Alright, so welcome back to Anti-War Radio, it's Chaos 92.7 FM in Austin, Texas.
We're streaming live on the internet from ChaosRadioAustin.org and AntiWar.com.
Our first guest today is Warren Ritchie, he's the crime reporter from the Christian Science Monitor and has been keeping track of the Military Commission's situation developing down there at Guantanamo Bay.
Welcome back to the show, Warren.
Yeah, thanks.
Good to be with you.
Well, it's good to have you here.
So we got the historic first terror trial at Guantanamo Bay, the case of Hamdan, and people might remember that name since it was the Hamdan case where the Supreme Court originally ruled that the President could not create this Military Commission system outside of the rule of law, necessitating the passage of the Military Commissions Act.
And so I guess this is the first trial taking place under the Military Commissions Act, right?
That's right.
This is the first time it's actually gone to trial.
Of course, David Hicks, the Australian, would have been the first trial, but he pleaded guilty and was sent back to Australia, did some time in jail there, and is now a free man in Australia.
Well, and that's an interesting case, too.
They almost gave him the night court treatment, $50 in time served for a guy who was supposed to be the most dangerous man in the world.
Well, he's out.
So at any rate, that would have been the first, and now Hamdan is the first.
And today, the defense wrapped up its case, so they're actually close to deliberations.
The deliberations might start early next week.
Well, now, I saw that the prosecution had wrapped up their case, and that then, I guess it was today or it was yesterday, that they went into secret session for the defense to present their case.
Is that right?
That's right.
The defense called two witnesses.
These are military officers who had been present in Afghanistan during some of the questioning of Hamdan.
And that entire testimony was conducted in a closed session.
Now, the defense lawyers and Hamdan were present, which is an important fact, but reporters and any members of the public who were present at court were asked to leave.
And so the court was closed.
And so the excuse for that, then, I guess, is the government would argue, if the defense is going to be able to present a real defense, it's got to be in secret.
Yeah, the indication is this happened at the request of the government, not the defense.
The defense lawyers didn't want this section of the trial to be closed.
I mean, they've actually said that they'd like people to know what their defense is.
But I suspect that the issue, and maybe at some point we'll know, maybe a redacted version of transcripts will be released, and so we'll at least know what it was they were talking about.
But I suspect the concern was that there would be discussion about the method of interrogation that was used against Mr. Hamdan and various techniques that were used.
And the government is probably sensitive to this and wants to prevent people from knowing exactly what it is that they do.
Now, of course, there's a lot of discussion about interrogation techniques and tactics, but that's probably what the concern was.
So it wasn't even that he would say, no, I'm innocent because of this and that fact that they would say is classified or something.
It's simply because they tortured him, and they don't want that in the Christian Science Monitor.
Well, I don't know that there's an allegation of torture here with Mr. Hamdan.
It's important to differentiate who is being talked about.
In the Hamdan case, I think the argument is that when he was being questioned by various officials, some of them in the military, some of them on the law enforcement side, he was being interrogated.
And the question is, to what extent was that interrogation coercive?
And so even if it didn't rise to the level of, quote-unquote, torture, if it was coercive, then it still is important for a judge to gauge to what extent that whatever statements were made weren't made voluntarily.
So because some people, even though they're not tortured when they're not speaking voluntarily, they may just say whatever they feel is necessary to get a desired result.
In some cases, it's to stop the interrogation or whatever the treatment is.
But in other cases, it may be that he thought that he could talk his way out of something.
You get the idea.
But I think that's the concern.
And so the idea was, well, the defense would have to show that there was a plan and a way to make Hamdan talk.
And so to present that, they have to show to the judge.
They have to prove to the judge that this was so coercive that the testimony by these various officials about what Hamdan told them isn't trustworthy.
Well, and it seems like if the judge is honest at all, I mean, I think we should call him a judge with ironic quotes and that kind of thing.
But anyway, if he's honest, it seems like they ought to be able to make a case.
Because, I mean, you're the crime reporter for the Christian Science Monitor.
Isn't it the case that people confess to crimes they didn't commit all the time, whether tortured or coerced or otherwise?
Well, that's true.
But they don't really have a confession here with Hamdan.
I mean, Hamdan admits that he drove the car for Osama bin Laden.
But what he says is that he wasn't a member of al-Qaeda and he wasn't a terrorist.
