International Cries For Justice & Problems Over There (Everywhere)

Australia MPs Writing Top US Lawmakers To Press Fair Trial For Hicks

According to my friends from "Down Under," there is an ultra-conservative streak running through the Australian Parliament that emulates the same streak, albeit to a lesser degree, that we have seen under Bush and the formerly GOP-controlled congress. The Prime Minister of Australia has run things much the same way as Bush has run things. If it were not for the greater degree of autonomy each provincial territory has under the Aussie form of government, the PM would have the entire country running under such conservative ways.

So, when we see members of the Aussie Parliament rushing to decry the military tribunal commissions for being unfair and extreme in the inclusion of hearsay and unchallenged evidence, one has to assume that there are some genuine reasons for doing so... like the inherent unfairness, violation of international laws, and breach of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Australian MPs concerned about new US military commission rules plan to write to US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi next week to ask them to ensure Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainee David Hicks gets a fair trial in the US or to return him to Australia to face trial there. Hicks supporters have already spoken out against the new rules issued by the US Defense Department Thursday which allow convictions based on hearsay and coerced evidence and do not contain explicit mention of the right to a speedy trial, the right against self incrimination, and the right to confront an accuser.

Hicks has been in American custody for 5 years (certainly a violation of the principle of having a "speedy trial'), after being picked up in Afghanistan while allegedly fighting for the Taliban. His original charges, which were brought in 2004, have lapsed.

Morocco Appeals Court Acquits Five Former Guantanamo Detainees

In a pattern that has been followed by several international courts and rulings by the native countries of those released from Gitmo, five former Guatanamo detainees have been found not guilty of secondary terrorism charges. According to some reports that are not making the MSM, these secondary charges were implemented to appease the powers that be in the US government, especially the executive branch. However, since the Dems took back the House and Senate, there is less pressure for many independent nations to succumb to these unusual pressures to convict.

But at least a dozen cases involving charges stemming from the detention at Gitmo have been overturned or acquitted once these men had access to a reasonable court of law willing to hear evidence without prejudice and unfair rules. Many others released from Gitmo were merely released once their home nation's investigators conducted interviews and verified a few facts that our military and intelligence folks failed to do.

What does this say about our efforts at Gitmo? What does this say about our wide-sweeping arrest record in Iraq and Afghanistan? What does it say about our abandonment of our Constitution and its principles merely because we are afraid of the bogeymen Bush and company have created for us?

Don't get me wrong... Terrorism and terrorists are real. It's only that they do not represent the major militaristic or logistical threat that Bush and his gang make it out to be. Many experts on terrorism from around the world have condemned the "Bush Doctrine" as being overkill and extreme because it exaggerates the threat, employs military action rather than law enforcement, intelligence gathering/sharing, and surgical strikes when terrorist encampments and strongholds are identified.

Most of us that have reasonable examined the risks of terrorism to the US realize that we lose more people annually to traffic accidents, cancer, the effects of poverty, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, alcoholism, homelessness and other social or medical ills we face but refuse to confront fully. The fact that so many people were killed at one fell swoop on 9-11 is what drives our efforts to address the terrorists. However, even that information is not clear to us. We invaded Iraq to contend with terrorism and WMDs, but neither were present in Iraq prior to our invasion... and we knew that as fact but were misled and lied to by Bush and company. Then we were told insistently that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9-11 attacks. In the process of telling us that Al-Qaeda was responsible, the fact that Al-Qaeda has a stronghold in Saudi Arabia, which is where the vast majority of the 9-11 criminals came from, seems to have escaped us. Meanwhile, the real terrorists are alive and well in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Indonesia and a few other places where we have failed to act. We continue to kowtow to Saudi Arabia because of the latent political and economic power the House of Saud has over us and has exercised ever since 1973 oil embargoes (c.f. The American House of Saud by Steven Emerson)

On top of these issues is the question as to whether or not the Al-Qaeda network is really all that the government has made it out to be. I have been in the Arab part of the Middle East. The old joke about putting "three Jews in a room and coming out with 50 arguments" could be used to describe the politics of most Arab countries as well. In fact, historically, it has taken a strong leadership--usually based on tribal, familial and sectarian affiliations--to maintain order in Arab nations. Such is the case in Saudi Arabia where the House of Saud has ruled since Prince Faisal managed to claim the crown with support from the British. In Bahrain, the same is true with the Al-Khalifa royal family. In fact, the British have had a hand in establishing order and the ruling families for Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Irq (under the Shah), as well as playing politics with the ruling parties in surrounding nations of Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and India (c.f. history of World War I and World War II). [Also see The eclipse of U.S. influence in Middle East?, Britain and the Politics of Modernization in the Middle East, 1945-1958, and Wikipedia's article on the Middle East: History section.]

A Moroccan criminal appeal court Friday acquitted five former Guantanamo Bay detainees of terrorism charges related to the men's connection with Salafia Jihadia and unrelated to their detention at Guantanamo Bay, where three of the men spent up to 4 1/2 years in US custody. The Salafia Jihadia is an offshoot of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group. Both organizations are allegedly linked with al-Qaeda and are believed to be responsible for the May 16, 2003 Casablanca suicide bombings [BBC report] that killed 45 people, including 12 suicide bombers.

The head of the independent Human Rights Moroccan Center appealed a Moroccan court's conviction of the former detainees in November 2006. Two of the men remain in custody on a separate charge of trying to recruit volunteers to fight in Iraq.

