Why The Heart And The Kidneys?

Joe Carter remains sure that nothing wrong could have happened at Gitmo when three prisoners somehow committed a triple suicide, with their bodies hanging for two hours until guards (whose SOP was to check on each prisoner every ten minutes) discovered them. A reader writes:

Anyone who believes that the three detainees committed a triple suicide needs to explain, among other things, how the military "lost" the heart, kidneys and "throat organs" before sending al Zahrani's body back to his father. Without an explanation of these extraordinary and salacious details, which otherwise seem consistent with a cover-up of an administered-drug-induced heart attack, traces of which would have been in the heart and kidneys; rather than a hanging, which would have left evidence at the throat, we're left with an utterly implausible official story.

Remember how the bruised bodies - even with throats and organs removed - also did not fit the suicide explanation. I think we know why the Obama administration is ignoring this.

The enormity of what might have happened - the torturing to death of an innocent 21 year-old, held captive since he was 16 and the removal of his organs - would recruit even more Jihadists than Cheney managed in his seven years of torturing and covering up. It would put US soldiers at risk. It would galvanize the enemy. It would be a huge propaganda victory for al Qaeda. 

If you want to know how the government "lost" the last tape of the torturing of Jose Padilla, or why the CIA, with impunity, destroyed the tapes of their waterboarding, this reason remains. Exposure of the evidence would do incalculable damage to the war effort and put troops at risk. And someone somewhere in the military or CIA has told the Justice Department to stay away, just as they persuaded the president to withhold photographs proving that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were worldwide policy on Cheney's and Bush's orders.

Eric Holder, meanwhile, seems to act as if his job is to ignore evidence of hideous criminality in the government, rather than to prosecute it. The best explanation is that he is biding his time until the administration has more achievements under its belt. But delay itself is a violation of Geneva. As if those Conventions counted for anything any more.