Small World

I was reading an article in today's Wall Street Journal about an Army Captain by the name of Phillp Carter who was working to improve the Iraqi justice system in Baqubah (subscription required).

Capt. Carter, a 30-year-old military police soldier who is a lawyer in civilian life, could demand Mr. Abboud's release and the Iraqis would likely comply. But he doesn't. Instead he prods judges and prosecutors in this province an hour's drive from Baghdad to uphold Iraqi law and set Mr. Abboud free on their own.

"I have faith because of your work," Mr. Abboud told Capt. Carter in late May, when the temperature had risen above 100 degrees and the stench in the prison, crammed to four times its legal capacity, was almost unbearable. "My fate is in your hands."

Why a U.S. Army captain took on the case of a convicted murderer speaks volumes about how the American strategy has changed in Iraq in the past six months, as the U.S. tries to turn control back to the Iraqis. It also shows how painful and halting progress in Iraq can be.

Capt. Carter hopes to use the case to make a larger point: that the Iraqi judicial system, dominated by personal and sectarian grudges, needs to follow its own rules. "It appeared like the perfect test case, because it would show that the result should be dictated by Iraqi law and not by the whim of any individual," he says.

It wasn't until I was further into the story that I realized it was that Phillip Carter:

Capt. Carter came to Baqubah in November via an unusual route. After dropping out of high school in Santa Monica, Calif., he earned a graduation-equivalency degree and attended community college. He did well enough to get into the University of California, Los Angeles and, after graduating, became an Army officer.

He spent four years with the military police, leaving the Army to attend UCLA law school, where he graduated in 2004. Last fall, he was practicing at a big law firm in Los Angeles. During that time, he had an Internet blog and wrote occasional opinion pieces in U.S. magazines criticizing the U.S. decision not to follow the Geneva Conventions at its prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Yes, it's Phil Carter from Intel Dump, one of the regular stopping places in my early days of blog reading. It's good to know that we have guys like Phil trying to help the Iraqis establish the rule of law. It's also good to know that Intel Dump is still in business. Best of luck to Captain Carter.