Australian voters kicked Prime Minister John Howard out of office yesterday. Howard was even more of a groveler to Bush than Tony Blair.
One step Bush took to try to help Howard win reelection was to release Australian David Hicks from Guantanamo earlier this year. As part of the deal for his release, Hicks had to promise to keep his mouth shut about how he was tortured until after the Australian election – and to sign a statement swearing he was not abused while at Gitmo. The release deal stunk to high heaven, but it was typical of the candor & ethics of the Global War on Terror.
Here’s the segment on Hicks’s case from a story I wrote in July for the American Conservative:
The torture of David Hicks, an Australian seized in Afghanistan and sent to Gitmo in early 2002, became an international cause célèbre. Hicks, who joined the Kosovo Liberation Army, a terrorist organization supported by the U.S. government, before fighting alongside the Taliban, was sexually assaulted, beaten with a rifle butt, kept in isolation in the dark for 244 days, prohibited from sleeping for long periods, threatened with firearms during interrogations, and psychologically tormented.
He was one of the first people tried by the Gitmo military tribunals. Though former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once called him one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world, after Hicks agreed to plead guilty to material support of terrorism, he was sentenced to nine months confinement—a typical sentence for a misdemeanor in most states. As part of his plea agreement, Hicks was obliged to declare that he “had never been illegally treated by any person or persons while in the custody and control of the United States” and to swear that his guilty plea was made voluntarily, despite all the beatings he had received.
iam quite sure the u.s. government are terrorist and quite mad (insane). for some years i have felt like i live in an insane asylum. everything they say are lies, everything they do is for the distruction of civilization. does the rest of the people in america see what i see, like everything is weird and demented. like everyone in government are thieves and have been given their marching orders to go ahead and rape and pillage america. were threatened every day of our lives by this (DEMOCRATIC) federal government and even by local government. they say take your poison vaccines for no other reason than they order you to. there is NO LAW that says that you cant say their not for you. seems like they want to force you to do as they say. thats a formula for terror and tyranny. they force democracy on other countries by killin them. something went wrong along the way.
They couldn’t give a shit about Iraq or Howard, it was just 6% more Aussies voting to put their hands into their countrymen’s pockets via Smug Rudd. Promise them free money and they’ll always wote for you, they are too stupid to see its their own money!
But another step toward bundling up everyone of these Empire Amateurs and shipping them out to exile at St. Helena. We’ll give The Grayt Kummander a set of footed Napoleon Jammies and he can lord it over the mewling band of lockstep sycophants we’ll send along to rid us of their scratch and boo brand of governance. The arrogance of these witless imperial nymphomaniacs will insure that a speedy mutual loathing will occur, thereby seeing them all at each other’s throats within no time at all.
As a hail and hearty friend to the jogging and chest-pounding wing of America, Sarkozy should not mind his own little form of Guantanimo fer Neo-Cons within French Supervision. After all, these pompous wankers are more French than the French themselves, they’re French without a sense of style and so of no use to anyone at all .
I wonder what kind of idiotic stories these boys will spew now that Hicks is going to start singing like a Jackdaw.
Well, now, these comments have been hell on my resurgent idealism.
I agree with James that the defeat of John Howard is to be celebrated. Howard’s replacement Kevin Rudd proposes to withdrawl Australia’s 1400 troops from Iraq after negotiations to be held with the Iraqis and Americans over the next six months. This seems an extraordinarily slow operation considering the small size of the forces involved. Rudd says “the real war is in Afghanistan” and also proposes to beef up Australia’s involvement in anti-terrorist activities in “our region”. Rudd, a former diplomat, also promised a month or so before his recent election to bring charges against the Iranian leader for “incitement to genocide”. (See here). He would surely have been aware of the apparently relentless drive by Vice President Cheney towards a US-Iran war. Perhaps Rudd’s Iran claim was a cynical ploy to win votes or perhaps he is genuine. Either interpretation tends to undermine one’s resurgent idealism!
