"FIVE and a half weeks ago, after being told to pack his bags and that his father was on the phone, David Hicks thought he was heading home after 4½ years in Guantanamo Bay.
He was badly mistaken and, according to his father Terry Hicks, devastated when he found out the real story.
'I had to spend the first half an hour calming him down, getting him on the straight and narrow. He was very upset. He was so stressed out,' Mr Hicks said yesterday.
'I think it was quite deliberate. They are trying to wear him down. But he's not going to break down enough to say he's guilty. He's not that far gone.'"
"Why do they hate us" is becoming a bleakly rhetorical question. This is an example of why.
It would seem to me self evident that if there were a case to be made, it would have been made. If the young man in question was really a terrorist, simply knowing his name should have led so some information, perhaps an arrest or two by now, by virtue of good old fashioned police work.
You know, the sort of proven approaches sane people suggested in the first place as the most logical and effective way of finding out what happened on 9/11 and who to hold accountable for it. Not only does it work, it is the only approach that has produced any positive results at all.
The only result that is predictable from keeping this young man in Gitmo can be discerned by reading the concluding paragraphs:
While Mr Hicks and his son's US lawyer, Major Michael Mori, said they doubted Hicks would come home this year, Government members yesterday expressed their frustration at Hicks's 4½ year wait for justice.
The Liberal senator George Brandis said the Government had "always been of the view that the matter of Mr Hicks should be brought to a conclusion more promptly than it has been".
The Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce said: "The process has been long enough now in the US."
There is considerable disquiet in Coalition ranks about Hicks. Those on the moderate wing of the party - as well as the Sydney MP Danna Vale - believe he should be returned immediately.
Others are angry with the US for taking so long to bring him to trial and for giving false assurances he was to get a fair trial with the original military commission.
I wonder what that foreshadows for ongoing co-operation with US "anti-terrorism" efforts?
In other news; Scientists report cause and effect still operative despite White House skepticism.
tag: david hicks, austrailian gitmo detainees, Gitmo, Guantanomo Bay, Philip Ruddock, military commission, politics, constitution, constitutional, foreign policy, terrorism, ethical warfare, just war, media reaction, military commission, unconstitutional, foreign press
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