He was hired as a driver and he worked as a driver, and that's what he did.
Now the government says that he was a member of a terrorism conspiracy, a war crimes conspiracy.
And so to prove that, they need to show that he was in the group, that he was more than just an employee.
Well, did they do that this week?
That really is going to be a question for those military officers who are sitting on the commission.
They're going to have to make that determination whether the government has presented enough evidence.
It's really impossible for me to know, including not knowing what was said in this secret session yesterday.
It's just really impossible to know.
It's going to be up to the judgment of those military officers sitting on the commission, assuming that the judge, and the judge has ruled that this testimony can come in.
And then it will be a question of how those officers on the commission, the equivalent of an American jury, will weigh what they've heard.
Because they can say, oh, well, we know this guy was treated roughly.
And they could say, well, you know, war is hell.
Too bad.
We believe that it wasn't so rough that it undercut the veracity of what he was saying, or it forced him to say things that he wouldn't say voluntarily.
Or they could say, no, when you consider all of these things, everything that happened to this guy, we think he's just a little bit, you know, just an employee.
And he was being truthful with his questioners, and, you know, not that big a deal.
Well, now, they say when they arrested him that he had a surface-to-air missile in the backseat or something, right?
Was there testimony to that effect today?
That's right.
I should say, quote-unquote, testimony?
That's right.
There was testimony that when he was stopped, there was a missile, there were two missiles in the car.
The question is, well, why were the missiles in the car, and was he using the missiles, and what was his role in this?
So the allegation is, well, look, he's burying weapons to al-Qaeda.
But again, one question that comes to mind is, he's being charged with a war crime.
He's being charged as a war criminal.
And that's a fairly serious accusation.
He's actually not being charged with having committed a war crime.
He's being charged with conspiring to commit war crimes.
And so the idea that you can be held responsible for a terrorism conspiracy, this is one of the reasons this case is so important.
And coming as it does, as the first case, it could lay a legal groundwork for the cases to come.
Because if the fellow who admits to being Osama bin Laden's driver is guilty of a conspiracy to engage in terrorism, then pretty much everybody else who comes up is going to be guilty of the same thing.
Yeah, it seems like, well, and that was really the Washington Post headline I think the other day was that the goal here is credibility, and I guess really establishing that legal precedent, a far-reaching legal precedent in terms of conspiracy charges like you're saying there.
Yeah, and so one of the things that's important in the credibility of this commission process is to be able to look and see and assess his defense.
It's important for members of the public in this country and overseas, because people are watching this around the world.
They want to see whether this is a fair trial.
That's why when they closed those hearings the other day, this is not necessarily helpful to the credibility of this process.
Because people will want to know how good his defense was.
If his only defense is, well, I was just his driver, but I was trained to do this and that and this, and I brought missiles to people, then you can see that it's not a very good defense.
But if he has a good explanation for why he was in certain places and what he was doing, but the public never hears that, then this isn't a fair process.
I mean, it might be a fair trial, but the process has to be seen as fair.
There's more at stake here than just what happened to this fellow, this driver.
The credibility of the United States itself, not just the military commission, but the country itself is at stake here.
People are watching.
They set this up to make it not fair deliberately in the first place, didn't they?
There are people who they held three different hearings in a row until finally they agreed that they were an enemy combatant and that kind of crap.
Well, this is the subject of great debate.
How much process is enough process?
How much evidence should you be able to bring in?
How much should you be able to challenge the government's actions?
These are questions that can be debated.
And so while you could say, well, the government was trying to guarantee conviction, you could also say, I mean, the government would justify its position as saying, well, look, we have legitimate concerns about our sources and methods and intelligence, the identity of certain intelligence officials, and we want to keep those things secret to safeguard American national security.
And to do that, it's going to be easier to do it in the context of a military hearing conducted somewhere outside the United States than with all of the protections of the Constitution and the criminal justice system.
That's the theory.
That's the theory.
But when you go down that road and you start peeling back certain constitutional protections and certain protections of the criminal justice system, then you also have to be aware that there are going to be people who will criticize you for having a system that looks like it's all designed to come out with a certain outcome.
And you can't have that if you want to have a fair system.
Well, how about the war crimes thing?
You say you talk about how he's being charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes.
But I kind of wonder what that exactly even means.
