Last week I wrote about the controversy surrounding the HPV vaccine.

Over the weekend I came across a great article out of the Center for American Progress about the HPV vaccine and its implications for women of color. I think the article highlights yet another reason why the controversy against the vaccine is not only misguided but actually harmful.

There is a great letter to the editor in today’s edition of The Washington Times called Abstinence, sex-ed and public opinion.

The letter, written by Jodi Jacobson of the Center for Health and Gender Equity, responds to an article published last week that discussed the results of a new Harris poll on abstinence.  The article equates the poll’s results with newfound support among young people for abstinence-only education programs.  Jacobson points out in her letter that "the questions used in the survey referred to ‘programs to promote abstinence from sex before marriage’ — not to abstinence-only education programs." And she goes on to remind readers that "all comprehensive programs include a component on abstinence and delaying sexual debut."  

It’s an interesting and well written letter and it points out something that I think is so often overlooked in this debate – comprehensive programs do teach abstinence, they just couple such information with medically accurate information on pregnancy and STD prevention. 

According to advocates of abstinence-only-until-marriage education, condom wrappers and STD vaccines are giving teens the message that it’s okay to have sex and engage in risky sexual behavior.

If this sounds crazy then just take a look at some of the current controversies in the abstinence-only-until-marriage world.

Controversy Number 1:  The HPV Vaccine
This past fall, Merck announced that Gardasil, an experimental vaccine to protect against the human papilloma virus (HPV), was 100% effective in preventing infection from two HPV strains.  (The two strains the vaccine targets account for almost 70% of all cervical cancer cases).  Great news right?  Not for abstinence-only-until-marriage advocates.

An article in The Washington Post highlights some of the concerns that abstinence advocates have: “Some people have raised the issue of whether this vaccine may be sending an overall message to teenagers that, ‘We expect you to be sexually active’…There are people who sense that it could cause people to feel like sexual behaviors are safer if they are vaccinated and may lead to more sexual behavior because they feel safe.”

It’s hard to imagine how preventative care is going to send the message to teens that it is okay to have sex, or that such an argument would be used to fight the introduction of the vaccine when the alternative could be cancer.

Controversy Number 2: Condom Warning Labels
In November, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced proposed warning labels for condoms: “When used correctly every time you have sex, latex condoms greatly reduce, but do not eliminate, the risk of pregnancy and the risk of catching or spreading HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.” Previously, the FDA warning labels on condoms warned only of allergic reactions to latex.   

The proposed labeling, a result of a push by abstinence advocates, is meant to address the views of people like Shepherd Smith, president of the Institute for Youth Development, who in a LA Times article on the controversy said that condoms “have been hyped as offering protection. That isn’t the truth …When we see messaging to kids that says ‘Be safe, use a condom,’ we don’t think that’s an honest message.”

Condoms may not be perfect but they are still the best thing out there for sexually active people to use in order to reduce the risk of contracting HIV or other STDs.  Not to mention, aren’t we still fighting an uphill battle to get teens to use condoms when they do have sex?  Shouldn’t we focus our efforts on trying to get teens who are having sex to use condoms?

I have a hard time figuring out why exactly advocates of abstinence-only-until-marriage education pick the battles they do.  All I can say is that it certainly doesn’t seem to be in the name of keeping people safe and healthy.

If you thought the administration was only pushing abstinence-only-until-marriage education at home, well, you’d be wrong.

Back in December, NPR’s All Things Considered ran a interesting segment called Abstinence, Condom Use at Odds in Overseas AIDS Fight which addressed charges by the Center for Health and Gender Equity that the Bush Administration is requiring AIDS prevention programs that receive U.S. funding in Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia to emphasize abstinence and de-emphasize condom use. It’s worth listening to.

And a couple of weeks ago, I came across an article about Ellen Saurbrey in Salon.com. Saurbrey is the Bush Administration’s choice to head the U.S. refugee-response team. The article talks about her work at the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women and her “active opposition to programs that expand women’s access to contraception.” The article goes on to talk about how “[s]he infuriated representatives of other countries by working to scuttle international agreements that codify women’s right to reproductive healthcare. In March, she was loudly booed by delegates at a U.N. women’s conference in New York — a rare occurrence — for her comments endorsing abstinence education as the best way to fight HIV.”

Sensing a pattern?

