The Week in the War on Terra

We're safer today than we were last Saturday, right? Right?

1. Beginnning in December 2001, Jesselyn Radack, a lawyer at the Department of Justice, repeatedly advised government lawyers not to prosecute John Walker Lindh, the "American Talib," without respecting his constitutional right to an attorney. In her account of what happened next, they didn't - and thereby created a situation in which his mistreatment led to a light sentence. She blew the whistle on their illegal legal tactics, and was rewarded by being harassed by her boss and then getting fired. She's unapologetic for maintaining her ethical standards:

What was at stake in this case, I believed, went far beyond the particulars of Lindh's innocence or guilt to the fundamental fairness of the American criminal justice system. As the Supreme Court has noted, the Justice Department's interest in a criminal prosecution "is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done." The consequences of playing fast and loose with the ethics rules would not only delegitimize the integrity of any conviction, but debase the entire legal system.

2. In structure and execution, Operation Swarmer, this week's big sweep near Samarra in northern Iraq, was either an unusually large and complex attempt to prevent the creation of that that bête noire, "the next Fallujah," or a routine counterinsurgency exercise notable only for the number of Iraqi troops who participated. Either way, it didn't turn up much:

60 people arrested in the U.S.-Iraqi military sweep north of Samarra remained in custody out of 80 who were initially detained... The U.S. military said it had confiscated weapons in Operation Swarmer, but reported no casualties or firefights.

(Side note: according to a general quoted in one account, Swarmer was "a follow-on to additional operations conducted prior to this in that general area. We conducted one about three weeks ago called Katrina, which gave us a lot of information about some of those cells and those operations." Katrina? Are you effing kidding me? Calling a military offensive "Operation Slim Shady" is stupid, but calling one "Operation Katrina" is crashingly, almost criminally insensitive. What's next - "Operation Levee Topping"? "Operation Attic Drowning"?)

3. The government case against "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui is being permitted to proceed. This, despite the fact that the prosecution team flipped the bird to due process when Transportation Security Administration lawyer Carla J. Martin "sent current and former FAA employees a transcript of the trial's first day and coached them on how to testify about certain topics to deflect the kinds of attacks the defense mounted that day." Of the government's approach to this critical prosecution, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said, "I don't think in the annals of criminal law there has ever been a case with this many significant problems." I think that's judge-speak for, "WTF? Did you dolts get your J.D.s through the mail? 'Passing the bar' doesn't mean walking around a tavern, fools."

4. Oh, and just for shits and giggles: On Thursday, Kevin Drum at Talking Points Memo reported that "House Republicans voted almost unanimously against an amendment to beef up port security and install radiation monitors at all U.S. ports of entry. They also blocked consideration of an amendment to require 100% scanning of shipping containers entering the United States." What was that Dubai World Ports story again?