One of the things that has puzzled me most about the war in Iraq is the seemingly unquestioned acceptance of whatever reason the administration offers for the war, even when that reasoning changes from month to month. In a impassioned letter Kevin Tillman, brother of former NFL star Pat Tillman (killed by US forces in Afghanistan) makes this point as well as anyone:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

The current Administration, and the Right in general, seems to have little trouble with the idea of suspending habeas corpus – basically the requirement to demonstrate why you’re holding someone – as part of the war on whatever we’re characterizing it as today. Their ostensibly reasonable argument is that they’re only doing it to terrorists, who clearly don’t deserve any better. It’s an attractive idea, with only one flaw:

The Bush administration, finally forced to allow even a semblance of due process for its gulag-full of extrajudicial prisoners around the world, just conceded one case without even attempting to defend four years of asinine “interrogation” of a Pakistani goat herder that US forces arrested, on no evidence, at the request of a collaborator with an intra-family grudge.

OK, two flaws – it’s not just fearsome goatherds they want to treat this way, they want to be able to put you away for as long as they feel necessary, for whatever reason they see fit. In return you get to hope they have a good reason.

Update: It appears another prisoner we’re holding is guilty of being tortured by the Taliban into confessing to be an Israeli and US spy. Thank heavens he’s off the streets too.