Either directly or indirectly the U.S. is working very hard to spread the gospel of abstinence. Take Issue, Take Charge is focused on fighting on abstinence-only-until-marriage education in the U.S; however, it’s always good to remember that these issues extend far beyond our borders.

Anyway, food for thought.

“Can we all just go home now??” — that was the reaction of an exasperated Illinois DMV official contemplating the real details, difficulties and costs of implementing the Federal “Real ID” law. The law requires the states to issue a uniform national drivers license and join a unified national database containing the personal details of 200 million Americans by 2008.

His frustration was hardly unique. Last week an exclusive story from the Associated Press reported on the details of a remarkable survey of the 50 states by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

Cost and complexity may turn out to be the Achilles heel that ultimately dooms the Real ID, but it would be a real nightmare for Americans in much broader ways. The ACLU has created a new web site, www.realnightmare.org, which has the complete state by state survey results, so you can easily check out what’s happening in your state — but also covers the profound effects that Real ID will have on the rights
of all Americans.

Real ID will be a privacy nightmare creating a de facto National ID card and computer database. Among the most disturbing mandates will be the card’s standard “machine readable component” like an RFID chip that it will make
its data instantly available to not only every convenience store clerk, but to omnivorous data brokers like Choice Point.

It will be fundamentally unfair to both immigrants and native born Americans who will find themselves unable to jump through all the bureaucratic hurdles and overcome all the mistaken or lost records that will be required to get a driver’s license.

Imagine being a former resident of New Orleans or an asylee from Iran being asked to present one of the few official government documents recognized by Real ID ­ only to learn that have been lost to a hurricane or held by the government that persecuted you.

Real ID is not a done deal. The states are in near rebellion and millions of Americans oppose it. It’s too big and ungainly to mend it. Let’s tell Congress to end it.

So what’s it like to spend several days as a Guantanamo Bay visitor? Nothing I write will come close to capturing the experience. The Guantanamo of my imagination was a thin strip of beach on the edge of Cuba, with a small military community organized around a detention facility. So it was disorienting to arrive in a place of beauty, with mountain views and lush vegetation, and to realize that it would be possible to spend months in this 45-square-mile base without once encountering any direct evidence of the detainees’ presence here.

Below, I share some impressions from the last few days that didn’t make their way into my previous posts.

•  The motto of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo – the troops responsible for detention and interrogation operations here – is “Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.” When JTF members salute each other on the base, it’s common for one to say “Honor Bound,” and the second to reply “To Defend Freedom.” This is jarring at first, then routine; one senses that the recitation has become rote even for the some of the troops, who occasionally mumble the words as they walk past each other. To much of the world, hearing “Guantanamo” and “freedom” so closely associated must sound ironic, but I got the sense that most troops here believe in the mission, even though they’re not responsible for the policy decisions that brought them here.

