Ian Barker, QC attacks an Australian editorial from two days ago

CONTRARY to your editorial (15/6), David Hicks will not get his day in court. That has been denied him. He will get his day before a military tribunal, whose members are answerable to the US President who has already branded him as evil. He will have no appeal, and not even a right of release if acquitted. The evidence will probably consist of admissions extracted by a process of interrogation one can only imagine, after two and a half years in custody. Hicks, Habib and others at Guantanamo Bay have been kept in a legal vacuum, at the mercy of whatever directions the US President chooses to give, unburdened by judicial or parliamentary scrutiny. If all this is a fair process, I wonder what The Australian would regard as unfair? You cannot dispose of the problem by assuming Hicks’s guilt, as you have done. That is why we have trials in courts of law, whatever their defects. Rules of decency and due process on the part of governments matter a great deal. It is humiliating for Australia that the Prime Minister did not intervene on behalf of two citizens illegally held on foreign soil by a foreign power. But no. The convoluted reasoning is that they should not be repatriated because they have not offended against Australian law. That should make Australians travelling abroad a touch uneasy.

You might feel humiliated Ian but I don’t. I feel indifference and I think you will find that the vast majority of Australian’s feel the same way. I understand what you are saying Ian, but frankly I don’t give a damn. Your letter is full of legal rights and not one solitary mention of his responsibilities as a humane human. I also understand that even seriel killers who cut up and eat their victims are entitled to legal defence but whatever you say, whatever spin you put on the Military Tribunals, Hicks will get legal reresentation. So whats your point. If an Australian travels overseas and committs a crime in Malaysia or Thailand They are charged under the laws of Malaysia and Thailand so why is Hicks different? Australian Drug Runners have been executed in these countries – did you feel impelled to write to the press then? Maybe your right, it isn’t fair, but we all know it will be a damn site fairer than the WTC obscenity and on balance the US will be be fairer than the Taliban have ever been to their own people. Meanwhile Alan Logan from Victoria sums up the general feelings in the community on Hicks

HAS The Australian conducted a survey to find if any significant number of Australians give a damn about David Hicks? No one I have met cares at all

No one I’ve met care about him either, Alan. Update: Hicks in Training

God knows what some people think the military are all about. The Government is under fire because reports by junior officers in the ADF mentioned Abu Ghraib and they, the Government, didn’t do what all good Lefties and anti US journalists demand they do. As in why didn’t you start screamimg ‘abuse’ at the US Military eigth months ago? Why didn’t you fall on your sword? Why didn’t you sack General Cosgrove? Why don’t you acknowledge that we, the press, know far more than you? Why on earth aren’t you doing what we suggest? STEVE LIEBMANN from Channel 9’s Today program tries to make Senator Hill confess up to something or other. Anything to keep the saga on the boil. Steve Liebmann;

it’s now known that Australian military lawyers were reporting concerns about human rights abuses in the prisons back to our officials, military officials, eight months before you knew anything about them. Why was that material not passed up the chain of command, at least to you

Senator Hill

Because it was the Red Cross talking about other parties who were running the prisons, not Australians. The Red Cross report didn’t even make it to Australia as we weren’t an occupying power.

Steve insists

But there were 20 or 25 reports…

Senator Hill tries to explain again.

You’ve got to remember that this was at the end of the major conflict phase, there were large numbers of prisoners, there were inadequate facilities, overcrowding, difficulties in processing, the prisons were being mortared each night – it wasn’t a satisfactory environment for the holding and proper processing of prisoners…We weren’t running the prisons we just had some lawyers advising constructively

Steve is still trying to get Hill to accept that he is wrong and that Steve is very right. Steve, being a journalist, clearly knows more than the Senator. Why doesn’t the Senator admit it?

Yeah but I mean these reports are coming through, the alarm bells aren’t ringing – does that mean we need a general review of your Department’s efficiency?

Senator Hill:

No, because it wasn’t for us to act upon them. The Red Cross didn’t even deliver the reports to Australia. The Red Cross won’t even give us the reports now because they know it wasn’t our responsibility.

For Christ’s sake can’t you understand English? (my words, not Senator Hill’s) There would have been literally thousands of reports from Iraq submitted by Officers on duty there analysing what they had been involved in, witnessed, advised on and otherwise reporting matters within their field of responsibility. Do the press, the journalists, on a jihad to destroy Howard, really believe that everything goes up the chain. How many reports do you expect Hill, or Cosgrove, or even Howard to read eveyday. They rely on summaries from Defence and thus rely on Senior Defence personnel (Generals and civilians) to anticipate problems that may be hidden in a report. I can’t see anyone anticipating that reports that indicated overcrowding and rough treatment in prisons in a war zone on the eve of a cease-fire would turn into such a witch-hunt. To repeat Senator Hill’s words .. at the end of the major conflict phase, … large numbers of prisoners, … inadequate facilities, overcrowding, difficulties in processing, .. prisons mortared each night – it wasn’t a satisfactory environment for the holding and proper processing of prisoners…We weren’t running the prisons we just had some lawyers advising constructively. It’s not meant to be a three star rest camp situation. In the immediate aftermath of battle these camps and prisons are designed to deny the enemy use of the incarcerated troops. At that point in time commanders and logisticians are flat out supplying and reinforcing their own troops and have to balance removing troops from the battle to POW management. It never works perfectly and anyone that demands it does should try and manage it themselves sometime. Interrogators are called in to sort the wheat from the chaff, the ordinary soldier from the man who knows something. The ordinary soldier is bulk stored until it is safe to send him back home and those who may know something are interrogated. Meanwhile the battle still rages with insurgents and western media doing their best to turn the tide of war in the terrorist’s favour. It’s working fairly well too.

The Australian has an article titled Al-Qaeda claims kill as payback and goes on to say;

AN American engineer was killed in a drive-by shooting and another US national was believed kidnapped at the weekend in Saudi Arabia in apparent retaliation for US atrocities at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison.

My dictionary says; Atrocious: adj Extremely, or shockingly wicked or cruel, heinous. Atrocity: n The quality of being attrocious. I’d always used the word Atrocity in connection with events like the Holocaust, the WTC fly-ins, beheading people on video, Palestinian suicide bombers blowing up woman and kids or the IRA blowing up Mountbatten. I must admit that I never though to connect it to sleep deprivation and humiliation interrogation tactics. English is a living language and useage does change but I think it’s been kidnapped by journalists in a game of rising superlatives where the rules only apply to one side.