Our Leader protects us by classifying court documents alledging torture

The Defense Department is moving to classify court documents from a lawsuit alledging prisoner torture at Guantanamo. I'm sure the Frenchmen among us will be screaming about this. They don't understand that by keeping these documents secret, Our Leader is protecting Americans from being treated as badly as we treat captured enemies.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The documents describing the alleged mistreatment of Salim Ahmed Salim Hamdan -- a 34-year-old Yemeni who acknowledges having been a driver for Osama bin Laden -- are part of a lawsuit challenging his detention, the conditions of detention and his prolonged incarceration in solitary confinement. The suit also directly challenges the way President Bush plans to use military tribunals to try Guantanamo detainees accused of terrorist ties.

[...]

The lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in May that the documents "allege other violations of the Geneva Conventions" besides the contention that Hamdan's confinement in solitary has been excessive. And he said that they would make for "interesting and relevant reading" in light of recent revelations of abuse of prisoners in Iraq by the U.S. military.

The move by the Defense Department to classify the documents comes as the military's treatment of its prisoners has caused outrage in Iraq and questions at home about how far the Bush administration is willing to go in questioning those taken into custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Swift could not provide more detail because the documents at the time were unclassified, but under court seal. It was not until the presiding judge raised the possibility of unsealing them, and this newspaper and others asked the court to do so, that the Defense Department classified them.

[...]

One source who has seen the documents confirmed that they contained allegations of mistreatment -- beyond prolonged solitary confinement -- that could be seen as violations of the Geneva Conventions and the international Convention Against Torture.