To keep former Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna behind bars until 2024 for the “unpremeditated murder” of an insurgent during the war in Iraq, U.S. military prosecutors have resorted to strange and disturbing twists of law, logic and morality. They were all on display again this week in Behenna’s final plea before the military’s highest court of appeals in Washington. It was enough to make the gold eagle on top of the American flag in the courtroom shake and then hang its head.

Or so I imagined while listening intently as questions from the five civilian judges began to drill into a central argument advanced by the military prosecutor: that Behenna had “lost his right to self-defense” in the war zone when he embarked on an unauthorized interrogation of Ali Mansur, a suspected al Qaeda cell leader.