It's a pretty vague thing.
And I guess, you know, anybody could tell you that George Bush and Dick Cheney are guilty of war crimes.
But this guy, Hamdan, if he wasn't on a conspiracy to bring missiles to Al-Qaeda and the Al-Qaeda guys shot those missiles at American planes or whatever, and that's a battle, does that count as a war crime to fight in a war at all?
That's the question.
There are those who say that conspiracy is not a war crime and was not a war crime until Congress designated it as a war crime in the Military Commissions Act.
That if the United States wanted to be consistent, it should focus on actual war crimes.
Well, I mean, you can imagine what what a war crime would be.
It would be rounding up civilians and ordering them killed or planting bombs in a building or flying an airplane into a building occupied by civilians.
Those are war crimes.
Those are all sort of terrorist activities, but they're also war crimes.
But the question is, well, what about conspiracy to commit a war crime?
Does there have to be a tie to a specific act like killing civilians or planting bombs in areas where innocent people will be will be killed?
And the answer is going to come out, I think, in partly in this case, because there's no evidence that Mr. Hamdan planted a bomb or was in any way consulted prior to 9-11.
The issue is, well, did he learn about 9-11?
And I think there's some evidence that he found out about 9-11 shortly after it happened.
And of course, he was in close proximity to Osama bin Laden during this period.
But I guess the evidence, the trial, because they did obtain a written statement from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has suggested that he planned the 9-11 attack.
And supposedly his statement was that Mr. Hamdan, you know, a driver with a fourth grade education is capable of driving a car and maybe changing the oil in that car.
But he is not the kind of person al-Qaeda would recruit for an operation like the 9-11 attacks.
And it's important to look historically at who has been involved in those kinds of attacks.
And there were two different kinds of people involved in the 9-11 attacks.
They were so-called musclemen who were used to keep people away from the cabin of the aircraft.
But the leaders were people who generally had advanced degrees and were quite intelligent.
They had language skills.
They had academic backgrounds.
They were people who, under any circumstances, would probably have been successful.
And they turned to this mission of al-Qaeda.
Those kinds of people are extraordinarily dangerous.
Well, sure.
And, you know, I can see in whichever court, you know, as far as this military commission, as far as that goes, I could see it there or in regular federal court.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, if anybody could ever catch Ayman al-Zawahiri or bin Laden, to see them tried for war crimes for the September 11th attacks, you know, I don't have any problem with that.
I don't think anybody does.
The question to me is these people who supposedly just they're guilty of war crimes, supposedly simply for fighting in Afghanistan.
The one kid who he threw a grenade, supposedly, even though I guess there was evidence that it was somebody else that threw the grenade.
But supposedly he threw a grenade in a firefight.
And they're calling that a war crime to just simply be involved in the war in Afghanistan, September 11th aside.
And so does the law indicate that?
Or we're just waiting on the military judges to decide if these kinds of things count as war crimes?
Well, it's being established right now.
This is this is one of the reasons what's happening at Guantanamo is important, because it will it will set that bar.
Congress passed a law essentially saying conspiracy is a war crime.
And therefore, if you engage in conspiracy and it's conspiracy, it's not just a well, it's a conspiracy to to commit murder in a terrorist attack.
And so the question is, well, how much evidence must the government present to prove that charge?
That's an open question.
Right.
And can they define shooting or being in a firefight with American soldiers in Afghanistan as a terrorist attack?
I mean, that's to me is where we get to really stretch in the language of the law here.
Well, they well, now, of course, the administration's legal position is that Al-Qaeda members of Al-Qaeda are unlawful.
And I apologize for all of this jargon.
But the administration's position is that Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters were unlawful.
Well, and particularly Al-Qaeda were unlawful enemy combatants, meaning that they were in violation of the law of nations and the law of war, meaning that they they you know, when when when we go to war, our armed forces wear uniforms and display their weapons and do not target civilians and abide.
Just abide by generally accepted rules of the proper way to conduct war.
I mean, it sounds kind of crazy, but but but that is the way nations have set up a system of norms to help prevent war from cascading out of control.
When when combatants don't follow those rules, then normally they don't get the benefit of those from those countries that do comply with those rules.
There's it's an incentive system.
And Al-Qaeda has demonstrated that it's not interested in complying with any of those rules.
