It's (almost) unbelievable that this could happen to anyone under American law.
The first person to be tried in a military tribunal at Guantanamo will remain incarcerated no matter the verdict. Concerns remain about the procedure's fairness.
By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 4, 2008
Clip of article is below the fold.
GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA -- The war crimes case against Salim Ahmed Hamdan today goes to a jury of his enemies, hand-selected by the Pentagon official who charged him on behalf of a president who has ordered him imprisoned even if acquitted.
"The eyes of the world are on Guantanamo Bay," U.S. District Judge James Robertson said July 17 in declining to halt the first trial by military commission.
The article goes on to describe the proceedings as a dry run to ensure that evidence gained by the use of torture will be admissible in the future trials of others.
What should I have bold-faced in a report like this? What is the most outrageous aspect of this loogie that's being hawked in the face of justice?
What have we become when "we the people" allow an innocent man to be tried by a hand-picked hostile jury in a kangaroo court, and remain imprisoned by the people who tortured him even if that kangaroo court finds him innocent, because "George says so"?
"Fairness" doesn't even enter my mind when I hear things like this. "Corrupted", "evil", "we have become our worst enemies", "gulag"? Sure. Bush's Our contempt for the rule of law doesn't end with the International Criminal Court and the UN. We hold the constitution itself in contempt. We are reduced to defending the dirt we stand on. We are nothing but squatters, now.