Colonel Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor in the Defense Department’s Office of Military Commissions, has seen the light of truth and switched sides. At one time Col. Morris was writng OpEds in praise of the treatment and proccesses that those held at Gitmo were to under go. During that time he wrote things like this: <blockquote>Many critics disapprove of the potential admissibility of evidence obtained by coercion and hearsay. Any statement by a person whose freedom is restrained by someone in a position of authority can be viewed as the product of some degree of coercion. Deciding how far is too far is the challenge. I make the final decision on the evidence the prosecution will introduce. The defense may challenge this evidence and the military judge decides whether it is admitted. If it is admitted, both sides can argue how much weight, if any, the evidence deserves. If a conviction results, the accused has the assistance of counsel in four stages of post-trial appellate review. These are clearly robust safeguards.</blockquote> None of this is any longer the truth.  Colonel Davis has since given up that job and it appears the rules he set up have been changed.

In Dec. of last year Col. Morris wrote a OpEd in the LATimes. In it he revealed what he had once been gagged by the DOD from talking about, the reasons for his resignation. <blockquote>I was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until Oct. 4, the day I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system. I resigned on that day because I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively or responsibly.

 Finally, I resigned because of two memos signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England that placed the chief prosecutor -- that was me -- in a chain of command under Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes.( aka Waterboard Willie ) Haynes was a controversial nominee for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but his nomination died in January 2007, in part because of his role in authorizing the use of the aggressive interrogation techniques some call torture.  <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-davis10dec10,0,2446661.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail">AWOL Military Justice</a></blockquote>
 There was much written about both the OpEd Col. Morris wrote. Now he has written one more OpEd, this time it's in the New York Times. His concern this time is about the use of evidence waterboarded, beaten, shocked, or otherwise tortured out of the Defendant or others. Titled <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/opinion/17davis.html?ref=opinion">"Unforgivable Behavior, Inadmissible Evidence"</a>, once again takes on the powers he once served honorably. It is my hope that you, the readers, will make this OpEd the topic of emails and blogs going across the world in the next couple days. With all the news of the FISA fiasco this issue is barely being noted by the world. When men like the Col. break ranks and speak out it behooves us to listen well to what they have to say.

 The 1st two paragraphs of the newest OpEd lays out how Bush has changed or country for the worse. For those of us who lived through the Iranian Kidnapping Incident, it may strike you even deeper as it did me.
 <blockquote>TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, in the final days of the Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A.’s Tehran station chief, Tom Ahern, faced his principal interrogator for the last time. The interrogator said the abuse Mr. Ahern had suffered was inconsistent with his own personal values and with the values of Islam and, as if to wipe the slate clean, he offered Mr. Ahern a chance to abuse him just as he had abused the hostages. <strong>Mr. Ahern looked the interrogator in the eyes and said, “We don’t do stuff like that.”</strong>

<strong>Today, Tom Ahern might have to say: “We don’t do stuff like that very often.” Or, “We generally don’t do stuff like that.” </strong>That is a shame. Virtues requiring caveats are not virtues. Saying a man is honest is a compliment. Saying a man is “generally” honest or honest “quite often” means he lies. The mistreatment of detainees, like honesty, is all or nothing: We either do stuff like that or we do not. It is in our national interest to restore our reputation for the latter. (All opinions here are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Air Force or Defense Department.)<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/opinion/17davis.html?ref=opinion">Unforgivable Behavior, Inadmissible Evidence</a> </blockquote>
 While I wish I could just cut and paste the whole thing here for all to read, I can't but the next paragraph in the article is just as important as the first two. Please read it closely and then go ahead and read the whole thing. Pay close attention to how Col. Davis ponders the costs using Torture. His look back at Iran and how it will affect us going forward should read into the Congressional Record so those that study history later will know some of us were aware of those costs, while other ignored them out of fear. <blockquote><strong>Some accounts of detainee abuse in the war on terrorism are overblown, but others are not.</strong> After humiliating prisoners at Abu Ghraib by forcing them to strip naked and lie in a pile like a stack of firewood or simulating the drowning of detainees to persuade them to talk,<strong> we can no longer say we “don’t do stuff like that”</strong> — and we do not have to look far to see the damage. The disclosure last month of a manual for Canadian diplomats listing the United States as a country where prisoners might face torture, referring specifically to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was an embarrassment on both sides of the border.</blockquote>

 The Website Jurist had this to say after Col. Davis resigned last year. <blockquote><strong>For the majority of the prisoners at Guantánamo, the value of Davis’s resignation is that it may finally signal to the American public that politics rather than principle reigns at Guantánamo, and that decisions about the administration of justice at the camp are being made – largely outside of public view and without accountability – by political actors for nakedly political reasons.</strong> How else, for example, are we to explain the fact that every European who was dragged to Guantánamo has been returned to his home country, but that nearly ninety percent of the Yemenis who have been detained at the naval base remain there today – even though a number of them have actually been cleared for release by the military? <a href="http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2007/11/politics-at-guantanamo-former-chief.php">http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/20...</a></blockquote>

 Lastly I will leave you with a video of Colonel Davis taped in Dec. of last year. This is just part 1 of 2.
 <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4KZvskZ3ZfU&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4KZvskZ3ZfU&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
 Part 2
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 For those interested in a more intellectual discussion Torture, Scott Horton has a recent review of a book called "Torture and Democracy" that I highly recommend.It ties together the Iranian Kidnapping, and what could end up as our future in a odd sort of way.
 <blockquote>Another point: Everyone forgets that the Iranian revolution of 1978-1979 was the revolution against torture. When the Shah criticized Khomayni as a blackrobed Islamic medieval throwback, Khomayni replied, look who is talking, the man who tortures. This was powerful rhetoric for recruiting people, then as it is now. People joined the revolutionary opposition because of the Shah’s brutality, and they remembered who installed him. If anyone wants to know why Iranians hated the US so, all they have to do is ask what America’s role was in promoting torture in Iran. Torture not only shaped the revolution, it was the factor that has deeply poisoned the relationship of Iran with the West. So why trust the West again? And the Iranian leadership doesn’t.</blockquote> <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002387">http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/h...</a>