•  The troops and detainees are not the only ones who have logged significant time at Guantanamo. Carol Rosenberg, a reporter for the Miami Herald, estimates that she’s spent over 400 days here, and I’ve taken to calling her the “Queen of all Guantanamo.” Carol is not just a kind of den mother to the other reporters who pass through here on assignment; she actually answers everyone’s questions, including troops stationed here and, more than once, a newbie lawyer confused about one thing or another. Her stories reflect the breadth of her knowledge, and I’ll be adding the Herald to my bookmarks.
•  I also met an Arabic language interpreter who disclosed that it was his 39th visit to Guantanamo. (He is employed by most of the law firms that represent detainees in habeas corpus proceedings; this time, he was accompanying four attorneys from Debevoise & Plimpton.) The interpreter suggested that if I wanted a quintessential Guantanamo experience, I should walk down to the beach one night, away from any lights, and lie on my back to see the stars. “It’s like a planetarium,” he said. So last night at around 11, I rounded up the other NGO observers, grabbed my Yoko Ono pocket flashlight (see second item), and headed for the beach. I didn’t need the flashlight, and I never lay on my back: there was a full moon, and I probably could have brought my book with me to the beach.
•  This week has been an unexpected reunion for me – or several, really. Avi Cover, the representative of Human Rights First, is a childhood friend whom I literally grew up with, though we’ve seen little of each other in the last fifteen years. Muneer Ahmad, Omar Khadr’s civilian counsel, was a college classmate of mine, and I know for certain I haven’t seem him since 1993. And Colonel Dwight Sullivan, Chief Military Defense Counsel for the Commissions, is a former ACLU lawyer from the Maryland affiliate whom I met several years ago in a bar in Austin. (Sorry, Dwight.)
•  In addition to the mess halls and fast food chains (McDonald’s, Subway), the base has some of its own restaurants and bars. There was excitement in the air at the Windjammer when we arrived for “Taco Tuesday,” and I confess I paid more attention to my plate than to the representative of the Canadian government whom we were dining with. We never made it to the Jerk House, the Jamaican restaurant, nor to the Tiki Bar – which, despite our protests, is off limits to us. (Maybe next time . . . .) We did have dinner at the Bay View, Guantanamo’s most elegant restaurant, where a player piano sits in the lobby, tinkling out Elton John favorites and waiting for someone more insightful than I am to explain how it’s a metaphor for this whole place. I’m not equal to the task.
•  Camp Delta, where the detainees are housed, is divided into several numbered camps, and the most “compliant” detainees reside in Camp 4. There, they are permitted to live more communally, and they can share their meals together and play sports. Recently, basketball was introduced to Camp 4. “Do they play?” I asked Colonel Jeremy Martin. “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “There are no Michael Jordans.”
•  The Commission room is fairly small, so it’s impossible to sit far away from the journalists, Commission staff, and members of the prosecution and defense teams who are not involved in the case being heard. During breaks, we chatted with the lawyers for both sides. On Wednesday evening, near the end of a very long day, I overheard one of the prosecutors announce: “Two words for tonight: Red. Stripe.”

And yes, I did see a two-foot iguana, on my very first day.

It’s one of the strange aspects of being here that you spend your entire day hearing and speaking about the detainees, but you never actually see them. So it was almost startling on Wednesday morning when the doors to the Military Commission room swung open, and Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al Bahlul walked in with a military security officer on each arm. Al Bahlul is a diminutive man – maybe five foot six or seven, and no more than 145 pounds – but a large presence. He sat alone at the defense table (his appointed military counsel would not join him there until ordered to do so by the Presiding Officer), and he seemed to be scribbling on a sheet of paper. We’d learn later what he was up to.

After a few false starts – someone had forgotten to give al Bahlul a headset for translation; then someone forgot to turn it on – the proceedings began with a colloquy between al Bahlul and Presiding Officer Peter Brownback regarding the issue of defense counsel. Brownback asked al Bahlul if he understood that the man in a military uniform sitting behind him (Major Tom Fleener) was his lawyer. Al Bahlul responded that he understood that Fleener was being forced on him according to the Commission rules (”I was told,” he said, “that [the rules] change from one minute to another”), but he refused to accept a military defense counsel operating under military rules. He added that he would refuse the services of any volunteer civilian lawyer if he were American. “This doesn’t mean I hate all Americans,” he insisted, repeating himself for emphasis. “It means I regard them as enemies.”

Back in August of 2004, al Bahlul had requested to be represented by Yemeni counsel, and he asked Brownback the status of that request. Brownback stated that the rules would not permit it, and wondered whether al Bahlul still wished to represent himself. Al Bahlul responded that he wished to read a statement. After warning al Bahlul that he might interrupt a statement that he regarded as self-incriminating, Brownback allowed al Bahlul to speak.

What followed was a manifesto of sorts. Al Bahlul announced that he wished to read nine points regarding the “causes and circumstances” of the decision he was about to make. Some offered critiques of the Guantanamo justice system (”Because of discrimination based on nationality . . . . The British detainees were not subjected to military trials, because Britain refused to allow its citizens, even Muslims, to be tried”; because of “the secret evidence issue”); others were harder to follow. “I know I’m detained,” he said, “and they will carry out their laws as they wish. I know there will be a day of judgment before God. Therefore I say to the judge – do as you will. You will rule in this world, and God will provide justice.”

Al Bahlul then declared: “With these nine causes, I am boycotting all sessions, even if I am forced to be present.” He lifted the paper that he had been scribbling on. “I will raise this paper, and this word is ‘boycott.’ I am boycotting every session. This boycott is the result of circumstances that I believe, and it doesn’t matter if you believe them.” Then, in English, he repeated the word “boycott” three times.

