Richard Ackland - lawyer, commentator and journalist -reflects in his weekly op-ed piece in the SMH, on David Hicks, Gitmo and the military commission there and PM Howard and Ministers Ruddock and Downer.
Bottom line Ackland, rightly, concludes that the 3 former Government ministers ought to hang their collective heads in shame:
"I wonder if, in the time-out room of their souls, the former government's doughty little foot soldiers of freedom feel the odd shiver of embarrassment or shame.
The extent to which Messrs Howard, Ruddock and Downer were prepared to subvert some sacred principles might have brought normal mortals unstitched. But by all appearances they have kept their chins up and their rectitude unexamined.
The principle that they nearly wrestled to the ground and choked to death was that of the "fair trial".
As they abandoned David Hicks, an Australian citizen, to the spectacularly bogus "judicial" regime at Guantanamo Bay, we were told repeatedly that our fears were baseless, that the system the Americans had devised for the detainees there was fairness itself.
A cacophony of government claqueurs in the media cried their approval of that patent nonsense.
But the nonsense has been laid bare, with the military commissions system that plea-bargained with Hicks now in crisis and probably forever unworkable.
The military prosecutors themselves are saying Ruddock's and Downer's entirely "fair" trial system is unfair. Here are the most recent developments."
Read on here.
Bottom line Ackland, rightly, concludes that the 3 former Government ministers ought to hang their collective heads in shame:
"I wonder if, in the time-out room of their souls, the former government's doughty little foot soldiers of freedom feel the odd shiver of embarrassment or shame.
The extent to which Messrs Howard, Ruddock and Downer were prepared to subvert some sacred principles might have brought normal mortals unstitched. But by all appearances they have kept their chins up and their rectitude unexamined.
The principle that they nearly wrestled to the ground and choked to death was that of the "fair trial".
As they abandoned David Hicks, an Australian citizen, to the spectacularly bogus "judicial" regime at Guantanamo Bay, we were told repeatedly that our fears were baseless, that the system the Americans had devised for the detainees there was fairness itself.
A cacophony of government claqueurs in the media cried their approval of that patent nonsense.
But the nonsense has been laid bare, with the military commissions system that plea-bargained with Hicks now in crisis and probably forever unworkable.
The military prosecutors themselves are saying Ruddock's and Downer's entirely "fair" trial system is unfair. Here are the most recent developments."
Read on here.
Comments