Race goes to the Swift?

In light of the recent Hamdan decision, I've been reading quite a bit about "Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift -- the Navy lawyer who beat the president of the United States in a pivotal Supreme Court battle over trying alleged terrorists" and the sad reality is that most people now figure that "he'll probably have to find a new job". For, if there's one thing that BushCo won't tolerate it's what they see as disloyalty. You could win a medal for being wrong (George Tenet) and praise for screwing up ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job") but they'll cut you no slack for doing your job well, telling the truth or being right -- just ask Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, et al. No, as Billmon says,

Officers who have crossed Rumsfeld and the gang have already learned that it tends to be bad for your professional health.

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What the Rumfelds and the Addingtons and the Cambones continue to have a hard time dealing with is the fact that there are some odd balls in the U.S. professional officer corps --- particularly the more educated parts, like the Judge Advocate General's office -- who still take the duty, honor, country stuff seriously, and who believe their oath is still to the Constitution, not the Bush family and the Republican National Committee.

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These days, of course, no good deed can go unpunished by the right wing, so I'm sure we can expect Lt. Commander Swift to be, well, Swiftboated as a whiny loser who couldn't cut it as an officer and so decided to stick it to his president by helping the terrorists win one. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if I just inadvertently plagiarized some conservative blogger's latest post -- although I left out the part about Swift being the leader of an Al Qaeda spy ring feeding highy classified information about Dick Cheney's bowel movements to the New York Times.

In any case, here's as crisp a military salute as this civilian can manage to Lt. Commander Swift, Col. Sullivan and the other military dissidents still fighting the good fights -- i.e. against Al Qaeda and against the creeping annexation of the U.S. government by the GOP machine (i.e. the clone war.)

As for Lt. Commander Swift's career prospects, I wouldn't worry too much about that. If the cabal is ever ousted from power, there are a number of very high-ranking officials in the U.S. government who might need a good lawyer, one with just the kind of war crimes expertise Swift could bring to the defense table. On the other hand, if the cabal remains in power, the Constitution is going to need good lawyers -- the very best it can get.