On further eroding credibility

For those wondering whether the U.S. judiciary had fallen in line with Bushco after last week's Arar decision, there's some reassuring news today, as the black hole that is Guantanamo Bay is being pushed a little further toward the light of public knowledge:

A U.S. federal judge ordered the Pentagon on Thursday to release the identities of hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to The Associated Press, a move which would force the government to break its secrecy and reveal the most comprehensive list yet of those who have been held at the U.S. navy base in Cuba.

Some of the hundreds of prisoners in the war on terror being held at Guantanamo have been imprisoned as long as four years. Only a handful have been officially identified...

Most of those who are known emerged from the approximately 400 civil suits filed on behalf of prisoners by lawyers who obtained their names from family or other detainees, said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which represents about 200 detainees.

“They have been very resistant to releasing the names,” Ratner said.

“There are still people there who don’t have a lawyer and we don’t know who they are. They have disappeared.”

It shouldn't come as much surprise that Bushco opposed the application. But the argument made by the government as a basis to suppress the identities of those detained deserves some attention, if only for its sheer absurdity:

In his ruling last month, Rakoff rejected government arguments releasing the prisoners’ names from 558 transcripts should be kept secret to protect their privacy and their families, friends and associates from embarrassment and retaliation.

As much gall as it's taken for Bushco to push the "trust us" line, it's taking the claim several steps further to try to argue that the people forcibly removed from any contact with the world prefer being trapped in legal limbo to having anybody find out about their plight.

Fortunately, the argument to try to keep the detainees' names away from the press (like so many other arguments made by the Bush administration) has now been tossed in the dustbin. Moreover, the ruling will help at least to ensure that everybody being held is accounted for...and perhaps to allow those inmates not yet pursuing claims before the courts to start seeking some measure of review as well.