contrapositive

OUTSOURCING Billmon has a run-down--and some informed, evidence-driven speculation--about the story behind the Abu Ghraib abuse story.

It's probably proof of my ignorance about how these things work, but I'm still having trouble getting my head around a facet of the story that Billmon deals with almost in passing--the idea that our military is contracting out prisoner interrogations to private companies.

What's the argument in favor of this?

It's an especially galling state of affairs given the constitutional weight Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement attached to the role of interrogators during Wednesday's Hamdi v. Rumsfeld oral argument.

Taking issue with the notion that an enemy combatants denied access to lawyers have no way to contest their detentions, Clement maintained:

It may not seem what you think of as traditional due process...but the interrogation process itself provides an opportunity for an individual to explain that this has all been a mistake.

According to the Bush administration, in other words, the only inviolable legal check standing between any one of us and a lifetime in solitary confinement is...an evaluation of our culpability by a privately-employed contractor.

Don't know about anyone else, but I favor the "jury of your peers" concept myself.