Do You feel safe now?

American law
Will Cheney's Chauffeur Be Next in the Dock?
Driving Bin Laden

By BINOY KAMPMARK

Driving bin Laden in the 1990s has proven hazardous for Yemeni citizen Salim Hamdan, who has been convicted by a jury of American military officers after a two-week trial by military commission at Guantánamo Bay. The accusations leveled at Hamdan centred on the transport of missiles for Al Qaeda and the aiding and abetting bin Laden's escape from Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks. Eight counts of supporting terrorism and two counts of conspiracy were filed by the prosecution.

The verdict then. Hamdan was found guilty on five counts of aiding terrorism by serving as bin Laden's armed bodyguard and driver in Afghanistan whilst knowing that he was intent on attacking the United States. Hamdan was cleared of the important charge of conspiracy after some eight hours of jury deliberations.

Despite the fantastic insistence by the White House that the commissions abide by a framework of international law, mandated by the Supreme Court, the system continues to possess defects that render it incurable. The case still reeks of that fetid air of torture (what Bush has called ?'an alternative set of procedures') and the entire process behind extracting confessions within the Gitmo system.

Evidence was admitted by the commission that would never had seen the light of day in a civilian or standard US military court, another elastic addition to the undermining of law by the Bush Administration. Allegations that the CIA had engaged in brutal conduct against Hamdan on route to detention were not heard. Crucial parts of the trial were also held in secret.

A mixed verdict doesn't necessarily make it a just one. Nor does being a driver make one a member of a terrorist network, let alone complicit in terrorist attacks, but wobbly reasoning continues to remain the province of the illegal and specious.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. He can be reached at [email protected]

http://www.counterpunch.org/kampmark08072008.html

Among the groups protesting against the verdict last night was the British-based legal charity Reprieve. "These trials are not just about a few men and what they may have done - they are about the message the United States is sending to the world. And that message right now is flat wrong: convictions by any means necessary," said Reprieve's senior counsel Zachary Katznelson. "The US needs to show it stands for openness and fairness - the very values we are fighting for. Instead, we get verdicts rammed down the gullet of justice."

The conviction also drew scorn from Ben Wizner, of the American Civil Liberties Union, who was allowed at the trial. "We were told that Guantanamo was necessary because these were the world's most dangerous terrorists," he said. "Salim Hamdan is not one of the world's most dangerous terrorists."

That the first Guantanamo conviction should involve a driver might seem oddly anticlimactic.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/outrage-as-us-military-convicts-bin-ladens-driver-of-war-crimes-887127.html

Be Human and expose hypocracy
The lawyers argued that this framework made the tribunals unconstitutional because it allowed the president to define the crime and select the prosecutor and judges who acted as jury.

Hamdan alleged that he was beaten, forced into painful positions, subjected to extreme cold temperatures and threatened with death in 2001 and early 2002.

He also described being kept in such extreme isolation after being transferred to Guantánamo that he once considered "pleading guilty in order to get out of here".

After Hamdan won his landmark ruling against the first military commissions, he was again charged under the new system of tribunals.

After seven years in detention, he was tried by a military court and convicted of supporting terrorism but acquitted of the more serious charge of conspiring with al-Qaida.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/06/osamabinladen.guantanamo1

I am extremely sorry to expose my ignorance.
The Americans have recently started devoting greater resources to the hunt for the man on the top of their most wanted list. George Bush, it seems, wants the man he vowed to capture "dead or alive" before he leaves office. There have also been reports of Bin Laden at various points in Pakistan's border region, some of them placing him in north Waziristan where the "Pakistani Taliban" is the de facto ruler after a series of deals with the government in Islamabad. There have also been reports that the US came close to killing Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy leader of al-Qa'ida, in air strikes.

But US and British commanders privately admit they are seriously hampered by a lack of intelligence about the whereabouts of the al-Qa'ida leadership. They cannot depend on the ISI, the Pakistani secret service, which is widely perceived to back Islamist terrorists

In July 2006, the CIA unit tasked with hunting Bin Laden, codenamed Alec Station, was closed. Iraq was still the main focus of Washington's attention and it was felt resources were needed there.

The task of finding Bin Laden, said a senior security official, is now more difficult than ever. "Since the elections in Pakistan we have got to be more careful about carrying out air raids across the border, although if we have a sniff of locating Bin Laden there'll be no compunction about ordering a strike, but I wouldn't bet on when that will be."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/kim-sengupta-why-bushs-dead-or-alive-posse-havent-got-their-man-887128.html

Most of you speak a language which is not familiar to many.
Your English is like this.

"The meaning of words had no longer the same relation to things, but was changed by them as they thought proper. Reckless daring was held to be loyal courage; prudent delay was the excuse of a coward; moderation was the disguise of unmanly weakness; to know everything was to do nothing. Frantic energy was the true quality of a man."

Thucydides,
History of the Peloponnesian War