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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Here's a new development of which I'm particularly fond, reported by the AP:

I so look forward to the Administration's explanation as to why the withholding of this detainee's name, done primarily TO KEEP HIS IDENTITY UNKNOWN FROM THE ICRC SO THAT THEY COULD NOT MONITOR HIS TREATMENT, was necessary. Presumably, the ICRC can join the Administration's growing list of pussies who simply don't understand the requirements of the War on (The Noun of) Terror.

This story gets even worse. After hiding this guy from the ICRC, they lost track of him, and failed to interrogate him for several months:

• Seven months later, however, the detainee - a reputed senior officer of Ansar al-Islam, a group the United States has linked to Al Qaeda and blames for some attacks in Iraq - is still languishing at the prison but has only been questioned once while in detention, in what government officials acknowledged was an extraordinary lapse.
  
  “Once he was placed in military custody, people lost track of him,” a senior intelligence official conceded Wednesday night. “The normal review processes that would keep track of him didn’t.”
  
  The detainee was described by the official as someone “who was actively planning operations specifically targeting U.S. forces and interests both inside and outside of Iraq.”
  
  But once he was placed into custody at Camp Cropper, where about 100 detainees deemed to have the highest intelligence value are held, he received only one cursory arrival interrogation from military officers and was never again questioned by any other military or intelligence officers, according to Pentagon and intelligence officials.

More, if yo can stomach it.

So it's not a ruthless contempt for international law, it's an incompetent contempt for international law.