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David Hicks - and Donald Rumsfled

As speculation swirls around the outcome of the David Hicks' guilty plea - and many rightly say Hicks would not have brought a free-will to his decision given his 5 year incarceration at Gitmo and his treatment all up - it is worth bearing in mind the words of former Defence Secretary Rumsfeld:

"Interrogations must always be planned deliberate actions to take into account the detainees' physical strengths and weaknesses". Then he went onto say, "Interrogation approaches are designed to manipulate the detainee’s emotions and weakness, to gain his willing cooperation".

The SMH reports :

"David Hicks' father Terry says the Australian government put pressure on his son to plead guilty to the charge of providing support for terrorism.

Adelaide-born Hicks could be back in Australia by the end of the year after the shock plea in front of the US military commission at Guantanamo Bay.

"The Australian government, I believe, are the ones that put the pressure on David," Terry Hicks said in an interview in Washington DC, aired on the Nine Network.

"They demonised him, they pre-judged him for five years.

"I suppose Mr Howard would be throwing his hands up with glee at the moment but as far as I'm concerned this was a way out for David regardless of whether he was guilty or innocent, we'll never ever know now."

Meanwhile, Colonel Mo Davis [the prosecutor in the Hicks "trial"] on the ABC Radio National Breakfast program this morning in answer to a question on why Hicks had to spend 5 years at Gitmo when he could have been dealt with in American's civil courts much sooner, Davis asserted that the Vietnamese had detained Americans for years on end, without trial, during the Vietnam War. So, now we equate our standards of justice and fairness to those nasty Communist people in Vietnam?

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