“this Obama gussied up swine of military commissions is a pig that is not going to fly”

Not even with Obama’s efforts/wish to “look forward, turn the page, move onto the next chapter” and all?

Appears to be some repeating going on

You think a grizzly bear backed into a corner is ugly?

Wait’ll Deadeye gets cornered; he has no pride, shows no mercy, takes no prisoners.

The MCs are a constituent part of the torture program which, even now, is not dismantled, and continues in somewhat attenuated form. It is also part of the cover-up of the previous torture program, allowing for the use of torture evidence without the political explosion that would take place by having to release or acquit “terrorists” (really “accused terrorists,” but who cavils about such things in our modern America anymore?) because the evidence was tainted by torture, and therefore inadmissible.

is very much on point.

From the FBI report (pdf link here to one chapter of it only) on FBI roles in the program, Chertoff (yes, Chertoff) supposedly told FBI/DOJ when he was head of Crim Div that you couldn’t “cleanse” coercion with later clean teams.

Chertoff told us he oculd not recall specific conversations about Zubaydah, but he did generally recall discussions about whether the FBI could preserve the admissibility of detainee statements by interviewing detainees some period after other agencies had completed their interrogations using non-FBI techniques. Chertoff also told us that he did not think this approach would successfully prevent the statement from being “tainted” by any prior enhanced interrogation techniques.

This is in a now-public FBI review document. Even so, in 2006 FBI went on with a “clean team” approach. I guess Obama feels that a “clean up” that even someone like Chertoff won’t endorse for a real court is fine for a Presidentially convened, Congressionally blessed, military commission. The GITMO detainees we sent to Spain did end up walking because of their torture, but what is going to happen if KSM walks? Think of the position that a US judge would be placed in to make that ruling. Well, we don’t really. We had the related issue of Padilla and his ability to participate in his defense after years of abuse and US courts had no problem with it. We had the issue of coercive interrogations, masked men certified in torture appearing before a court that had no jurisdiction over them to punish them for perjury showing up to offer testimony on the “clean” nature of confessions in the Saleh case and courts had no problemw ith that. We had the coerced statements of Zubaydah and Mohamed in the Padilla case and the lack of access to torture witnesses in Moussaoui’s case and the courts ahd no problem with that.

The only way to address any of this is head on, with the truth, and that’s what Obama won’t do. The only thing I can say is that in some ways a military judge who might make rulings on the admissibility of information might be more “protected” from political and domestic fall out, but the corollary is that if a military commission is excluding evidence for coercion (if it happened, as opposed to just getting a stacked result) that commission is also by definition saying that there were war crimes committed but that it won’t be able to address.