History repeats itself.
After leading the prosecution against 7 Gitmo prisoners, Reserve Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld is speaking out.
"Silence in the face of evil is collaboration with evil."
and
"Our fighting men and women who've been putting themselves in harms - They're not fighting for rigged, kangaroo trials."
Read the story here.
Vandeveld wasn't some liberal, terrorist loving, rights defending softy. In the words of military defense counsel, Maj. David Frakt, Vandeveld was a "true believer".
Vandeveld himself said that when he was first assigned to Gitmo, ""I wanted to punish them. I wanted vengeance."
Then he started work on the case of Mohammed Jawad. Jawad was accused of throwing a grenade at US soldiers 7 years ago, when he was sixteen. He's been a prisoner in Gitmo for 7 years.
As he prepared his case, Vandeveld found the evidence against Jawad was "in chaos". Worse, Jawad claimed he had been tortured into give evidence against himself. No surprise there.
But Jawad's torture claims were supported by statements from Gitmo guards and existing records.
As a good lawyer, Vandeveld turned this evidence over to Jawad's defense team and resigned.
"My conscience is not clear. I prosecuted Mohmmed Jawad for too long. I participated in the commissions for too long."
Vandeveld isn't the first good lawyer to face Gitmo
Vandeveld's story almost exactly follows that of Col. Morris Davis, the Chief Prosecutor at Gitmo till Oct. 2007. Davis also started out as a gung-ho, true believer and ended up resigning after he saw the mockery Gitmo made of our standards of justice.
Next time someone says, "Kill all the lawyers" remind him of people like Vandeveld.
Of course, if he's a wing nut, he'll probably think Vandeveld proves his point about lawyers. In the wing nut view, anyone who could possibly stand up for the rights of the accused must want Willie Horton to come kill us all in our sleep.