The news event yesterday that stirred this post was: Bin Laden's driver convicted of Terrorism. For reasons given below this strikes me as justice like FEMA was a rescue of New Orleans.
Unfortunately there is no single face to point the blame at here. Bush, Cheney, White House lawyers and warmongering neocons certainly, but then again it was a vast majority in Congress that passed the law, the Military Commissions Act, in 2006, setting up the travesty of these military courts in Guantanamo Bay and the previous Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 that allows for the continuation of CIA-run secret prisons and treatment that the rest of the world calls torture but the White House deceitfully calls "harsh interrogation," or physical coercion which is allowed and from which "evidence," is allowed.
But the Pentagon has to be considered the ultimate National Villains in this case. They are the ones who also lobbied for and staged this fiasco; and despite all the platitudes we are expected to repeatedly give to the U.S. military this makes it clear their hands and their hearts are not clean.
ALL the 'evidence,' that convicted bin Laden's chauffeur came from statements under torture.
So many previously believed U.S. values have been cheapen and trashed by this that it's difficult to know where to begin. There is a link on the title of this post and it leads to a British headline that reads:
"Guantanamo Bay is just a farcade (edifice) of justice."and some reasons of why this is a travesty and disgrace for America are printed there. An article in Newsweek points out that even if this kangaroo court had any value only one-third of the prisoners are scheduled to have a trial and the other two-thirds will stay in prison because they have (subjectively) been declared by someone as: "unlawful enemy combatants." a new definition, this issue of indefinite detention without trial was also mentioned by the BBC
It's been reported that even if this driver was found not guilty he would still stay in jail, reported by the Christian Science Monitor,The Washington Post that same aarticle in the BBCthe international edition of Britsh pressGlobe&Mail and of course, Amnesty International
The fact that this man would stay in jail even if found innocent is what make it clear to me that this is no justice at all.
Other have pointed out the issues of allowing secret evidence,hearsay evidence
evidence derived through "coercise interrogations," years without a lawyer, short limited access to a lawyer just before the trial, limits on the laywer, 40 interrogations without notification of "Mirandia rights," courtroom attendance by invitation only and sometimes a totally closed court, and unidentified jury and the need for only 2/3 of the jury for criminal conviction are also against American previous principles of justice.
It bothers some too that the crime he was found guilty of was not the crime he was arrested for and charged with in the first prosecution attempt. (This was the third trial of Hamdan who 'won,' a Supreme Court victory that scrapped the first version of these Guantanamo military court systems in 2006).
And it bothers some that the crime he was convicted of was not a law unti years after his arrest and many feel it was a law, a new idea of what's a "war crime," that was specifically designed to fit his case, the prosecutors only had to prove that Hamdan knew the people he was driving around were involved in war and the evidence was that he admitted that.
There was no evidence or charge that Hamand ever killed anyone, wounded anyone, blew up anything or ever fired a weapon of any sort.
In truth, BTW, Hamdan didn't "win," anything in that Supreme Court decision because he remained in jail and will remain in jail as this case is appealed (which has already begun) and will probably wind up in the Supreme Court again, and, if so, Hamdan will still stay in jail even if the Supreme Court decides in his favor. He's just a prisoner who has become a political football and another incident that the Bush White House will delay and delay until they are out of office and it's someone else's problem.
To this this is a "fair trial," -- as the White House and Pentagon claim -- is to either be successfully fooled by the government, or to be a fool. If anyone thinks this is justice then I can only hope they will experience it for themselves someday.
The Pentagon -- National Villains.
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