From The Boston Globe
Editorial

Six years ago next month, the first prisoners from the war against terrorism arrived at the US military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The administration has refused to grant prisoner-of-war status to inmates there and denied them the protections of the Geneva Conventions, but has brought criminal charges against just three of them. Those remaining face indefinite imprisonment. In this ignoble chapter in the history of US justice, the military’s own uniformed lawyers have stood out for their attempts to uphold the rule of law.

That may not be true for long. To clip the wings of the Judge Advocate General corps, the administration recently proposed, as the Globe’s Charlie Savage reported, to give politically appointed lawyers a veto over JAG officers’ promotions. When military lawyers objected to this gambit, the administration backed off. But it is still looking for a way to expand its authority over JAG lawyers.

Congress should block any move by the Bush administration to do for JAG what former attorney general Alberto Gonzales did to nine US attorneys fired for political reasons.

Under the rejected proposal, any JAG promotion would not have been based just on the merits of the officer’s work; such a move would also have required “coordination” with civilian Defense Department lawyers.

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