WHERE ARE THE WAR CRIMINALS?

A sidebar story in today’s Springfield News-Leader devotes three paragraphs to reporting on the first American war crimes trial since World War II.

The accused is Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni, who worked as a driver for Osama bin Laden. His prosecutors say his service to bin Laden makes him culpable for the danger his work posed for American troops. His defenders say he is just a pawn; a chauffeur who knew nothing more than what destination to drive to on a given day.

Most prisoners at Gitmo have never been tried and probably never will be. It appears to me that the administration is drawing at straws in an attempt to prove their vigilance over the nation’s safety by demonstrating that they have caught and will prosecute terrorists. But the real question on which this trial will shed light is not whether or not this man is guilty of the charges. The central question everyone will be assessing is whether the system the Bush administration put in place – from the arrest process to Guantanamo Bay to the military tribunal assigned to hear cases against prisoners – is a legitimate system or a trumped up means of denying prisoners’ rights while railroading them into sentences issued in response to baseless charges.

There is a lot of evidence that a great many of the prisoners in Gitmo are there because their enemies turned them in for the rewards offered by the American government for information leading to the capture of terrorists. It was an easy way for any Pakistani, Afghani, or anyone else to point the finger at an enemy and have him removed from the local competition for whatever power was to be had whether governorship of a municipality or just control of a fig grove.

There is also plenty of evidence of Amerikan abuse of prisoners, and a huge, though behind the scenes as far as the popular press is concerned, debate over whether the military tribunal system was structured by the administration so that they could (1) avoid habeas corpus, and (2) allow “evidence” gained through torture.

Amerika is trying the wrong people. No prisoner in Gitmo is guilty of imprisoning hundreds of people and holding them for years without stating the case against them, allowing them to have representation, or bringing them to trial. No prisoner in Gitmo has outed a covert intelligence agent for political revenge. No prisoner in Gitmo has constructed false intelligence to build a case for war. No prisoner in Gitmo is guilty of leading America away from its long heritage as a nation that does not torture prisoners. No prisoner in Gitmo is guilty of unleashing pre-emptive warfare on a country that posed no threat and possessed no weapons of mass destruction and in the process causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the displacement of more than two million more. No prisoner in Gitmo is now advocating doing exactly the same thing to a second sovereign nation (Iran).

My bet is that you can find more real war criminals per capita in the White House right now than in Guantanamo Bay.

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry


Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR