Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift is the Navy lawyer who successfully defended Salim Ahmed Hamdan all the way to the Supreme Court. Two weeks after that decision in the case that was reached, he received word that he had been passed over for promotion and that, under the “up or out” rules, he will be forced to retire in March or April. Coincidence? Who knows. All I know is that Swift looks to be a straight arrow, the kind of guy you’d want for a brother or a son. And when he talks, we should listen.

Keith Olbermann interviewed him recently:

SWIFT: Thomas Paine said famously, “He who would seek liberty must first defend his enemies from oppression lest he set a precedent that would reach himself.” And when we say that you can have a full and fair trial without the accused present, [or] you can use techniques such as waterboarding to extort a confession, and use that and that’s fair, then inevitably that’s going to haunt us and it’s going to haunt our children. We have a chance, still, to stop this and I am dedicated to preventing that from happening.