One Fewer Good Man

Lt. Col. Colby Vokey has served in the Marine Corp for the last twenty years, and spent the last four as chief of the Corps' defense lawyers for the western United States.  Everyone who knows Vokey has described him as the straightest of straight arrows.

"Colby Vokey?" muses retired Col. Jane Siegel "Integrity almost seems like a word too small to describe him."

Says Lt. Col. Matthew Cord, "He's just one of the best."

Vokey is also a self-described conservative who voted for Bush.  He's the lead defense attorney in the trial of eight Marines involved in the massacre at Haditha, and became a hero to Marines for his vigorous defense of those involved.  After a lengthy argument, Vokey convinced the courts martial to drop most of the original charges against the Marines.  You might think that Vokey would be the favored Marine of the political right.

Instead, when Daniel Zwerdling of NPR interviewed Vokey, the Lt. Col. had recently been fired from his position as chief of defense counsels, had announced he's leaving the Corps, and that he is "angry" and "bitter." Why? Because Volkey placed the rule of law above the rule of politics.

The U.S. has imprisoned hundreds of "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay in a military legal system that Vokey denounces as "horrific." Vokey saw the system first-hand when he agreed two years ago to defend a teenager there who had been charged with murdering a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. Vokey said he knew the case would be difficult, but he discovered that the legal system at Guantanamo is a "sham."

Vokey's 15 year-old Canadian client had been tortured into signing a confession, including being used a "human mop" to wipe his own urine off the floor after being left chained in painful positions for many hours at a time.  Vokey was kept from meeting with his client, or from seeing the evidence against him.

"Anytime you want to subvert the rule of law to the power of a government, you've got a very bad thing brewing," Vokey told NPR. "As an officer in the Marine Corps I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And now we are perpetrating something that if any other country in the world was doing, we would likely step in and stop it."

Asked who was to blame for this subversion of justice, Vokey made a careful response.  

Vokey went to his bookshelf, pulled out the Manual for Courts-Martial, and read from Article 88: "'Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the president, vice president, Congress'" and a list of other officials, he said, "'shall be punished as a court martial may direct.'"

If those in the military most familiar with the system are not afraid to call it as they see it, how can those sitting comfortably in Washington continue to support what goes on at Guantanamo?