Get your story straight, boys

It seems our government frequently has trouble speaking from the same script. Nice to see the other side having that problem for a change.

A long-time resident of Guantanamo passed away last week. His lawyers insist he quit the Taliban before 9/11:

The government charged that he was a prominent member of the Taliban and its military, but we proved that this is false. Indeed, we have documents from Afghanistan, even a letter from Mullah Omar himself on Taliban letterhead, discussing Mr. Gul's efforts to resign from the Taliban a year or more before 9/11/01. He resigned because he was disgusted by the Taliban's growing penchant for corruption and abuse.

Resigning the Taliban over "corruption and abuse" would seem akin to leaving the Mafia over one's conscience -- both tend to be effective posthumously. And I doubt good ol' Omar was likely to write a letter saying "yeah, he's one o' my boys" while Gul was in custody. Leaving all that aside, what's left of the Taliban today sure doesn't seem to think of him as a quitter:

...the prominent Jihadi commander of Nangarhar province, Moalim Awal Gul embraced martyrdom on Wednesday ...

Still, his lawyers insist Gul was full of sweetness and light:

Mr. Gul's enduring hope for Afghanistan, and even the United States forces in Afghanistan, is captured in an Afghan proverb he quoted to us more than once: "You cannot wash blood with blood."

One wonders how he could pass along that touching thought so often, since we are, ahem, reliably informed that detainees are not allowed to talk to lawyers:

They are deprived of the right to have access to lawyers to defend them.

America's made a bunch of mistakes since 9/11, including a detour through Baghdad. But nothing compares to our indecision how to process the chess pieces we remove, still breathing, from the board. Federal court, military commission--either process is defensible in this nebulous new world of non-state militarism; neither will please everybody. But choosing one and pressing forward is better than limbo... something we should have recognized years ago. Let process be served, and let's move on.

As Forrest would say, "that's all I've got to say about that..."