Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Another US judge rules US treatment of 'enemy combatants' illegal.
A US federal court has ruled that Usama bin Ladin's driver is entitled to a legal hearing on whether he is a prisoner of war... A competent tribunal should have evaluated whether Salim Ahmad Hamdan was a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions, Judge James Robertson of the US District Court in Washington ordered in an opinion issued on Monday. The judge added that Hamdan should not be tried unless rules of the military commissions were changed to conform to the Uniform Code of Military Justice... The court ruled in favour of Hamdan's habeas petition and against the US government's contention that Hamdan and other detainees were not prisoners of war but "enemy combatants", a classification affording fewer legal protections.
But this wants to make me parachute my Mum into the Centre for Constitutional Rights:
Barbara Olshansky of the Centre for Constitutional Rights said the judge's emphasis on the Geneva Conventions was a key point in his ruling. "What people in the United States haven't realised is that if we don't comply with them, no other country is required to comply with them, looking at our example," Olshansky said. "That places our own soldiers at risk whenever they are fighting abroad."
Note to Olshansky: Your Government has, from the start, tried to pretend that this is all about defeating people who hate the western values of democracy and freedom. Yeah, I know, but what can you do? Anyway, you can either admit this is all rubbish and that this whole thing is about grabbing oil, stealing the money of hardworking Americans to give to the board of Halliburton and Shrubya's feelings of inferiority towards Papa Bush. OR, you can claim the high moral ground, that this is about freeing the ordinary citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq from tyranny and giving them the chance to decide their future. The drawback to the second is that you have to hold higher moral standards than your enemies which doesn't really square with keeping human beings in rights-free states indefinitely just because you know your enemy would probably do the same with anyone they capture. The United States cannot lecture anyone on standards and morality when they're in the gutter holding people in inhumane conditions and torturing people for no real reason other than humiliation.
Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said the government stood behind President George Bush's assertion that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to members of al-Qaida and said with the ruling, "the judge has put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war".
No no no he hasn't! It's not about what the terrorists have done, it's about how YOU treat THEM!
A US federal court has ruled that Usama bin Ladin's driver is entitled to a legal hearing on whether he is a prisoner of war... A competent tribunal should have evaluated whether Salim Ahmad Hamdan was a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions, Judge James Robertson of the US District Court in Washington ordered in an opinion issued on Monday. The judge added that Hamdan should not be tried unless rules of the military commissions were changed to conform to the Uniform Code of Military Justice... The court ruled in favour of Hamdan's habeas petition and against the US government's contention that Hamdan and other detainees were not prisoners of war but "enemy combatants", a classification affording fewer legal protections.
But this wants to make me parachute my Mum into the Centre for Constitutional Rights:
Barbara Olshansky of the Centre for Constitutional Rights said the judge's emphasis on the Geneva Conventions was a key point in his ruling. "What people in the United States haven't realised is that if we don't comply with them, no other country is required to comply with them, looking at our example," Olshansky said. "That places our own soldiers at risk whenever they are fighting abroad."
Note to Olshansky: Your Government has, from the start, tried to pretend that this is all about defeating people who hate the western values of democracy and freedom. Yeah, I know, but what can you do? Anyway, you can either admit this is all rubbish and that this whole thing is about grabbing oil, stealing the money of hardworking Americans to give to the board of Halliburton and Shrubya's feelings of inferiority towards Papa Bush. OR, you can claim the high moral ground, that this is about freeing the ordinary citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq from tyranny and giving them the chance to decide their future. The drawback to the second is that you have to hold higher moral standards than your enemies which doesn't really square with keeping human beings in rights-free states indefinitely just because you know your enemy would probably do the same with anyone they capture. The United States cannot lecture anyone on standards and morality when they're in the gutter holding people in inhumane conditions and torturing people for no real reason other than humiliation.
Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said the government stood behind President George Bush's assertion that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to members of al-Qaida and said with the ruling, "the judge has put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war".
No no no he hasn't! It's not about what the terrorists have done, it's about how YOU treat THEM!
