Odd Priorities
Today's NY Times has a fairly righteous editorial on the Hamdan trial recently concluded at Guantanamo Bay. In it, the editorialist makes clear that the conviction of Osama bin Laden's chauffeur is hardly the triumph President Bush and his supporters claim.
For years, Mr. Bush and his supporters have been telling the world that it is necessary to hold prisoners without charges, to abuse them in ways most civilized nations consider torture, and to deny them basic human rights because of the serious threat they pose to America. These are “dangerous terrorists captured on the battlefield,” Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The administration considered Mr. Hamdan such a priority that it took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, insisting Mr. Bush had the power to hold anyone he deemed an enemy combatant for as long as he wanted under any conditions he wanted. Mr. Hamdan’s trial was the first by a military commission in Guantánamo. ...
Mr. Hamdan, however, is hardly a high value target. The comedian Stephen Colbert captured the absurdity of the proceedings perfectly on Thursday night when he called the trial “the most historic session of traffic court ever.” It will not be long, Mr. Colbert added, “before we track down Ayman al-Zawahiri’s dermatologist.”
Mr. Colbert’s dark humor was a fitting coda to a case that illuminated so much of what is wrong with Guantánamo and the administration’s war on terrorism. [Emphasis added]
Meanwhile, as the editorial points out, Osama bin Laden roams the wilds of Pakistan with no serious attempt by the US to capture him in years. Why did the administration select a person so far down on the terrorist totem pole as to be subterranean for the first trial? Easy pickins? An attempt to show how "serious" the US is about rousting terrorists? Or a trial run to see if all of the unconstitutional and illegal actions leading to his capture, detention, and interrogation would prohibit a conviction? Quite probably all of the above and more.
So, the administration got themselves a conviction, albeit in the darkest and slimiest fashion imaginable, of a chauffeur, thereby giving Bush and his cohort the opportunity to wave their male appendages at the rest of the world.
We're Number One!
Right.
And an ominous new precedent has been set for all of us to labor under.
163 days
For years, Mr. Bush and his supporters have been telling the world that it is necessary to hold prisoners without charges, to abuse them in ways most civilized nations consider torture, and to deny them basic human rights because of the serious threat they pose to America. These are “dangerous terrorists captured on the battlefield,” Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The administration considered Mr. Hamdan such a priority that it took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, insisting Mr. Bush had the power to hold anyone he deemed an enemy combatant for as long as he wanted under any conditions he wanted. Mr. Hamdan’s trial was the first by a military commission in Guantánamo. ...
Mr. Hamdan, however, is hardly a high value target. The comedian Stephen Colbert captured the absurdity of the proceedings perfectly on Thursday night when he called the trial “the most historic session of traffic court ever.” It will not be long, Mr. Colbert added, “before we track down Ayman al-Zawahiri’s dermatologist.”
Mr. Colbert’s dark humor was a fitting coda to a case that illuminated so much of what is wrong with Guantánamo and the administration’s war on terrorism. [Emphasis added]
Meanwhile, as the editorial points out, Osama bin Laden roams the wilds of Pakistan with no serious attempt by the US to capture him in years. Why did the administration select a person so far down on the terrorist totem pole as to be subterranean for the first trial? Easy pickins? An attempt to show how "serious" the US is about rousting terrorists? Or a trial run to see if all of the unconstitutional and illegal actions leading to his capture, detention, and interrogation would prohibit a conviction? Quite probably all of the above and more.
So, the administration got themselves a conviction, albeit in the darkest and slimiest fashion imaginable, of a chauffeur, thereby giving Bush and his cohort the opportunity to wave their male appendages at the rest of the world.
We're Number One!
Right.
And an ominous new precedent has been set for all of us to labor under.
163 days
Labels: Guantanamo Bay, Justice
posted by Diane at 4:13 AM
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