So members of Al-Qaeda, people who are fighting with Al-Qaeda don't get the benefit of those legal protections.
Well, I know that was the theory.
That was what five came up with in order to protect the sanctity of the Geneva Conventions.
We have to not let it apply to the Taliban or Al-Qaeda at all.
And they came up with the other excuse, which was that Afghanistan was a failed state so that even the Taliban's signature didn't apply.
And they they you know, but in fact, it was explained to me yesterday on the show by the dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, that common article three binds any signatories behavior toward any people, whether within the system of the rules or not, as though they were.
That's what.
Yeah.
And then the Supreme Court has ruled as ruled as such.
But that was the theory that they were operating under anyway, I guess is the point.
That's right, that's right.
But, you know, once once you're in a trial setting, then the question becomes, OK, well, what you know, how how much do you have to prove and how fair is this process going to be?
And so the key point is we're going to see how much evidence the government has to put on and or or how little to get a conviction.
Now, if this military commission comes back and says, sorry, you didn't prove enough.
If they come back with an acquittal, that'll be an answer.
Yeah.
Then they'll just have to try them again.
Well, actually, they can do that.
Right.
There's no protection from double jeopardy under the Military Commissions Act, is there?
Well, there would be.
I think it would be unlikely that they try them again on exactly the same thing.
Now, they might try to find some new way to try him.
But the other thing, the other big feature of the system at Guantanamo that's important to remember is that, you know, when somebody is designated an enemy combatant, the United States can hold them for the duration of the conflict.
And if if our conflict is against international terrorism and, you know, an ill-defined war on terrorism, that means we could hold him without any further action for the rest of his life.
Even after being acquitted of war crimes, he'll still be an enemy combatant.
Exactly.
Even after being acquitted of conspiracy to murder people as part of a terrorist operation.
Yeah, that's right.
Wow.
That's really something else, isn't it?
Well, now, tell me this, and I think I know the answer, but I'd like to hear you explain for the benefit of the audience.
Some people may be confused.
The Supreme Court ruled just a few weeks back in Beaumedin versus Bush that these guys all have the right to come to a federal court and get rid of habeas corpus.
But a judge last Thursday, Judge Robertson, decided that that didn't count for Hamdan and 18 others.
Why is that?
Yeah, I wish I could answer your question.
I can.
I mean, what was his bogus argument?
Well, I don't it's hard to know exactly what the judge was thinking.
But what he ruled is that Congress established this system, this military commission system at Guantanamo.
And it's not for judges that Congress in concert with the White House.
And just to go back a little bit, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdan case, the Supreme Court said, look, this process that you've set up under an earlier law, the Detainee Treatment Act, isn't robust enough.
It isn't fair enough.
So go back and try again.
And the Supreme Court actually said Congress can fix this.
And so so so then Congress with the with the White House got together and they passed the Military Commissions Act.
And so at really at the Supreme Court's invitation, Congress now, of course, then it was a Republican Congress working hand in hand with the with the Bush administration.
And so they were they were sympathetic to each other.
But it was at the suggestion of the Supreme Court.
They went and they passed this, the Military Commissions Act.
And so you have two branches of government of the three branches of government working together.
And so it would have been extraordinary for the judge to basically say, well, I'm a federal judge and I think the White House got it wrong and Congress got it wrong.
Now, the reason the judge might have said that he thought that Congress and the White House got it wrong is because just a few weeks earlier, the Supreme Court ruled in the case, this recent case that the that certain constitutional protections extend to Guantanamo.
And so these detainees have some protections.
But what nobody knows is because the Supreme Court didn't lay it out specifically is, well, how many protections, which protections, how much of the Constitution protects people at Guantanamo?
Nobody really knows that.
And so what they do know is that that a detainee at Guantanamo is entitled to a hearing before a neutral judge to determine whether or not he is being held legally by the U.S. government.
Now that we know, but the broader question is, well, what about other parts of the Constitution?
If the habeas clause applies, what about the Bill of Rights or some parts of the Bill of Rights that refer to people, the people near a broad application of the Bill of Rights?
Do they extend to Guantanamo?
Nobody knows the answer to that question.
And future law, future lawsuits may bring that out.
So there was a there was an anticipation that perhaps the people who are facing military commission trials like Hamdan would have the ability to go to a federal judge in Washington, D.C. and appeal the the.
