Bin Laden driver given 66 months for changing lug nuts

it's a joke and makes me really depressed about being an American :(

The Conviction of Salim Hamdan
Do You Feel Safe Now?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

http://counterpunch.org/roberts08072008.html

Now that military officers selected by the Bush Pentagon have reached a split verdict convicting Salim Hamdan, a onetime driver for Osama bin Laden, of supporting terrorism, but innocent of terrorist conspiracy, do you feel safe?

Or are we superpower Americans still at risk until we capture bin Laden’s dentist, barber, and the person who installed the carpet in his living room?

The Bush Regime with its comic huffings and puffings is unaware that it has made itself the laughing stock of the world, a comedy version of the Third Reich.

Hamdan was not defended by the slick lawyers that got O.J. Simpson off, and he most certainly did not have a jury of his peers. Hamdan was defended by a Pentagon appointed US Navy officer, and his jurors were all Pentagon appointed US military officers with an eye on their careers. Even in this Kangaroo Court, Hamdan was cleared of the main charge.

The US Navy officer who was Hamdan’s appointed attorney is certainly no terrorist sympathizer. Yet even this United States officer said that the rules Bush designed for the military tribunals were designed to achieve convictions. He also said that the judge allowed evidence that would not have been admitted by any civilian or military US court. He said that the interrogations of Hamdan, which comprised the basis of the Bush Regime’s case, were tainted by coercive tactics, including sleep deprivation and solitary confinement.

Does this make you a proud American?

Do you think you are made more safe when you stand there while “your” government implements its own version of Joseph Stalin’s show trials?

The trial and conviction of Hamdan has made every American very unsafe.

The one certain fact about US law is that it is expanded until it applies to everyone. Consider RICO, for example, the asset freeze law that was intended only in criminal cases involving the Mafia; it wasn’t long before RICO found its way into civil divorce proceedings.

Bush’s multi-year, multi-billion dollar “war on terror” has been reduced to railroading a low level employee, a driver, for “terrorism.”

One would hope that the Hamdan verdict would be enough shame and ridicule for the US in one day. But no, Bush didn’t stop there. On his way to the Beijing Olympics, President Bush expressed “deep concerns” for the state of human rights in China.

But not in Guantanamo, nor in Abu Ghraib, nor in the CIA’s torture dungeons used for “renditions,” nor in Iraq and Afghanistan where the US is expert at bombing weddings, funerals, children’s soccer games, and every assortment of civilians imaginable.

As the good book says, clean the beam from your own eye before pointing to the mote in your brother’s eye.

But Americans, the salt of the earth, have neither beams nor motes. We are the virtuous few, ordained by God to impose our hegemony on the world. It is written, or so say the neocons.

What would President Bush say if, heaven forbid, the Chinese were as rude as he is and asked Mr. Superpower why the land of “freedom and democracy” has one million names on a watch list. China with a population four times as large doesn’t have a watch list with one million names.

What would President Bush say if China asked him why the US, with a population one-fourth the size of China’s has hundreds of thousands more of its citizens in prison? The percentage of Americans in prison is far higher than in China and is a larger absolute number.

What would President Bush say if China asked him why he used lies and deception to justify his invasion of Iraq. China, unlike Bush, is not responsible for 1.2 million dead Iraqis and 4 million displaced Iraqis.

China’s human rights policy is not perfect. China’s greatest human rights failing is that China is the Bush Regime’s prime enabler of its war crimes and human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. By financing Bush’s budget deficit, China is financing Bush’s gratuitous wars. Indeed, China can be said to finance the weaponry that the US gives Israel to enable the suppression of the Palestinians and with which to bomb the civilian population of Lebanon.

China is a serious human rights abuser, because China is complicit in Bush’s human rights abuses.

If we are honest about who is actually murdering and abusing people, it is the US, Israel, and the UK. There’s your “axis of evil.”

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

Hornberger’s Blog
Tuesday, August 5, 2008

http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2008-08-05.asp

The Irrelevancy of the Gitmo Trials
by Jacob G. Hornberger

The Pentagon’s model “judicial” system at Guantanamo Bay has many fascinating features, virtually all of which are contrary to the rights and guarantees in the federal system established by the Constitution. Among the features in the Pentagon’s system are a presumption of guilt for the accused, no right to confront witnesses, the use of hearsay evidence, the use of evidence acquired by torture or coercion, no right against self-incrimination, no protection against cruel and unusual punishments, no right to bail, and no right to trial by jury.

But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Pentagon’s system is the irrelevancy of the trial itself. Under the Pentagon’s rules, if a person is found not guilty the Pentagon can nonetheless continue to keep him in custody for as long as it wants, even for the rest of his life. In the federal judicial system here in the United States, when a jury acquits an accused he is immediately discharged from custody, enabling him to walk out the courtroom a free man.

Granted, it is highly unlikely that any defendant is going to be acquitted, given that U.S. military personnel are serving as prosecutor, judge, and jury. Nonetheless, every American should take note of this critically important part of this model “judicial” system established by the Pentagon. If the accused is acquitted by the military tribunal, the Pentagon can continue to treat him as if he had been convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Obvious questions arise: If the Pentagon can continue imprisoning a defendant who has been acquitted, then what’s the point of a trial? Isn’t the trial more in the nature of a show trial, similar to those conducted by the Soviet Union? Isn’t the Pentagon simply using a fake trial, one whose outcome is preordained and irrelevant, to convince people that its punishment of a person is done pursuant to principles of justice?

The Pentagon’s model “judicial” system makes a mockery of the principles of justice that America is supposed to stand for. Heaven forbid that the Pentagon is ever permitted to import it to our country.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.