Brownback asked al Bahlul if he could make a copy of the “boycott” sign for the record. Al Bahlul said yes, but first he signed and dated it, and wrote “boycott” in English beneath the Arabic. (Later, when a Canadian journalist asked Commission staff if the press could obtain a copy of the sheet, he was told that it might be possible only after security personnel had reviewed it to ensure the absence of “subliminal messages.”) “Please, before you boycott,” said Brownback, “can I ask you one more thing?” Al Bahlul put his hands in front of his face, then removed his headset.

After a recess, Brownback formally denied al Bahlul’s previous request to represent himself – reasoning, oddly, that al Bahlul’s boycott rendered him “incompetent” to represent himself. (This was circular: the Commission’s refusal to permit al Bahlul to represent himself was almost certainly a principal cause of the boycott.) Brownback then ordered Tom Fleener to sit at counsel table and to state his credentials.

Fleener did so and then immediately moved to withdraw as defense counsel, explaining that al Bahlul didn’t want him as a lawyer, and ethical rules required that he not participate against the wishes of a client. Fleener had sought guidance from the state bars of Iowa and Wyoming, where he is licensed to practice, and had not yet received responses. Brownback denied the request. “You are de facto and de jure the only counsel Mr. Al Bahlul has, and as he pointed out earlier, it is him against the United States. You are the only one on his side.” The result is that proceedings in al Bahlul’s case will continue, though al Bahlul refuses to speak to — or even look at — his defense counsel.

The afternoon session was marginally more dignified, largely because Presiding Officer Robert Chester brings a recognizable judicial temperament to the proceedings. But any comparison between these tribunals and those at Nuremberg was shattered by the appearance of Omar Khadr, now nineteen, who was dressed in a red and blue “Roots Athletics” jersey and who looked like a freshman in college. (Chester would later request that “more appropriate” attire be provided to Khadr for future appearances.) Khadr, remember, was fifteen years old when he was captured in Afghanistan following a firefight with U.S. troops in which an American medic was killed; he is charged with murder.

As in the Bahlul case, the preliminary issue revolved around the accused’s choice of counsel. Khadr’s appointed military counsel, Captain John J. Merriam, has never defended a criminal case. It is uncommon, to be charitable, for one’s first criminal defense to be in a murder trial. (Bahlul is also represented by Professors Rick Wilson and Muneer Ahmad of the Washington College of Law at American University. But the Commission rules allow the prosecution to present evidence that neither the accused, nor his civilian counsel, can see. Thus the military defense counsel – who is permitted to see all sensitive evidence – is a critical player in these proceedings.)

Merriam – whose inexperience was outweighed by his tenacity – had previously requested on Khadr’s behalf that a more experienced trial counsel be appointed to Khadr’s case, and he was adamant that no proceedings should take place until that issue was resolved. Chester ultimately acceded to Merriam’s refusal to move forward with pretrial preparations, and it seems likely that a far more experienced defense lawyer will either join or replace Merriam.

But the fireworks came later, when Khadr’s civilian counsel, Muneer Ahmad, sought Chester’s intervention in preventing the chief prosecutor from making prejudicial, extra-judicial comments about the guilt of the accused – comments that violate rules of professional conduct in most jurisdictions. (At a press conference the previous day, Colonel Moe Davis has made some fairly strong statements – suggesting, for example, that Khadr must be spending a lonely Eid without his friend, Osama bin Laden, and repeatedly calling him a terrorist. See this article for a more thorough description of Davis’s remarks.

Ahmad’s motion put Chester in a bind: if he declined to sanction Davis, he’d be approving, at least implicitly, prosecutorial conduct that would be considered unacceptable in most jurisdictions. But if he granted the motion, he’d open the door to much more serious challenges, because Davis’s statements, however troubling, pale in significance to previous statements of President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, both of whom have already declared the detainees guilty. Davis, at least, is a prosecutor: it’s his job, consistent with ethical obligations, to convict Khadr. Bush and Rumsfeld, by Commission rules, are appellate judges: they will review any conviction of Khadr and other detainees, and it’s hard to imagine that they could provide impartial review to detainees whose guilt they have publicly declared.

Ahmad’s immediate reward for filing the motion was an order to submit a supporting brief by 8:00am the following morning, only 12 hours later. After losing a night of sleep, Ahmad lost his motion: at 8:15pm tonight – after a hearing in which a video recording of the press conference was played in the Commission room – Chester ruled, unconvincingly, that Davis’s statements were not improper because they had been offered to rebut defense charges that the Commission was illegitimate and Khadr had been tortured. Ahmad argued the motion brilliantly, even movingly, and if the Supreme Court allows these proceedings to continue, his ongoing and eloquent critique of the system will become an important part of the historical record.

