Two days back, I noted the odd choice made by the government to go easy on David Hicks, the Australian citizen who recently pled guilty of supporting terrorism in the first-ever military tribunal held in Guantanamo Bay. The leniency, it seems, came with a price: Hicks would serve a very limited amount of time in an Australlian jail in exchange for remaining silent about his alleged torture.
Given how the administration has hyped the people held in Gitmo, this decision seemed almost inexplicable. Apparently I was overlooking the obvious. Andrew Sullivan explains:
So Cheney goes to Australia and meets with John Howard who tells him that the Hicks case is killing him in Australia, and he may lose the next election because of it. Hicks's case is then railroaded to the front of the Gitmo kangaro court line, and put through a "legal" process almost ludicrously inept, with two of Hicks' three lawyers thrown out on one day, then an abrupt plea-bargain, with a transparently insincere confession. Hicks is then given a mere nine months in jail in Australia, before being set free. Who negotiated the plea-bargain? Hicks' lawyer. Who did he negotiate with? Not the prosecutors, as would be normal, but Susan J. Crawford, the top military commission official. Who is Susan J. Crawford? She served as Dick Cheney's Inspector General while he was Defense Secretary...
And the prosecution? They weren't even aware the negotiation was taking place.
Their words suggest this is a battle to save civilization. But their actions? Not so much.
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