Hat tip to Scott Johnson at Powerline for calling attention to this delicious piece by Jay Nordlinger:
Michael Mukasey was attorney general from November 2007 to January 2009. He remembers visiting Guantanamo Bay in February 2008. He looked at many of the high-value detainees on video monitors. But he did not see Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; Mohammed wasn't in his cell. He was off having a Red Cross visit.
Mukasey did see the exercise room, adjacent to Mohammed's cell. And he noticed something interesting: Mohammed had the same elliptical machine that he, the attorney general, had back home in his Washington apartment building. Only there was this difference: Mukasey had to share his, with other residents; there was a mad scramble in the morning to get to it. Mohammed had his machine all to himself.
Bear in mind that he was the "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks, which killed almost 3,000 people. That he was the beheader of Daniel Pearl. And so on. I wonder how much more tenderly America's critics expect us to treat such people. "Abdominal massages," of the type Al Gore apparently requests?
John Hinderaker adds: KSM is contemptuous of us because he thinks we are a bunch of idiots. I'm beginning to believe he's right.
As a former prosecutor at the Office of Military Commissions, issues like these irked us. We were particularly frustrated with the public perception of conditions at the camps and the rights afforded the accused at trial.
For anyone interested in further reading on the military commissions, comparative rights of the accused, and the effect of reputation on the process, see my forthcoming article, "Beyond the Court of Public Opinion: Military Commissions and the Reputational Pull of Compliance Theory" at SSRN. The abstract follows:
The decision to prosecute the suspected co-conspirators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in either a federal courtroom or by military tribunal has reached a critical juncture. Central to this debate is whether the military commissions are consistent with domestic and international standards of justice. Utilizing the analytical framework of compliance theory, which seeks to answer why States comply with the rule of law, this article discusses the U.S. reputation for compliance in the context of the revised military commissions.
A common element to several competing theories in the compliance debate is reputation. States are pulled toward compliance with accepted legal standards in part out of concern for reputation among transnational actors. These include governments, multi-national institutions, non-governmental organizations, and legal commentators. I argue that a decidedly negative reputation of the military commissions contributed to recent policies to amend the tribunal process, culminating in the Military Commissions Act of 2009.
A critical analysis of the substantive and procedural aspects of the military commissions reveals that, in spite of a reputation for non-compliance, the process is consistent with applicable legal standards. Nonetheless, as witnessed in this debate, opting out of the transnational and domestic discourse results in diminished interpretive influence when future efforts are made to shape a reputation for compliance.
[Comment edited to fix link, 7/2/10 @5:28 am PDT -- KS]