Certain aspects of the military commission process.
So basically, because their so-called trials have already started, they've already had their pseudo indictment and they're already being charged with war crimes.
Now, it's too late for them to file the writ of habeas corpus.
That can be done by the other guys.
But for these 19 who are already being charged, it's too late for that.
But you're saying it's possible that after being convicted by the kangaroo court down there in Guantanamo, they still may be able to appeal to higher federal courts, is that right?
That's right.
And that's that's what Judge Robertson said.
He said he said.
But that wasn't in the Boma Dean case or you know how to pronounce it correctly.
But that wasn't in the most recent Supreme Court case, was it?
Well, no, the case that case was about the about detainees and and the determination of whether they're enemy combatants.
But by extending by ruling that the Constitution extends to Guantanamo, it raises questions about, well, if it extends to Guantanamo for people who are merely being detained there, why wouldn't it extend to the people who are about to be placed on trial for facing either a life sentence or the death penalty?
Why wouldn't why wouldn't we extend those same protections to to those people as well?
It raises the question that that will probably be, well, for sure it'll be litigated.
The question was whether or not those that that issue will arise before or after.
And Judge Robertson said, oh, well, OK, well, there'll be an opportunity after the commission to to raise those issues.
And those issues can go through the appellate courts, civilian appellate courts, all the way to the US Supreme Court.
And at that time and this is what Hamdan's lawyers were saying, why should Hamdan be subjected to a to an unconstitutional procedure?
The government's position was it's not unconstitutional.
It was set up by by Congress and it it affords these enemy combatants enough due process and fair process to comport with the requirements of justice under these circumstances.
Now, all of these issues are yet to be hashed out.
It's going you know, I mean, this is a very interesting process because we are watching we're just watching this unfold.
So that's why it's important.
That's why everybody's watching.
And that's why it's important to stay tuned.
Yeah, well, it's all a bunch of precedents being set.
And, you know, it's funny because through these years, ever since they first abandoned the law and started calling people enemy combatants and and doing this whole thing, I've always been so worried that the Supreme Court would get these cases because what if they decide wrong?
And they've done, you know, reasonably well so far on Hamdan, Rasul and Boumediene.
But, you know, it's the kind of thing, well, like the Military Commissions Act itself has yet to face challenge in front of the Supreme Court.
And they could go ahead and say, well, we told you to pass a law like this and you did.
So good job and uphold the thing.
And then forever, we'll have government lawyers telling judges, well, judge, you see, it was already decided in the case of, you know, not the first Hamdan case, but the second Hamdan case that, you know, all these precedents are set now.
We can do whatever we like to these people.
Mm hmm.
There there will be lawyers will argue precedent when it's there.
But, you know, the court, the courts are there to to make sure that if there are mistakes, that those mistakes are corrected.
So, you know, this will be looked at very closely now and in the future.
So back in the 1990s, did you cover these these terrorism trials in New York and stuff?
I didn't.
I wasn't I wasn't in New York in the in the courtroom, but but I followed them.
You did follow the Mary Jo White and the New York prosecutors.
Now, can I ask you your personal opinion on kind of the larger question of could the whole war on terrorism just be fought like that?
Wouldn't it be better to just go ahead and try to stay with the Bill of Rights all the way around in this kind of thing?
Well.
It's kind of it's a big question, and all I would say in that regard is that I know from having covered trials, federal court, big, big cases that the courts are up to.
They're up to it.
They could they could handle, for example, Osama bin Laden could be prosecuted in an American courtroom.
It would be an enormous challenge, but it would probably be a challenge well worth any any of the costs.
But having said that, we have a military justice system and it's designed because when we're at war, there are special needs of the military.
And so there's a whole need.
There's a need for fast battlefield adjudication of of issues.
And and so it's important to know that the military commission process exists and that it's that it can be used.
Now, what you could ask me is, is this the right military commission process?
Yeah.
Well, you know what I was going to say was that even Ron Paul, I think, in his Freedom Restoration Act, which repealed the Military Commissions Act, even said that, hey, if we're talking absolute battlefield necessity, then fine.
But the problem is Dick Cheney says the whole world's a battlefield and immediate battlefield necessity can mean eight years later at Guantanamo Bay.
Yeah.
And it seems that the Supreme Court, a majority of the Supreme Court, is saying in its decisions enough already.
