The Stories Everyone Else Has Forgotten About

... are usually covered admirably by Scott Horton:

The Guantánamo Commissions are being whipped ahead by the Bush Administration, but as things progress does anyone mistake this process for justice? Certainly not the participants. The military lawyers who serve as prosecutors, defense counsel and judges have denounced the entire charade in terms as explicit as could be imagined.

The most passionate denunciations have come from the prosecutors. The chief prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, quit and has delivered a series of public statements—the most powerful of them carried in the Washington Post and then in the Nation–in which he recounts his own discussions with the mastermind behind the commissions process, William J. Haynes II, the former general counsel to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and now a corporate counsel at Chevron Inc. In these discussions, Haynes makes clear that he desires the commissions to be a political show trial worthy of Andrei Vyshinsky, and that his principal objective in arranging the process is to furnish red meat to fuel a Rovian campaign agenda as the Republican Party attempts to hold the White House in 2008. And, as if there were any room for ambiguity, he goes on to insist that there can be “no acquittals.” A model of justice of which all Americans can be proud.

Horton goes on to note that Haynes has refused to testify before Congress and ordered his subordinates (including Col. Davis) to do the same. Five prosecutors so far have resigned from the Guantanamo Commissions, and more may follow.

But haven't you heard? The war isn't a news story anymore.