A recent experience in kangaroo court at Guantanamo Bay provides an excellent example of how things operate in that surreal, unjust world of military tyranny and oppression.
Accused terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is representing himself, told the presiding judge, Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann, that he had asked the prison guards to let him have some paper on which he wanted to write legal motions for his case.
The guards told Mohammed that the terrorists at Gitmo were not allowed paper. After all, what could be more dangerous than a few sheets of paper in the hands of a terrorist, even one inside the walls of one of the most tightly controlled prisons in the world?
According to the New York Times, Judge Kholmann “seemed to acknowledge the challenge of writing a motion without paper.”
So, what was Kholmann’s ruling on this legal quandary? He told Mohammed that in order to secure the paper for his motions, Mohammed would have to file a motion asking for the paper on which to write his motions. After all, Kholmann said, rules are rules and must be followed.
The Gitmo episode brings to mind the old saying, “Military justice is to justice as military music is to music.”
