Bush's War On Terror - Silly But Serious: Hamdan Case Exemplifies Bush's Failure In The "war On Terror"

War on Terror

10 Aug 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com

Bush's War On Terror - Silly But Serious: Hamdan Case Exemplifies Bush's Failure In The "war On Terror"

By Paul Craig Roberts Vdare.com    09 August, 2008   Now that military officers selected by the Bush Pentagon have reached a split verdict convicting Salim Hamdan, a onetime driver for Osama bin Laden, of supporting terrorism, but innocent of terrorist conspiracy, do you feel safe?   Or are we superpower Americans still at risk until we capture bin Laden's dentist, barber, and the person who installed the carpet in his living room?   The Bush Regime with its comic huffings and puffings is unaware that it has made itself the laughing stock of the world, a comedy version of the Third Reich.   Hamdan was not defended by the slick lawyers who got O.J. Simpson off, and he most certainly did not have a jury of his peers. Hamdan was defended by a Pentagon appointed US Navy officer, and his jurors were all Pentagon appointed US military officers with an eye on their careers. Even in this Kangaroo Court, Hamdan was cleared of the main charge.   The US Navy officer who was Hamdan's appointed attorney is certainly no terrorist sympathizer. Yet even this United States officer said that the rules Bush designed for the military tribunals were designed to achieve convictions. He also said that the judge allowed evidence that would not have been admitted by any civilian or military US court. He said that the interrogations of Hamdan, which comprised the basis of the Bush Regime's case, were tainted by coercive tactics, including sleep deprivation and solitary confinement. [Split verdict in first Guantanamo war-crimes trial, AP, August 6, 2008]   Does this make you a proud American?   Do you think you are made more safe when you stand there while "your" government implements its own version of Joseph Stalin's show trials?   The trial and conviction of Hamdan has made every American very unsafe.   The one certain fact about US law is that it is expanded until it applies to everyone. Consider RICO, for example, the asset freeze law that was intended only in criminal cases involving the Mafia; it wasn't long before RICO found its way into civil divorce proceedings.   Bush's multi-year, multi-billion dollar "War on Terror" has been reduced to railroading a low level employee, a driver, for "terrorism."   One would hope that the Hamdan verdict would be enough shame and ridicule for the US in one day. But no, Bush didn't stop there. On his way to the Beijing Olympics, President Bush expressed "deep concerns" for the state of human rights in China.   But not in Guantanamo, nor in Abu Ghraib, nor in the CIA's torture dungeons used for "renditions," nor in Iraq and Afghanistan where the US is expert at bombing weddings, funerals, children's soccer games, and every assortment of civilians imaginable.   As the good book says, clean the beam from your own eye before pointing to the mote in your brother's eye.   But Americans, the salt of the earth, have neither beams nor motes. We are the virtuous few, ordained by God to impose our hegemony on the world. It is written, or so say the neocons.   What would President Bush say if, heaven forbid, the Chinese were as rude as he is and asked Mr. Superpower why the land of "freedom and democracy" has one million names on a watch list. China with a population four times as large doesn't have a watch list with one million names.   What would President Bush say if China asked him why the US, with a population one-fourth the size of China's has hundreds of thousands more of its citizens in prison? The percentage of Americans in prison is far higher than in China and is a larger absolute number.   What would President Bush say if China asked him why he used lies and deception to justify his invasion of Iraq. China, unlike Bush, is not responsible for 1.2 million dead Iraqis and 4 million displaced Iraqis.   China's human rights policy is not perfect. China's greatest human rights failing is that China is the Bush Regime's prime enabler of its war crimes and human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. By financing Bush's budget deficit, China is financing Bush's gratuitous wars. Indeed, China can be said to finance the weaponry that the US gives Israel to enable the suppression of the Palestinians and with which to bomb the civilian population of Lebanon.   China is a serious human rights abuser, because China is complicit in Bush's human rights abuses.   If we are honest about who is actually murdering and abusing people, it is the US, Israel, and the UK.   There's your "axis of evil."     Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan's first term.  He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.  He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of   Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington;  Alienation and the Soviet Economy and   Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of  The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. http://www.vdare.com/roberts/080806_war.htm        ****************     Hamdan Case Exemplifies Bush's Failure In The "war On Terror"   By Mary Shaw   09 August, 2008 Countercurrents.org   On August 6th, Osama bin Laden's former driver, Salim Hamdan, was convicted of aiding terrorism but acquitted of more serious conspiracy charges.   The next day, the jury sentenced Hamdan to 5 1/2 years in prison -- much less than the 30 years to life that the prosecution wanted. The sentence includes the five years and one month that Hamdan has already served at Gitmo, so he may be free in as little as five months.   This is the Bush administration's big news-making catch, their showcase trial in the "war on terror". And it is pathetic.   The trial was a fiasco, a kangaroo court, in clear violation of international human rights standards. But, of course, the Bushies seem to believe that they are above the law, or they make it up as they go along.   Pursuant to the provisions of the unfortunate Military Commissions Act of 2006, the prosecution used secret evidence, much of which wasn't provided to the defense until hours before the trial, if at all. That "evidence" included information obtained by coercion, which experts agree is usually unreliable. (John McCain himself once exemplified this by recalling how, when asked under torture in Vietnam to provide his captors with the names of the members of his flight squadron, instead rattled off the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, "knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse.")   But those practical concerns don't seem to matter. We must obtain convictions at any cost, because it looks good. It's all politics.   Fortunately, the jury recognized that Hamdan is not the "worst of the worst", as the Bushies like to call our Gitmo detainees. He was a two-bit player, a poor shmuck who chose the wrong car to drive for a living. And for that he has suffered five years of abuse and interrogation.   Ironically, for all of Bush's tough talk in the "war on terror", this is what he's got to show for it.   Meanwhile, bin Laden remains free and the terrorist threat remains stronger than ever.   God bless America.   "I don't know where [Osama bin Laden] is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him."     -- George W. Bush, in a press conference, Washington, DC, March 13, 2002   Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist, with a focus on politics, human rights, and social justice. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views appear regularly in a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites. Note that the ideas expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty International or any other organization with which she may be associated. E-mail: mary@maryshawonline.com   http://www.countercurrents.org/shaw090808.htm