I’ll close this post with an observation: Even in a terribly flawed legal system like this one, a skilled and dedicated defense lawyer can transform the nature of the proceeding. That’s why the Administration attempted for so long to keep any lawyers from coming here. All of the defense lawyers who participated this week, military and civilian, are fighters, and they won’t just throw up their hands at the injustice of the rules. The Administration may yet get the outcomes it wants – after all, it selects the Commission members and makes the rules – but it won’t get the trials that it wants. The defense lawyers will make sure of that.

Before I fly back on Friday afternoon, I’ll write one more post, this one more personal, in an attempt to give some sense of what it’s like to spend a week here.

Yesterday, we pestered anyone who would listen to us to arrange meetings with the Commission prosecutors and personnel, and we were given to believe that we were about as likely to get a meeting with the tooth fairy. So, when we serendipitously bumped into some of those prosecutors this morning in the parking lot outside the base’s Starbucks hut, we concealed our surprise and struck up a conversation.

I asked one of the prosecutors — who flinched theatrically when I told him I was an ACLU lawyer — why it wouldn’t have been preferable to try these detainees under an existing legal system, rather than inventing a new one on the fly. “If they had wanted to be tried in a civil law system,” he intoned, “they should’ve attacked France.” Before we could fish for more such gems, and in the middle of a harangue about Romania under Ceausescu, we were hurried away to our first appointment of the day: a tour of the kitchen where preparations were under way to serve the detainees a traditional Eid meal. With lemon chicken on our minds, we watched as the kitchen staff prepared what seemed to be ample portions of lamb kabobs, roast chicken, fresh baked bread, and rice.

For the four groups that have sent human rights observers to Military Commission proceedings - the ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Human Rights First - this was the closest we had been to where the detainees are housed. Our van drove along the outer boundary of Camp Delta, which is encircled by multiple rows of barbed wire fencing. Green plastic sheeting prevented us from seeing inside, and our requests to enter the camp were politely refused. Later, we would be permitted to stroll through Camp X-Ray, the original makeshift home of the first 312 detainees, which has been closed since the construction of Camp Delta in the spring of 2002 and is now a tangle of overgrown weeds and banana rat droppings.

Compared to yesterday and to previous visits, today was a day of relative openness. To our surprise, the Chief Prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, agreed to sit down with us, and at times he spoke candidly about some of the challenges he faces. One of our principal concerns about this Commission process is that there is no rule prohibiting the use of evidence obtained through torture or other coercive interrogation methods. (See the ACLU’s brief challenging the military commissions in the case of the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan). And our concern is far from speculative: through litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, we’ve obtained voluminous evidence - including the eyewitness accounts of FBI agents - that torture has occurred here and that “highly aggressive” interrogation techniques have been employed.

Omar Khadr, the Canadian teen who will appear before the Commission tomorrow, has alleged through counsel that during the course of his numerous interrogations, he was placed in stress positions, forced to urinate on himself, and then doused with pine oil solvent and used as a human mop to clean the floor; and that on various occasions he was threatened with transfer to other countries where he would be raped and tortured.

Colonel Davis acknowledged that the “treatment of detainees,” and the rules permitting the use of evidence that would be categorically excluded in U.S. courts or in ordinary military courts martial, would present him with some difficult decisions as a prosecutor. “In my job, that will be one of those hard calls,” he said. But, he “gets to drive the train,” he “didn’t get to build the railroad.” And he believes that the prosecution may be able to present its case against Khadr without the need for any statements obtained through interrogation.

This afternoon, during a briefing with a public affairs officer, we asked whether, four years after the arrival of the first detainees here, interrogations of detainees are ongoing. His response - “We continue to interrogate and to receive troves of strategic intelligence that is vital to our War on Terror” - was somehow as dispiriting as anything we’ve heard or seen. When the Supreme Court considers the legitimacy of the Military Commission system in the Hamdan case this spring, its decision will be vitally important to our efforts to restore the rule of law to our government’s conduct.

