Former Gitmo prosecutor Morris Davis makes, in really powerful fashion, a point I’ve been contemplating: how does Hillary Clinton get off criticizing the torture of Syrian teenager Hamza Ali al-Khateeb or Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad when we have done nothing to hold those who tortured Mohammed al-Qahtani accountable? (h/t Michelle Shephard) In the fall [...]

I’ve been having difficulty finding the time to get through the entire AEI torture extravaganza that took place yesterday (“Moderated” by John Yoo). But by the time I read this Greg Sargent piece, I had gotten through the point at about 3 minutes in where Michael Mukasey said, Was there a memo in the file [...]

An unfortunate side effect of the NYT and NPR’s attempt to preempt WikiLeaks’ embargo on the Gitmo Files is that their coverage–rather than the coverage of those who had been working on the files for several weeks–got the most attention. Notably, McClatchy’s team of Tom Lasseter (who had done a series on Gitmo) and Carol [...]

Update: The Nation’s Chris Hayes and I had a chat about the OPR report here. The OPR Report [searchable PDF here] notes–but does not call much attention to–a Goldsmith footnote on a draft of his attempt to replace the March 2003 Yoo Memo that had authorized torture for us in DOD. In a footnote designed [...]

Susan Crawford, who’s in charge of Gitmo show trials, admits that Mohammed al-Qahtani was tortured. Why wasn’t she asked about Abu Zubaydah?

The charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani were dropped not because he was tortured. So was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, after all, and he’s still being charged. The charges against al-Qahtani were dropped because trying him would have amounted to trying Rummy, Jim Haynes, and Diane Beaver, too. And trying al-Qahtani would have also proved that torture doesn’t work.