A military panel of six officers shocked the Administration by giving Osama bin Laden’s ex-driver, Salim Hamdan, only five and a half years. In a demonstration of the Administration’s contempt for even judicial rulings from its own tribunals, the Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman stated that, after serving his time, Hamdan would revert back to being an “enemy combatant” and could be held indefinitely. So, after proclaiming to the world that he received a “fair trial,” here,the Administration is now saying that the trial and sentence are meaningless.
Since Hamdan has been imprisoned at the U.S. military detention center since 2002 and has been credited with 61 months served, he would have only five months to serve. The Administration wanted 30 years to life.
For the many Democrats who supported this tribunal system, this is the inevitable result. Ultimately, the trial does not mean a thing when the President can simply declare him to be an enemy combatant once the sentence is served.
It is an obvious mockery of a legal system and Whitman’s comments seems to strive to guarantee that no one can seriously mistake this tribunal system for a real legal system.
For the full story, click here.
I see you refused to address the media bias. I’m not imagining the suffering of the Palestinian people and the fact that the Press doesn’t cover it, or that I personally haven’t been tortured, expelled from my home, raped or had family killed doesn’t mean I can’t sympathize when it happens to Palestinians.
And since you didn’t feel the bias exists enough to address it, I would ask others who are more open minded to take note the next time you’re watching any of the media outlets on the list I had previously mentioned and can reproduce if required, especially Fox and CNN, listen to the language that the reporters are reading from the teleprompter. Israeli official STATES vs. Palestinian official CLAIMS; Palestinians KIDNAP or ABDUCT vs. Israel DETAINS or CAPTURES Arabs; Arabs MURDER Israelis vs. Israelis KILLS Arabs; and the ever prevalent Palestinians ATTACK vs. Israelis RETALIATE. Can you find a SINGLE case on Fox or CNN of Arabs RETALIATE to Israeli ATTACK/AGGRESSION?
Zak,
You sadly make my points. You are so full of yourself that you only allow yourself to perceive that which your pre-judgment allows you to perceive. I am happy that you have a perfect life and seem to be independently wealthy. I appreciate and respect that you see yourself as a defender of the oppressed and downtrodden. While I’ve never been wealthy, I’ve spent my life and career doing the same. However, my experience of my own life being less than perfect, allowed me to be able to feel true empathy for those oppressed, because I know what it feels like to be oppressed and downtrodden.
You seem to have missed that experience and so rather than being able to have true empathy, you substitute stereotype for feeling. By stereotyping the oppressed, even in an idealized sense, you diminish them producing victims rather than real human beings. In this respect you are doing the same thing that the Corporate Media does, even though you oppose their conclusions. One can either live life asleep, or awake. To be aware of life’s complexities and alert to being educated beyond ones’ own pre-judgments, allows us to awake, see the world as it really is and hopefully do something about it that is effective.
I’m glad you have faith in “everybody”, but I’ve found a few people on this blog to be quite dense. Also, I am one of the few people I know that feels his life is perfect and fortunately I have the energy and means to try and make a difference. ALL injustice bothers me, but especially when it is against those that are too weak to defend themselves and those that are ignored and marginalized. Nowhere is this more obvious than with the Palestinians.
When I was a young child, I remember my father telling me that he wanted four things for the world before he died: the USSR to no longer be a superpower; Germany to be reunited; the USA to no longer be a superpower; and Palestine to be a country again. Two out of the four have been realized, and when the third happens, the fourth will be a few months behind.
When large parts of the American population protested the US BEFORE the massacre with Iraq began, the Government ignored them, and they were a large minority of the population. Now when 1% of Israel protests the treatment of the Palestinians with respect to the Occupation, it becomes evident that Israel does not want peace and neither does the US.
The fact that the entire news media supports the Israeli position and ignores the plight of the Palestinians only emboldens Israel and the US. In fact when an Israeli bulldozer crushed a True AMERICAN Jew hero to death while she was trying to stop it from destroying Palestinian homes in Gaza, it received almost NO attention from the Press. I attended a play about the life of Rachel, and it was protested by Jewish groups and RABBIS because it was “too one-sided”. I don’t see ANY Jewish groups protesting Fox or CNN about their one-sided coverage. I thus thank Dr. Turley for providing one of the only forums for dissent against Zionism and the monopoly of the Corporate Media.