You know, it's been eight years.
This is too long.
You've got to you've got to do more than this.
And so so the Supreme Court is running out of patience.
If the if the government in other words, if the government had done many of these things, but done it very quickly and done it in Iraq or in Afghanistan, we wouldn't be here talking about this.
This just wouldn't it just wouldn't be an issue.
It's because there was this special effort to set this this thing up at Guantanamo apart from from the battlefield and apart from the from the protections of the United States.
That's really sparked this.
It's it's and it's a it's a backlash against this idea that there can be a little place where American law doesn't reach, but where the U.S. government has complete control over people.
It's that is a concept that is upsetting to many people.
And, you know, it's probably worth mentioning, too, that we're not just talking about people who are somehow brought into American custody in Afghanistan.
The Military Commissions Act says that this can be done to Americans, too.
And correct me if I'm wrong.
Didn't a judge just rule in the Almari case that here was a guy, I don't think he was a citizen, but he was a legal American resident arrested on American soil and declared an enemy combatant.
And the judge said, yeah, do what you like with him.
Well, it's not the Military Commissions Act does not apply to U.S. citizens, but it could apply.
And this is still it's going to be interesting to see how that that case plays out.
Right, because the Almari case actually predates the MCA there.
Yes, yeah, but the but the question is, to what extent can it be applied to non-residents in the United States?
And that is a huge issue.
And so we may see that that issue moving up through the courts with the Almari case.
Well, now, wait, doesn't the Military Commissions Act say that I thought that the Military Commissions Act said that if you're a foreigner, you don't get habeas corpus.
If you're an American, we can call you an enemy combatant, but at least you do get rid of habeas corpus.
But then we call you an enemy combatant again anyway, once the judge says it's OK.
You could.
Yes, you could be an enemy combatant, but they won't.
But they won't.
They can't try you in a military commission.
So if you're an American citizen, the Military Commissions Act does not apply to U.S. citizens.
But it could it applies to everybody else if you're an unlawful enemy combatant.
I see.
And but the Military Commissions Act, for example, you could consider Padilla, Jose Padilla, the U.S. ambassador, or the other guy, the American Taliban.
Wind.
Yeah, I mean, he or or Hamdi Hamdi was captured and it turned out that he was born in the United States.
Right.
And so instead of going to Guantanamo, he was brought to the United States.
That's the difference.
That's the benefit of citizenship.
Is that but but then there was the question of, well, then what special rights does does that person have?
And that was litigated years ago.
Well, now in the in the Military Commissions Act, it doesn't address U.S. citizens at all, because I thought it does say something in there about they get rid of habeas corpus, but then they can still be called enemy combatants.
But that's not under the Military Commissions Act that it says Americans can be declared enemy combatants.
No, I don't.
I well, I'd have to get out my copy of the law and read through it, but my my memory of the way that law is worded is it's it's worded that these are foreign combatants.
Hmm.
Well, so is there a law at all that says that they can declare Americans an enemy combatant or we're still going back to the presence of the commander in chief and all that?
Well, the I I think the administration relies on the this this law that was passed by Congress shortly after 9-11 that authorizes the use of military force against anyone associated with people who carried out 9-11.
Hmm.
And so under that, if somebody is designated an enemy combatant and that that's the president who does that designation, then, you know, that's that's the authority through which it would go.
But, you know, I mean, it's still that's still an open question.
It's not it's not entirely clear.
Well, yeah, that's the whole thing here.
It's such a mess.
And I guess there are so many questions that haven't had to go before the final say yet that we just really don't know.
What's funny is all this time that we're talking about the war crimes trials of these enemy combatants down in Guantanamo, there are people like David Addington, who they say turned white as a sheet, white as a ghost at lunch when he heard about the Supreme Court's ruling in the Hamdan case that these guys know that they're war criminals for what they've done to these war criminals.
Well, I don't it's difficult to know how this is going to play out.
I think that they should put all the White House and Pentagon lawyers on trial in front of a military commission made up of Al Qaeda members.
All right.
I'm sorry.
Very poor attempt at humor there.
Hey, everybody, that's Warren Ritchie.
He's the crime reporter at the Christian Science Monitor, keeping track of the Guantanamo Bay and the military commission's disaster for us.
Thank you very much for your time today on the show, Warren.
Good to be with you.
