.

But, hands down, the game of the week is Monday night between Boise State and the Virginia Tech Hokies. Boise is rated number 3 preseason and VaTech number 10. That is a good game any time, but this is simply huge in that if Boise State gets by the Hokies, they are primed for a run at playing for the National Championship in the BCS title game, which would be yet another perfect black eye for the hated BCS assholes. And boy would that be sweet. Boise State is my favorite team right now; Go Broncos!!

There is also MLB baseball as the season winds up and October looms and a few other things sporting out there, so get yer trash on people!

Letter to Earl Blumenauer Re: Indemnification Agreements

/in , , , , , , , /by

Dear Congressman Blumenauer:

I must say, I was both surprised and heartened to see you intrepidly and doggedly pursuing the existence and nature of indemnification agreements from the United States government insulating and immunizing private companies such as Halliburton/KBR from damage liability they would otherwise accrue for heinous, illegal and/or unconscionable acts committed in their participation in national security and the war on terror. Excellent work sir!

However, now that you are up to speed on the insidious use and abuse of such provisions, maybe you would like to continue your fine work – and give honor to your oath of office to defend the Constitution – and ask the same questions, and demand answers thereto, regarding indemnification agreements given to telcos by the Bush Administration in conjunction with the telcos’ participation in the illegal and unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program instituted by the Bush/Cheney Administration. And we know the program was illegal and unconstitutional because a United States Federal Judge directly and specifically declared it to be just that.

So, what you need to know is that the same type of craven indemnification agreements you have pluckily exposed for Halliburton/KBR were almost certainly given to the telcos participating in the President’s Wiretapping Program, and you owe it to your constituents and the citizens of this country to look into it and get answers just as you have done here.

Now I know this may be a lot to grasp and there is much for you to learn in order to successfully pursue this matter, but by great and fortuitous luck, I have already laid out everything you will need to get going. In fact, I did it nearly three years ago, and here is a taste:

For the foregoing reasons, the telcos are already protected by the immunity of existing statutory safe harbor provisions for legal conduct requested by the Administration and will have indemnity for other acts demanded by the Administration. I respectfully submit that the telcos are already sufficiently protected from the Spectre (some pun intended) of massive financial peril of the existing civil lawsuits; and that the only real reason for the desperate push for immunity is panic among Administration officials that their craven illegality will be exposed and they will be held to account. We now know for a fact, that which we have always suspected, thanks to Mike McConnell, namely that the entire belligerent push for FISA reform is all about immunity, and not about what George Bush would call “protectun Amarikuh”.

The minor issues with FISA that need tweaking could have been easily accomplished and, indeed, Congress offered long ago to work with them to do just that; but, of course, were belligerently spurned because, as Dick Cheney famously bellowed, “We believe… that we have all the legal authority we need”. This furious push has been about immunity, from the start, to prevent discovery of the Administration’s blatant and unconscionable criminal activity. The House of Representatives, and the cave-in Administration cover-up specialists in the Senate as well, should take a long, hard look at what is really going on here and steadfastly refuse the Administration’s self serving craven grab for the cover of telco immunity.

But, alas, Congress, which you were a member of, went along like a bunch of blind lemmings with the Bush/Cheney Administration’s demand for immunity for telcos that, along with the dishonest assertion of state secrets, has completely eviscerated citizens’ ability to know and understand what illegal and unconstitutional actions the US government is taking in their name, not to mention ability to seek proper redress for the crimes and acts.

So, now that you are all hardwired in on indemnification abuse, and on a roll of success, how about you go ahead and pursue this part of it? Come on Earl, it is your duty after all. Thank you in advance for your attention and cooperation in resolving this important matter.

Sincerely,

bmaz

Why Does Anthony Kennedy Hate Lindsey Graham?

