Busting Bin Laden’s Baker
I don’t know about you. But I sure feel a whole lot safer now that a kangaroo court in the unaccountable gulag of Gitmo has formally convicted Osama Bin Laden’s driver. If the CIA could only nab his manicurist, his astrologer and his tailor, I think we would pretty much consider the Global War on Terror wrapped up, no?
Reading even the short news dispatch lined to above should tell you just about everything you need to know to get really sick to your stomach.
Ask yourselves these questions:
How is it that Salim Ahmed Hamdan who — by all appearances– was precisely and only a driver, is the first suspect to be tried by the shameful military tribunals established by Dick Cheney? That’s the highest value target we could try after seven years of running what amounts to a concentration camp for the supposed world’s most dangerous terrorists? Perhaps because most of those at Gitmo are not so dangerous? And that those who are have been so repeatedly tortured that we can’t even make a case against them in a rigged court?
What does it mean that the judge sentenced this guy, effectively, to only 6 months more jail? Perhaps because Hamdan is precisely a “little fish” — maybe like a guppie– as the judge described him.
What does it mean that the court admitted hearsay as evidence? Perhaps that as a court it is a farce?
What does it mean that the court did not permit some “coereced” evidence? Perhaps that little fish or nor Hamdan was tortured?
What does it mean that U.S. military authorities immediately announced after the 5 1/2 year sentence imposed on Hamdan (including 5 years time already served) that he isn’t going anywhere and wil be held indefinitely? Perhaps that the court is a farce? (Oops, I already said that).
What a national embarrassment this all is. Last week, I recommended reading Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side.” If you get through that, pick up a copy of Ron Suskind’s new “The Way of the World” and get really bummed out. I can only say what I have said about 50 times in the last few years: The incompetence, hubris, arrogance and reckless disregard for human and American values imposed by this administration will cost us for generations to come. Way, way beyond November.
August 7th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
This sets a legal precedence. Anyone who wants to try Bush & Cheney for war crimes will have to go through their chauffeurs first.
August 7th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I’m waiting for Col. Nathan Jessep to post a ranting speech here.
August 7th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Yeah. Just about anyone was qualified and suitable to be Bin Laden’s driver. It’s not like he would be physically near the world’s number one most-wanted terrorist or anything. Hell, I bet he didn’t even have to provide references to the AQ security detail.
August 7th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
“Mr Hamdan, what about the two surface to air missiles found in your trunk?”
“Missiles? I know nothing of stinking missiles! I just driver!”
August 7th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Jim H. You are absolutely correct. It’s absolutely worth suspending habeas corpus, shredding the constitution, employing torture, and basically suspending the constitution to get Osama’s driver.
August 7th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Uh-oh, I’m not sure if I just got shredded by Marc, or not!
I’m in total agreement on all your points…I mean, just how ludicrous is it that our so called War on Terror has come to this?
August 7th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Oh Marc, you naive ignorant slut! Do you want the terrorists to win!
This was really funny and goes a long way to explaining why Shrub is at 25% in the latest polling. And what’s better is the very good chance that the Supremes – getting a FOURTH bite of the Hamden apple – will reiterate the first three decisions and vacate both the verdict and the sentence.
But never fear – Bush sure put those Chinese Commies in their place, didn’t he!?
August 7th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Meanwhile – in a tale of two legislatures – the Pakistani Parliament is on course to Im peach and remove President Mushariff.
Don’t you feel real good about Nancy taking that off the table here?
War Crimes Trials!
Yeah, right!
August 7th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Did RLC just call Marc Jane Curtain?
August 7th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Jim guess you’re old enough to get the reference!
Gee, remember when SNL was Funny?
August 7th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
And “Bustin’ Bin Ladin’s Balls” – er “Baker” – I remember when every other week we caputed or killed the #2 or #3 guy in AQ. Guess that spot was like the unamed crewman in Star Trrek – you knew he was toast!!!
August 7th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
“Gee, remember when SNL was Funny?”
I remember when it was mandatory!
August 7th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
We must find, torture, and convict bin Laden’s hairdresser.
Only then will American be safe.
