More on Lawyer Restrictions

From the Boston Globe:

The administration's laughable justification for these restrictions is that client-attorney contacts have led to unrest at Guantanamo. A more obvious cause of the unrest is the fact that many of the prisoners have been held there for more than five years -- with no criminal charge placed against them. Many had so little involvement with either the Taliban in Afghanistan or Al Qaeda that the camp's commanders would happily release them if they could find countries to accept them. But former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld made that hard by describing Guantanamo inmates as "the worst of the worst." Unrest might also be caused by the fact the military is now holding about half the prison's 385 prisoners in isolation, which often leads to mental and physical deterioration.The Bush administration could end Guantanamo unrest and the international black eye the prison is causing by transferring the detainees to prisons in the United States and handling their cases under military or civilian criminal procedures, either of which would offer them the due process rights they are now being denied. Congress, for its part, should approve pending legislation that would repeal the clause of last year's Military Commissions Act that strips the prisoners of their habeas corpus right to challenge their continued detention in court.