There is nothing against you. But there is no innocent person here. So, you should confess to something so you can be charged and sentenced and serve your sentence and then go back to your family and country, because you will not leave this place innocent. [emphasis added]

– Statement of US interrogator to al-Rabiah during his interrogation, quoted by the judge on page 41 of the decision. This was cited in an email from a US Attorney posted at Andrew Sullivan’s blog. Take a minute and read what he has to say.

This was not a statement pulled from the transcripts of the Nuremburg trials, nor archival evidence taken from reports smuggled out of one of Stalin’s gulags.  This was a statement made by an agent of this government less than 7 years ago to a detainee.  The enormity of that is nearly incomprehensible.

But even worse – far worse – is the fact that the government would nevertheless still seek to convict based on the resulting confession.

To those of us who read that passage and who vowed and make it our vocation to serve and protect the Constitution of the United States, that fact is a gut-punch.