/in /by

This is a rather interesting public statement from the guy who–at least before Elena Kagan and her obscure views on executive power got sworn in–was the swing vote on SCOTUS. (h/t fatster)

“Article III courts are quite capable of trying these terrorist cases,” [Justice Anthony] Kennedy said, agreeing with [an earlier panel that endorsed civilian, rather than military, trials].

[snip]

It was clear, he said, that an “attack on the rule of law has failed,” referring to the use of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects, often before panels in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Mind you, this is not exactly a surprise. Aside from Kennedy’s votes in past terrorism-related cases, his opinion in Boumediene was as much a defense of Article III prerogative as it was a defense of habeas per se. Which is why I’m interested in the context of his “attack on the rule of law” quote–because it sure sounds like he’s fed up with efforts on the part of both the Bush and Obama Administrations to usurp the powers of the courts.

And if he feels that way, I hope he nagged those judges in the 9th he was partying with to hurry up and finish their Jeppesen opinion so he can vote to uphold some limits on state secrets…

Blago Lesson: It’s Okay to Sell a Senate Seat, So Long as You Don’t Lie about It

/in /by

All you Californians ought to be getting awfully nervous about Senate-Select Carly Fiorina about now. Because the lesson I take from the Rod Blagojevich verdict–he was found guilty of just one charge of lying to the FBI, while the jury remained deadlocked on 23 other charges–is that it’s okay to sell a Senate seat, so long as you don’t lie about it.

A federal jury today convicted former Gov. Rod Blagojevich of only one count against him: lying to the FBI. Jurors said they were deadlocked on the other 23 counts against the former governor, and all four counts against his brother Robert.

Mind you, prosecutors immediately told the judge they’d be back to retry the remaining counts.

But in spite of the fact that Blago appears to be headed for jail, this is not a big victory against corruption.

Qosi Sentenced to 14 Pretend Years, Reportedly 2 Secret Years

/in /by

Remember when Omar Khadr wrote this about the military commissions?

Firstly, the unfairness and unjustice of it. I say this because not one of the lawyers I’ve had, or human right organization or any person say that the commission is fair, or looking for justice, but on the contrary they say it is unfair and unjust and that it has been constructed solely to convict detainees and not to find the truth (so how can I ask for justice from a process that does not have it or offer it?) [new color ink–apparently added later] and to accomplish political and public goal and what I mean is when I was offered a plea bargain it was up to 30 years which I was going to spend only 5 years so I asked why the 30 years? I was told it make the US government look good in the public eyes and other political causes. [my emphasis]

Best as I can tell, the fake plea bargain Khadr was offered–in which he would be sentenced publicly, but in which there was a secret agreement that he would serve just a fraction of that time–is what happened to Osama bin Laden cook Ibrahim al Qosi today. After making great show of picking a jury and directing them they could sentence Qosi to between 12 and 15 years, the military commission sentenced al Qosi to 14 years.

But everyone knows that 14 year sentence doesn’t represent Qosi’s real sentence. Instead, he is reported to be serving 2 more years–though there is a bit of a dispute because his plea promised he’d serve his time in communal quarters even though DOD regulations prohibit that.

The day opened with Air Force Lt. Col. Nancy Paul, Qosi’s judge, reversing herself on an order to the prison camps Monday that, whatever sentence Qosi receives, he must be held in a communal POW-style camp for compliant prisoners.

Paul issued the order Monday, saying she understood captivity in the company of some of the other cooperative detainees at Guantánamo was part of a secret annex to his plea agreement approved by retired Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, the top Pentagon official overseeing military commissions.

But by Wednesday she noted that collective confinement was not a promise but a recommendation, in part, because, despite a Pentagon bureaucrat’s directive in 2008, the U.S. military has never developed a policy or plan for how to confine war court convicts at Guantánamo.

Call me crazy, but if I were Qosi I’d be really nervous about this double secret plea deal, given that two years is longer than most people are deployed to Gitmo, and two years from now we’ll be in the middle of Presidential election season again.

But that’s what passes for justice in America’s prison colony these days, I guess.