Posted by
Defend America on Friday, March 05, 2010 4:34:29 PM
March 5, 2010 7:00 A.M.
The Gitmo Volunteers
Detained terrorists received more legal help than American prisoners do. Why?
This
is not that hard. The salient issue in the controversy over Justice
Department attorneys who formerly represented our terrorist enemies
detained at Guantanamo Bay is this: They were volunteers.
The
lawyers and their lefty legions expect you to overlook that. Lawyers
presume that they have an elite status in our litigious society and
that their superior knowledge of the law will intimidate critics into
silence. Since they are trained advocates, they figure that if they
feign enough indignation over somebody’s “questioning their
patriotism,” then Americans will shrink from asking, “How is it
patriotic to go out of your way to help America’s enemies in wartime?”
Often, that line of defense works. In 2007, these same lawyers managed to get a Defense Department official run out of town.
His hanging offense? He observed that many American corporations might
prefer to find a new law firm rather than continue retaining one that
used clients’ legal fees to subsidize its representation of terrorists
who murder Americans. The observation, of course, was common sense. If
you found out a restaurant you patronized was using the profits from
serving you to provide free meals for al-Qaeda, would you keep going
there, or would you find another restaurant? But when The Profession
shrieked, our politically-correct-on-steroids Defense Department cried
“uncle” in about a nanosecond. The al-Qaeda Bar and its cheerleaders
calculate that this sorry episode will make the rest of us pipe down if
we know what’s good for us.
Not all of us.
There is no
legal right to counsel in a habeas corpus case. The vast majority of
American citizens and aliens who are incarcerated after being found
guilty of crimes do not get lawyers to help them challenge the legal
proceedings against them or the conditions of their confinement. They
must represent themselves. The United States has detained millions of
war prisoners in our history, and those prisoners have never been
entitled to counsel in order to challenge their detention — indeed,
until 2004, they didn’t have a right to challenge their detention,
period. And even terrorist detainees who were charged
with war crimes in military commissions had no right to representation
by private counsel; instead, the rules provided for the assignment of
military defense lawyers at the expense of the American taxpayer.
http://article.nationalreview.com/426964/the-gitmo-volunteers/andrew-c-mccarthy