August 7th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
What is so appalling about all of this is that the Bush administration never made the case that these types of proceedings were necessary. They just got a hard on to go kick ass, rather than come up with a process that could try, convict and jail those responsible.
Instead, they developed a kangaroo court that is fundamentally flawed and is bogged down with a huge number of suspects in jail, who may very well have no other involvement in terrorist activities than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
August 7th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
reg! You’re in the news!
August 7th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Woody, on January 17th:
>>>If this were the general election, Edwards would have a better chance than that black guy and that bitch.
Woody, on June 23rd:
>>>If the profanity and obscene comments didn’t bother you or if you thought that they were funny, then it wouldn’t hurt for you to get closer to the head guy “up in the sky.” Unfortunately, Carlin is discovering that now.
August 7th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Chileno, once again, proof that Woody is this guy. Right down to the corny humor and insufferable self-righteousness.
August 7th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
I think what they mean when they say they’re going to hold him indefinitely is that they’re intent on having him in jail until Obama is president, so they can then say that one of Obama’s first acts was to release a terrorist.
August 8th, 2008 at 6:11 am
One key to all of this is the fact that the Bushistas are not part of “the reality-based community,” as reported by Suskind in his essential Oct. 17, 2004 NYT Magazine cover article:
http://www.ronsuskind.com/articles/000106.html
“In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”"
Gitmo, you see, is just part of this “new reality.”
August 8th, 2008 at 7:33 am
After reading the libs crying about Osama bin Laden’s driver, “who was just a regular guy,” I’m glad that the Democrats haven’t been in charge of national security.
Chileno, I couldn’t remember their names so I described Obama and Clinton as best as I could.
August 8th, 2008 at 7:39 am
While Bush wants to drive our enemies before us and hear the lamentation of their women,
leftists want to drive Bush before us, after hearing the lamentation of their drivers.
Don’t ever get into a fight expecting a leftist to watch your back. They will ask you what you did to deserve it……between blows.
August 8th, 2008 at 7:42 am
Presumably, they started the tribunals with the case they thought would be most likely to garner an enraged posse for the lynching party. If this was the best they’ve got, I shudder to think what the next schmuck they try is going to be like.
Well, Dems, enjoy it while you can. It’s going to be Obama in charge next time around, when they try to hang the guy who makes OBL’s turbans. Have fun.
August 8th, 2008 at 7:43 am
“What a national embarrassment this all is.”
Yes, but look at the bright side, Marc: it’s a very American, very character-building national embarrassment.
That’s what’s so great about the principle of equality under the rule of law. The trial of some poor schnook caught up in events largely beyond his understanding or control propels that guy into the catbird seat of history. Only for a moment, true — but it still leaves his or her name in the history books forever. And that changes the course of history — most of which has been changed more through the application of swords, arrows and spears than by words and reasoning.
Landmark cases in our history from Dredd Scott to Roe vs. Wade have involved people who would otherwise have been total nobodies. In Hamdan we have this guy who, if he’d been in the drivers’ pool for some Mafia chieftain, and had transported some arms for this mob in the trunk of the car in their service, would hardly have had a chance of being even a footnote in state-level case law, especially if he plea-bargained for immunity in exchange for testimony. But because this semi-literate Yemeni slum dweller ended up chauffeuring not for the Mafia, but for a crime gang involved in Terrorism Oh No the Scourge of Our Time, and because his treatment upon capture was extra-judicial and above the law BY DESIGN, and because (by his account, anyway) he decided not to just sign any damn confession handed to him in hopes of getting out of Gitmo, he goes down in history. Small consolation for him, I’m sure — I’ve read that the mistreatment and isolation of Gitmo have shattered him psychologically. But if it wasn’t for somebody’s suffering, we wouldn’t have landmark court cases.
To say we’ve turned a corner here with this verdict might sound rather pollyanna to you. But think of the corner as a very tight one in a pitch-dark sewer, and of turning it as involving a glimpse of faint, stray daylight, the first whiff of non-fetid air in a long while. The day I first heard about Guantanamo, I knew we were in for a long, dark journey as a nation. But it’s almost over now. This verdict, however flawed and messy, is yet another good sign of that we’re almost all the way through the sewer, and simply by being an actual verdict, in an actual trial. The first good sign, not coincidentally, also bears the name of this same poor schnook: the Supreme Court’s Hamdan decision.
