And once more into the breach

And then there is, of course, the release of Yaser Esam Hamdi, the US citizen "enemy combatant" who, the Shrub team insisted, was an unspeakable danger to the country and all the people in it. The deal is, in essence, he renounces his US citizenship and it's "get out and don't come back!" Not surprisingly, why, if he's such an unregenerate terrorist, he would be expected to abide by the travel restrictions goes unexplained.

But the real point here is that in covering the case, the Boston Globe (still as quoted by CSM) called it one of a number of "high-profile legal setbacks in the Bush administration's war on terrorism." Similarly, as I noted below, Reuters referred to dropping spy charges against Ahmad Al-Halabi as "the latest setback to the Bush administration's war on terror."

Just why in flaming hell are these "setbacks?" Why is being forced to admit that you kept a man locked up, virtually incommunicado, for over two years because, as it turns out, you didn't have any evidence to actually charge him with anything (or at least anything serious) a "setback to the war on terror?" Why is being forced to drop charges you had to admit you couldn't sustain in court a "setback?" Why is freeing a man after being forced to acknowledge you had no reason to think he'd done anything wrong a "setback?"

Setbacks to a war on freedom, yes. Setbacks to a war on Constitutional protections, yes. Setbacks to a war on justice, yes. But setbacks to a war on terror? No f'ing way. Unless you simply assume without proof (so much, again, for innocent until proven guilty) that Hamdi, Halabi, Yee, and all the rest of the targets of the dropped, failed, dismissed, or never-undertaken prosecutions were guilty just because Attorney General Burntfarm says so, the truth is that as far as we know no terrorist, no terror group, has gained a shred, a single tatter, of advantage from this.

Unless you believe that the government should be empowered to accuse, abuse, and abandon to prison indefinitely anyone it wants without the need for evidence simply by breathing the magic incantation "terrorist"; unless you say that justice must surrender to jingoism and freedom must submit to fear; unless you avow that what the Constitution describes are privileges, not rights; then you should declare that cases such as these are not signs of setbacks but reasons for rejoycing.