Something You Can Do To Help One Soldier This Memorial Day
You can take a few minutes to send a letter of support on behalf of Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld. Lt. Col. Vandeveld is a highly decorated member of the U.S. Army Reserve Judge Advocate General Corps who served in Bosnia, Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan, as both a solder in combat and a prosecutor. After almost 20 years of courageous service to our country the Army is threatening his ability to retire with honor. You may be asking yourself why. I know I certainly did.
Lt. Col. Vandeveld served as a prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from May 2007 to September 2008. He went to bring “to justice detainees who President George Bush had said were ‘the worst of the worst,’” but eventually left Guantanamo because he concluded that he could not “ethically or legally prosecute” the case he was assigned. Lt. Col. Vandeveld admits that he arrived at Guantanamo as a “true believer” and brushed off stories of detainee abuse as “hyperbole.” One such case was that of young Afghan Mohammed Jawad. Jawad informed the court that he was a minor and that he had suffered horrible abuse during his detainment. Lt. Col. Vandeveld accused Jawad of “exaggerating and ridiculed his story as ‘idiotic’” and “railed against Jawad’s military defense attorney” for being a terrorist sympathizer.
The Lt. Col. thought that he was working on a simple case that would produce a quick conviction and prove that the Guantanamo Military Commissions worked. Little did Lt. Col. Vandeveld know that he was actually opening Pandora’s box. He discovered many serious issues including: abusive interrogations, evidence withheld from the defense, judicial incompetence, and confessions coerced through torture. When Lt. Col. Vandeveld brought these issues to his supervisors they were “harshly dismissive” of his concerns and “on some unspoken level, began to question my [his] loyalty, even though my [his] combat experience exceeded both of theirs combined.” Lt. Col. Vandeveld made the “enormously painful decision to ask to be reassigned” because he could not “in good conscience continue.”
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