August 8th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Of course Bin Laden’s drive did not require any special skills or aligence to his cause. Just a quiet unagressive nice Muslim boy that done good in ‘drivers school’.
August 8th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Woody: St. Peter reads this blog. Drop down now and beg for forgiveness because no amount of ginko biloba will save you from sharing eternity with all those comedians, chauffeurs and, according to your beloved Rev. Moon, liberal bloggers.
August 8th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Chileno, St. Peter watches FOX and reads conservative blogs. He’ll never come here to catch me.
August 8th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Actually, Jim, the guy did have some “allegiance to the cause”. One of his attractions to Afghanistan was to go run remaining Soviet sympathizers out of Tajikistan — well, on salary, actually, but anyway. That adventure aborted, but he went to see bin Laden, who was by then a host of the Taleban, and joined up after listening to him for a few days. But, well, probably a salary figured into that, too — after all, the guy had maybe a 4th grade education at best, but wanted to get married someday. He needed the money. So maybe sitting through three days of bin Laden sermons seemed like a small price to pay, kinda like that door-to-door encyclopedia sales training thing I bombed out of back when I was 19 and somehow even stupider than I am today.
In other words, without the swirling power vacuums created by U.S. involvement — then abdication — in Afghanistan, we wouldn’t have Hamdans. Or Taleban. Probably wouldn’t have bin Ladens either, come to think of it. And thus no 9/11. Not saying it’s our fault or anything. Why, that’d be like saying anybody who suffered in New Orleans because of Katrina and government botches in both preparation and response was somehow at fault. What kind of person would say such a thing?
August 8th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Chileno, St. Peter watches FOX and reads conservative blogs
More blasphemy.
August 8th, 2008 at 11:00 am
When Obama is in power, reg will volunteer to wear a black hood as hang-man.
August 8th, 2008 at 11:15 am
So, Woody…does St. Peter also quote Sean Hannity, do ya think?
August 8th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
>>>Chileno, St. Peter watches FOX and reads conservative blogs
Gosh, Woody, that’s a gloomy forecast for your friends.
August 8th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
SHOCK: John Edwards admits affair, says he lied repeatedly!
Har!
August 8th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
The question how Hamdan’s case came up first is an interesting one. It would seem that whoever chose this case was setting the table for appeal with the best possible set of facts to overturn the military tribunal process. But, as it stands, even if it is overturned, the current administration claims that there is no need to release Mr. Hamdan so he can rejoin his family, as the military judge hopes he can.
Congress needs to overturn the law (resolution?) that declared the “war on terror,” and arguably gave the executive the power to subvert what we thought were constitutional guarantees. Think that is going to be easy? Hell no, it will require unusual political courage, and there are going to be a number of other issues, like energy and environmental change, not to mention health care, education and infrastructure needs, that also will wither without an injection of political courage. It is hard to imagine that current and potential political leaders are up to the task. It is difficult to imagine that the American people are up to the task.
I’m watching the McCain campaign and its near- delirious attack du jour (one talking head calls it “paintball”), and thinking, we are witnessing the death spasm of a way of thinking about leadership and public policy. What McCain is saying and the commercials his campaign is airing are so unfocused and so (as Obama says) ignorant that people may have to wake up and say that they are just fed up and not going to respond to it anymore.
And, not to omit Bush and Cheney, we learn this week of a conspiracy to fabricate evidence–to fabricate “documentation” of an Iraq/al Qaeda connection–and it’s getting practically no attention at all. This either means nothing this administration could do would surprise us, or it means we as a people have become so callused that we will accept miscreance of the most egregious sort in support of policy goals.
What’s next?
August 8th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Stay classy, bob williams!
August 8th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
August 8th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Michael Crsoby: Congress needs to overturn the law (resolution?) that declared the “war on terror,”….
As I said before, “I’m glad that the Democrats haven’t been in charge of national security.”
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bob williams, John Edwards is denying that the kid is his. It looks as if he needs to go on the Maury Provich Show and take a DNA test to prove he is not the father.