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May 20, 2007

Convicted for convictions

Members of the military blowing the whistle on the Bush Adminstration unfortunately get the shaft:

A military jury recommended that a Navy lawyer spend six months in prison and be dismissed from the service for sending a human rights attorney the names of 550 Guantanamo Bay detainees in an unmarked Valentine's Day card.

Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz was convicted Thursday at his court martial of communicating secret information about Guantanamo Bay detainees that could be used to injure the United States and three other charges of leaking information to an unauthorized person.

"Injure the United States" is a pretty heavy-handed charge..especially given that nothing he sent was marked classified.

Further, according to the woman that received the information--many of the names sent by Diaz were already listed with human rights organizations such as Amnesty International.

In other words, Diaz was sending information that was likely already available through non-military channels.

Imagine a military attorney so distraught by what he's seeing in the name of his country that he's willing to risk his career and his freedom by telling what he knows.

Then imagine the right wing excuse machine applauding his sentence.

The fucked up priorities of conservatives in this country never cease to amaze me.

Posted by Carla at May 20, 2007 01:29 PM