The Defense Secretary Rests

Defense Secretary Gates said he wants to close Gitmo and figure out a way “to move the ‘hard core’ detainees while ensuring they do not have access to a legal system where they might be released”—in other words, prejudge their guilt and make sure they never have a fair trial. Justice, Bush style.

Executively privileging what?

What does “executive privilege” protect?

Here’s Mr Bush: “If the staff of a President operated in constant fear of being hauled before various committees to discuss internal deliberations, the President would not receive candid advice, and the American people would be ill-served…. I'm worried about precedents that would make it difficult for somebody to walk into the Oval Office and say, Mr. President, here's what's on my mind. And if you haul somebody up in front of Congress and put them in oath and all the klieg lights and all the questioning, to me, it makes it very difficult for a President to get good advice.”

Putting aside the melodramatic “constant fear,” “hauled,” and “klieg lights,” what do we have?

Let’s say Mr X gets a call from the president asking him to come into the Oval Office to say what’s on his mind on a particular issue. Mr X says, well, I’d like to tell you what I think, but because I might have to repeat my opinions publicly and state under oath that I’m not lying about what I’ve said to you, I’d rather say nothing.

Now, what kind of honestly held opinion could Mr X possibly have that would be so damaging to him on its being made public that he would rather remain silent than help the president of the United States with an issue Mr X presumably feels strongly about? And how ill served would the American people be by Mr X’s refusal to give such advice? The argument is clearly nonsensical.

Col. Victor Petrenko Death, Lies, and Videotape

“The U.S. military asserted that an American soldier was justified in erasing journalists' footage of the aftermath of a suicide bombing and shooting in Afghanistan last week, saying publication could have compromised a military investigation and led to false public conclusions.”

According to Col. Victor Petrenko, “taking pictures [may] misrepresent what had happened in the incident…. If such visual media are subsequently used as part of the public record to document an event like this, then public conclusions about such a serious event can be falsely made."

If the independent documentation is “misleading,” declare it misleading, and set it aside when you conduct your investigation. If the pubic perception is at odds with the army’s conclusions, that’s a public relations issue and should be resolved by arguing the evidence, not destroying in advance any evidence that you fear could be misconstrued as contradicting the result of an investigation that hasn’t been carried out yet. If there's a medal for bullshit, Petrenko qualifies.