UK Admits Prior Knowledge Of Secret CIA Prison Network

In what amounts to a violation of the human rights provisions of the European Union, the British government is acknowledging that it knew of the US extraordinary rendition efforts. Add to that the same violations by Germany, Spain and Italy, and we see a growing conspiracy of nations that are willing to violate human rights, international law, ratified treaties, and basic human decency to forward their own agendas. Of course we can probably trace back to the Bush administration numerous efforts to coerce cooperation out of some of the EU partners, but the British under Tony Blair probably wished they could have done it without US involvement. After all, the UK has used similar tactics against the Irish for centuries.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett admitted Friday in a written response to a parliamentary question that Britain was "aware of the existence of a secret US detention program" prior to a September speech by President Bush acknowledging the existence of CIA-operated secret prisons for terror detainees. A cabinet Intelligence and Security Committee report has also stated that British intelligence service MI5 was also aware that the US was holding detainees in facilities other than those in Guantanamo, but did not have knowledge of the locations, conditions and access to the detainees. The admissions are believed to be the first public confirmations that British officials had prior knowledge of the secret prison network.

In November, a report released by a European Parliament committee investigating the CIA's alleged covert use of facilities in European countries for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners, concluded that 16 of those countries cooperated with the CIA "passively or actively". The European Parliament investigation was launched after the existence of the secret prisons was first mooted in press reports in late 2005.

Pakistani Role Seen in Taliban Surge at Border

So much for Pakistan's assurances of help in dealing with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. We know that Pakistan has been a retreat place of operations since before we went into Afghanistan or Iraq. We have been conducting covert operations, including bombs and missile strikes, in the Pakistani frontier regions where the Taliban and Al-Qaeda live when they are not busy raising their own version of Hell. But why haven't we done more to pressure Pakistan to deal with these bastards among their own people? The answer is simple... nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Pakistan has them and is willing to deploy them should they suffer the same sort of invasion we provided in Iraq. Of course, there isn't much oil in Pakistan, so there isn't much of an incentive to go in there anyway. But our troops in Afghanistan are being harassed by the folks that seem to cross into Pakistan and hide among their fellow tribesmen with ease.

But if you ask the Bush gang, they will tell you that they are in control over there... NOT! It is more likely that Pakistan is playing a game with Bush so that it can demonstrate it is not a puppet regime of the US and that its independence can run all the way to resisting US influence.

The most explosive question about the Taliban resurgence here along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is this: Have Pakistani intelligence agencies been promoting the Islamic insurgency?

The government of Pakistan vehemently rejects the allegation and insists that it is fully committed to help American and NATO forces prevail against the Taliban militants who were driven from power in Afghanistan in 2001.

Western diplomats in both countries and Pakistani opposition figures say that Pakistani intelligence agencies — in particular the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence — have been supporting a Taliban restoration, motivated not only by Islamic fervor but also by a longstanding view that the jihadist movement allows them to assert greater influence on Pakistan’s vulnerable western flank.

More than two weeks of reporting along this frontier, including dozens of interviews with residents on each side of the porous border, leaves little doubt that Quetta is an important base for the Taliban, and found many signs that Pakistani authorities are encouraging the insurgents, if not sponsoring them.

On the Air, the Voice of Sunni Rebels in Iraq

But then again, we don't even have control over the medium that insurgents use throughout the Middle East to transmit there viperous poison of revolution, Islamic utopia, and the preaching against the ruling elites. With all the technology and satellite capability of the US, we can't seem to prevent reverse propaganda from spreading the word of the insurgents. So where does that really leave us when we start to implement Bush's new plan forward? No where.

The fact is that we have not even begun to reach the level of operation where we try to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Our failure to implement safety and security, re-establish basic services, provide food and clean water, and rebuild economic opportunities is easy fodder for the jihadists, insurgents, terrorists and those that merely hate Americans from the gitgo. Our plan in Iraq was a failure from the first day we succeeded in wiping out the military forces and then allowed rampant looting and criminal acts without even lifting a finger to stop it. While our military invasion was successful (albeit illegal), our occupation was a failure even before it began... we did not have a plan.

The video starts with a young American soldier patrolling an Iraqi street. His head is obscured by leaves, so a red target is digitally inserted to draw the viewer’s eye. A split second later, the soldier collapses, shot. Martial music kicks in, a jihadi answer to John Philip Sousa. The time and place of the attack scrolls at the bottom of the screen.

Such tapes, along with images of victims of Shiite militias and unflattering coverage of Shiite leaders, are beaming across Iraq and much of the Middle East 24 hours a day, broadcast by a banned Iraqi satellite television station that has become a major information center for the Sunni insurgency — and the focus of a cat-and-mouse hunt that has exasperated and infuriated American and Iraqi forces.

Making the situation even more galling for the authorities, American and Iraqi officials say that money stolen from the United States probably helps pay for the station.

“They do not have programs but buffoonery, blaspheming and support for terrorism,” said Jalal al-Din al-Sagheer, a senior member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite party. “The source of funding for the channel is theft.”

The channel’s founder, Meshaan al-Juburi, is a former Sunni member of Parliament who was indicted last February on charges of embezzling millions of American dollars meant to pay for a vast pipeline protection force he had been assigned to help build with recruits from Salahuddin Province. He was accused of collecting salaries for thousands of soldiers who did not exist.

He denied the charges and went into hiding, fleeing to Syria.

But the American and Iraqi officials said he funneled some of the money to Sunni insurgents, and they suspect much of it helped him shift the programming on his channel, Al Zawra (“the gate” in Arabic), from popular music videos and dance shows to gruesome and detailed death scenes.