But nearly 99 percent of the detainees who have been brought here have never even been charged with crimes, even under the flawed Commission system. Some of them continue to be interrogated, even as the passage of time diminishes the relevance of any information that might be extracted from them. I’ll be thinking about those detainees tomorrow morning when the Commission reconvenes. I’ll report on the day’s events tomorrow evening.

The Guantanamo Military Commissions will reconvene on Wednesday, January 11 - four years to the day since the arrival of the first detainees at Camp X-Ray. Since then, more than 700 men and boys have been held here, and 505 remain in detention, in nearly complete isolation from the world. (Not so, assures my Visitor Handbook: “To date, the detainees have sent over 21,600 pieces of mail and have received over 15,300 pieces of mail.”) Of those 505, only nine have ever been charged with crimes of any kind. The ACLU and other human rights observers have come here to observe proceedings in two of those cases.

We arrived yesterday on a military C-130 transport jet, a mode of transportation aptly described as “austere” by our military contact. (Picture a Mack truck with wings, four deafening propellers, bench seating, temperamental heating, and a toilet behind a curtain in the back.) A military lawyer for one of the detainees joked that when he last flew in a C-130, he was being shot at in Iraq. But, he said, “These planes are the best. These planes can’t crash. Even when they crash, they don’t crash.” He slept soundly for the next five hours; I didn’t.

Why are we here nearly three days before the start of the proceedings? Not, presumably, because the military so enjoys denying our repeated requests (to see where and how detainees are housed; to inspect the hospital where dozens of hunger-strikers have been force-fed; to meet privately with the prosecution and with Commission members). Rather, it’s because the proceedings were originally scheduled to reconvene tomorrow - on one of the holiest days of the Muslim calendar, the celebration of Eid al-Adha. The Commission schedule was belatedly adjusted, but the travel schedule was not, so the military now has two dozen international reporters to entertain, and four ornery human rights observers to stonewall, for an extra day. (The press got a tour today. We didn’t.)

Each of the two cases in which proceedings will be held on Wednesday highlights troubling aspects of these Commissions. Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was a 15-year-old child when he was captured on an Afghan battlefield and brought to Guantanamo, where he has been held for 40 months in solitary confinement and, according to his attorneys, subjected to highly abusive interrogation. He has been charged with “murder by an unprivileged belligerent” for his role in a firefight in which a United States soldier was killed.

Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al Bahlul, a Yemeni native, has been charged with “conspiracy” and is accused, essentially, of being an al Qaeda propagandist. Al Bahlul caused something of a stir in August of 2004 when, during a prior hearing in his case, he announced his desire to represent himself - or, in the alternative, to be assisted by a Yemeni lawyer in place of his appointed military defense counsel. (For a firsthand account of that day’s proceedings, see this post by our Executive Director Anthony Romero.) The Commission, which adjourned to allow resolution of al Bahlul’s self-representation request, has since ruled that he can neither represent himself nor be represented by Yemeni counsel. Whether al-Bahlul’s appointed military counsel will agree to participate in proceedings — against the wishes of his “client” — is a question that will provide some of this week’s drama.

As a lawyer, I can’t help being concerned about a detainee without legal training confronting this bewildering and entirely unprecedented legal system, especially when I see the skill and dedication of the military defense counsel who have challenged the legitimacy of these proceedings both here and in federal court in the United States. And yet, it’s easy to understand why a detainee who has been held here virtually incommunicado for well over three years, subjected to harsh interrogation, and accused of a crime that has no basis in U.S. or international law, might mistrust a defense lawyer wearing the uniform of his captors. It’s possible to view al Bahlul’s request as a demand not only for self-representation, but for self-expression. For a brief moment, Bahlul will emerge from isolated confinement into the world spotlight. If he chooses to speak to the world in his own voice and not that of appointed military counsel - whatever the consequences - it’s hard to fault him.

I’ll write more about these two cases, and about some of the ACLU’s broader concerns about the Commission system, tomorrow. Meanwhile, the “Clipper Club” serves Buds for $2, Red Stripes for $3, and shots of Jack Daniels in a plastic cup for $2.50. After a day of being told “no” in eight different ways — from the terse, to the avuncular, to the analogous (Colonel: “You want to see that? I want to have dinner with J. Lo. It’s not gonna happen.” BW: “Don’t sell yourself short.”) — I’ve got a thirst. And I’ve got a wallet full of singles.