It's another thing entirely to not have access to a lawyer to "rebuff"

it looks like the bushco strategy of obstructing legal assistance and detainee rights is having an effect...

Many of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are no longer cooperating with their lawyers, adding a largely invisible struggle between the lawyers and their own clients to the legal battle over the Bush administration’s detention policies.

Some detainees refuse to see their lawyers, while others decline mail from their lawyers or refuse to provide them information on their cases, according to court documents, writings of some of the detainees and recent interviews.

The detainees’ resistance appears to have been fueled by frustration over their long detention and suspicion about whether their lawyers are working for the government, as well as anti-American sentiment, some of the documents and interviews show. “Your role is to polish Bush’s shoes and make the picture look good,” a Yemeni detainee, Adnan Farhan Abdullatif, 31, wrote his lawyer in February.

Some of the lawyers accuse Guantánamo officials of feeding the detainees’ suspicions of the lawyers, a charge Pentagon officials deny.

Lawyers said many of the relationships appeared to have deteriorated as the detainees’ legal cause has suffered setbacks in Congress and the courts, and as Justice Department officials have begun efforts to limit lawyers’ access to detainees, raising new concerns among the detainees about their lawyers’ effectiveness.

“Every lawyer is afraid, every time they go down there, that their clients won’t see them,” said Mark P. Denbeaux, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who represents two Guantánamo detainees. “And it’s getting worse, because it’s pretty hard to say we’re offering them anything.”

i can certainly see why detainees might think the attorneys were working for the government... i can certainly see why they might resist their help because nothing's going to come of it... and i can certainly see how, given the obstacles deliberately placed in the way, seeing an attorney just might be more hassle than it's worth... but further limiting detainees' rights to access legal counsel, no matter what the detainees' attitudes toward legal counsel may be, is wrong, wrong, wrong... it's just as wrong as keeping detainees in guantánamo for years and years without being charged, just as wrong as using torture to extract information, and just as wrong as using extraordinary rendition and operating a series of cia black sites...

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