Military commissions book reading
Jess Bravin, who has broken several important stories as the Wall Street Journal‘s military commissions beat reporter, whill discuss his new book The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay at 1900 on Wednesday, 20 February at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave., N.W. (202-364-1919).
Here’s an excerpt from the book description:
While much has been written about Guantanamo and brutal detention practices following 9/11, Bravin is the first to go inside the Pentagon’s prosecution team to expose the real-world legal consequences of those policies. Bravin describes cases undermined by inadmissible evidence obtained through torture, clashes between military lawyers and administration appointees, and political interference in criminal prosecutions that would be shocking within the traditional civilian and military justice systems.
I have skimmed the book, and I found the information in it to be dated. It is focused early on in the process when the people leading the prosecutor’s office couldn’t avoid stepping in it, etc. I think it also focuses way too much on one person, LtCol Couch. And there’s an outright myth in it that Mark Martins was brought in because the 9-11 case was a shambles. That’s just outright incorrect. He was brought in because nobody had any pull with the DoDOGC to get anything moving.