hicks and the rest of life

Adelaide lawyer Stephen Kenny, who represented Hicks for three years from 2002, said although he was surprised by the guilty plea, he could understand the circumstances that may have led to the outcome.

"My first reaction was, and I was talking about it moments before I heard of it, was that if I was in Guantanamo Bay and I could get out by pleading guilty after five years, I probably personally would have pleaded guilty," he said.

Whats to be read into the David Hicks guilty plea. That he did indeed spy on an embassy that had been abandoned ten years earlier, that he did meet the grand fool of terrorism, Richard Ried, that he met Osama Bin Laden, that he did be in Afghanistan around the time of september 11, 2001, that he expressed approval of the 9/11 attacks ....none of the charges matter, they are retrospective fits on actions that were not illegal at the time of commisson, and some parts so silly, such as fleeing US airforce bombs, while at the same time being charged with standing underneath those same bombs in a threatening manner, or fleeing the Northern Alliance or selling his weapon so that he could flee, the litany becomes foolish.

He is charged with both being a terrorist aiming to attack and for fleeing for his life. For having a weapon in a threatening stance and for selling that weapon to escape the fight he was supposedly threatening. He was essentially on trial for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, when the US was doling out huge sums of cash to any poor goatherder who handed over a foreigner in Afghanistan and then ensnared within a system that could not let him go lest the systems lies were exposed to the world. "Worst of the worst", what a fucking joke that oft quoted line is.

And as if to underscore the "fairness" of the system, in the minutes before he was due to face the court, the presiding judge dismisses half his legal team and bars them from participating in the proceedings. How does that "ad hoc" approach, when the trial judge had months to disqualify Hicks lawyers, cast the light of "fairness" upon the proceedings, one lawyer dismissed for failing to sign a legal agreement which was not due to be discussed until the trial started, the other for failing to upgrade her military status. Even the appearance of justice had dissolved in that black hole, turned to high farce, so what do we make of the Hicks trial?

“I’m shocked because I just lost another lawyer,” said Hicks when the judge said Dratel could not sit as counsel until he had signed a letter of agreement to comply with commission procedure. “One is gone and now another. What’s the point of him sitting here if he is not going to represent me? Now I’m left with poor Mr Mori,” he said, referring to his US Military counsel Major Michael Mori.

Colonel Davis was demanding 20 years jail time for Hicks, he now apparently says that time served would suffice plus a few months more, so long as the system itself does not have to be placed in the public spotlight. So long as the nooks and cranies of an illegal set of practices and circumstances do not get to see the light of day, so long as he did not have to fight to preserve the methods by which he obtained confessions such as the hearsay that Hicks applauding the 9/11 attacks.

TONY JONES: And we'll return now to Minneapolis and Dr Steven Miles.
You heard, I imagine, some of what Colonel Davis was saying there. He's basically saying in the 18 months he was there he's never seen any of the things you've been describing, and yet you say they were in government documents.
STEVEN MILES: Well, I would ask Major Davis to release the interrogation log, which they have not done, to release the pre and post interrogation physicals and also the medical log of the Hicks' interrogation. None of those documents have been released. Furthermore, in the trial, the only thing that's permitted is the evidence, often unsourced. And the trial rules prohibit introducing any material about the conditions of the interrogation itself. So that Major Davis actually was not correct in a number of his statements and, furthermore, the military has refused to provide the very documents which would allow this question to be answered.

So what do we make of the guilty plea? In light of the facts on offer, in light of the potential miscariage of justice on offer, in light of a system designed to acheive a guilty verdict, neither justice has been served nor fairness upheld, the only thing we can make of it all is a desperate man willing to pursue a desperate bid for his freedom in the face of a monumental unwillingness to uphold any of the principles we are meant to be fighting for.

Justice and truth be damned, just give me freedom, is all we can make of this fools parade. Now what becomes of all those still trapped inside who aren't white.

TONY JONES: Now, you also say that the sort of intelligence gained from interrogations like this and even worse interrogations has proven itself to be tantamount to useless, and you name one specific case about a man who was taken to Egypt and whose evidence was actually used as part of the argument to go to war against Iraq. Can you explain that to us?

STEVEN MILES: Right. Yeah, there's huge amounts of data that shows that interrogation produces bad information. One guy, al-Libi, was basically taken on this CIA rendition program, taken to Egypt and then he was interrogated and tortured on our behalf, and he produced the information that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were cooperating on bio weapons. That information was entirely false and he's since recanted and says that it was produced by torture.
You know, torture's been shown to produce bad information. It radicalises the population against which it's directed. It makes it impossible to recruit informants. Information obtained by torture has sent coalition soldiers, and I presume that includes Australian soldiers, out on missions, or essentially wild goose chases. This is a technique which the world has abandoned and indeed which senior intelligence officials and senior FBI agents vigorously protested to no avail, because it was set up as a romp operation with Rumsfeld Defense Department.

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Speaking of Justice, American style, the current scandal engulfing the ever scandaling Bushies has a key Justice Department official involved in the firings of U.S. prosecutors (for what is looking increasingly like purely political reasons), is pleading that beautiful old chestnut, The Fifth, rather than answer questions about numerous dubious answers her bosses gave. Gonzales, the US attorney general, has had a bad dose of the Santo Santoro's for the past few weeks.

Even solid republicans like chuck hagel are starting to hint at impeachment for the increasingly isolated and scandal plagued master of incompetence, GW Bush.

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suprise, suprise, the grand mufti of poonce has ruled another line (his fifth or sixth) beneath the corpse of Santo Santorum.

Mr Pyne said he was satisfied the report reached the correct conclusions.
"As I said last week, we have no reason to believe that anything untoward had occurred with respect to the allocation of beds," Mr Pyne told reporters in Canberra.
"There is no evidence that's been deduced of any wrongdoing on behalf of the former minister and this report exonerates him entirely.
"As far as I'm concerned and the government is concerned, we draw the line under this controversy, and we can now get back on with the business of governing for ageing Australians."

The correct conclusions being the one that suits the government which once again used the hackiest of party hacks to investigate itself and guess what. Nothing to see here, well nothing we will release. The aging australians, the man who wears his pants tucked into his collar, later went onto say, were the PM and his morals.

So in typical Santo fashion, look forward to much more coming out next week, leaked courtsy of the Queensland Liberal Faactions. I can already see an out for when this happens:

Ageing Minister Christopher Pyne said an investigation found no evidence Senator Santoro attempted to exert influence over the department's allocation of places.

Thats not the same as saying that there is no wrong doing here, just that the convicted liar has had nothing shown against him. The definitions here are all important.