Rumsfeld Gives Successful Navy Lawyer The Shinseki Treatment

Here is a story that I wish would get extensive media coverage but it probably won't:

The Navy lawyer who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of the Bush administration’s military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay has been passed over for promotion and will have to leave the military, The Miami Herald reported Sunday.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, will retire in March or April under the military’s “up or out” promotion system. Swift said last week he was notified he would not be promoted to commander.

He said the notification came about two weeks after the Supreme Court sided with him and against the White House in the case involving Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was Osama bin Laden’s driver. * * *

Swift’s supervisor said he served with distinction.

“Charlie has obviously done an exceptional job, a really extraordinary job,” said Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, the Pentagon’s chief defense counsel for Military Commissions. He added it was “quite a coincidence” that Swift was passed over for a promotion “within two weeks of the Supreme Court opinion.”

Washington, D.C., attorney Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said Swift was “a no-brainer for promotion.” Swift joins many other distinguished Navy officers over the years who have seen their careers end prematurely, Fidell said.

“He brought real credit to the Navy,” Fidell said. “It’s too bad that it’s unrequited love.”

Incompetent folks like Condi Rice and Paul Wolfowitz get promotions, while folks like Lt. Cmdr. Swift and General Eric Shinseki get shitcanned. But that's the way it works in the Bush Regime. This New York Daily News story gives us a bit of background as to why stuff like this happens:

[F]riends, aides and close political allies tell the Daily News Bush is furious with his own side for helping create a political downdraft that has blunted his momentum and endangered GOP prospects for keeping control of Congress next month.

Some of his anger is directed at former aides who helped Watergate journalist Bob Woodward paint a lurid portrait of a dysfunctional, chaotic administration in his new book, "State of Denial."

In the obsessively private Bush clan, talking out of school is the ultimate act of disloyalty, and Bush feels betrayed from within.

"He's ticked off big-time," said a well-informed source, "even if what they said was the truth."

If the Democrats take control of a branch of Congress in November, I'd hate to be in the same room with Bush when he gets the news of such an event. Although I don't think that the House would immediately act to impeach should the Dems gain control, I do think that legitimate investigations will be launched with regard to a number of issues, including illegal wiretapping and the extent to which Bush lied to get this country into Iraq. This is probably what BushCo and its enablers in Congress fear the most. Bush should be feeling a bit jumpy right now.

And by the way, if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2008, that person should acquire a list of all the people that BushCo let go in this manner or otherwise forced out, and make sure these persons are given jobs within the new administration. I don't care if these people are Republicans -- folks like Shinseki, Lt. Col. Swift, Coleen Rowley, and Richard Clarke all served this country with distinction and should be recognized for doing so.