Thanks for the excellent points. The “incitement to genocide” nonsense sounds like it could have come from the House Democratic Piety Caucus in this country.
My comments on Howard’s downfall should not be interpreted as an endorsement or praise of Rudd.
Jim,
conserve your efforts at resurgent idealism for a time when they can really bear fruit. Now that the Administration has orchestrated an Israeli-Palestinian conference because “everybody is desperate and has nothing to lose”, perhaps it will come sometime next week. Barring that, you’ll likely have to wait a while because sturm und drang has taken the planet by the throat and does not intend to let up for some time.
No, it’s red meat time and our political system is lost down a rathole of petty thought that will insure more grist for the mill of the military industrial complex.
One wonders who will be this era’s Dickens in preserving a record of this Best and Worst of Times.
I suppose you cannot be faulted for attempting to find refuge in the best, even though the relentless maw of our media machine so loves spewing out the worst.
I hope he does a better job of actually carrying through his promises than our own Democratic Congress has done during the past year.
I don’t think any of us think Jim is supporting Mr.Rudd. Howard made six atrocious mistakes in my opinion.
*He introduced a federal GST. (This did make possible as promised some minor reforms to income tax but the overall government tax take is up)
*He involved Australia in a ‘humanitarian intervention’ into East Timor (a decision that led to the blowback terrorist attack on Bali, at least according to those terrorists who did it).
*He introduced national gun laws following the Port Arthur Tasmania mass shooting. (These have cost almost a $1B and have not impacted the overall homicide rate in any perceptible way)
*He involved Australia in the US invasion of Iraq.(This policy was opposed by most of our retired Chiefs of Defence Staff and presumably the current CDS holds similar views)
*He has introduced completely unnecessary new anti-terrorist laws. (The new laws have caught no terrorists and have already led to a number of cases of serious miscarriage of justice)
*He has increased federal power in the areas of health, firearms, labour relations and water supply whilst sidestepping the constitutional limits on federal power.
*Although Howard’s putting Australian troops into Afghanistan made sense in terms of Australia’s treaty obligations to the US, following the 9-11 attack, the ongoing commitment of Australian forces to nation building activity in Afghanistan is at best a questionable activity with low probability of success.
Mr. Rudd promises to reverse course on only one of these issues, Iraq. So there is little in the change of government for liberty loving Australians to be thankful for. Indeed the Labor federal victory means that probably for the first time ever we have one party in power at the federal level and in power in all state and territory capitals as well. The only ‘constraint’ is that there is still a slight conservative majority in the federal senate. This goes to election in June 2008. If Labor is able to win a majority then Australia will have become essentially a democratically elected one-party state. This looks like a real possibility at present as the Liberal Party (conservatives) leadership is in disarray as Peter Costello, the deputy leader and natural successor to John Howard has declared he will not run for the top job. So a new conservative leader (and who that will be is anyone’s guess now) will have to come in and establish a sufficiently credible reputation both to his party and in terms of public opinion in under six months. None of the apparent heirs apparent, at least for now, look like they are up to the task.
Tim – Thanks for the excellent summary of Howard’s offenses.
Sad that Rudd will probably not be much better…..
Dirk – your doubts on the Israel-Palestinian conference have deflated my high hopes on this one.
At least now I understand why the local price of hummus jumped in the past week.
Perhaps the markets will trump – creating a much bigger vortex than the Plunge Protection Team can plug.
I don’t care which politician is in office but as Dirk said I can’t wait for Hicks to start singing. No doubt the Wargasm Party is preparing its next smear campaign; I hope Hicks is ready for that.
I think I saw some pictures of various hopeless political leaders shaking hands (except the only secure one of the bunch, the Saudi King who just helped bail out Citibank) and declaring themselves “hopeful” and desirous of peace. Did anything come of it? Will anything come of it?
When your government’s biggest chunk of dependable GDP is armaments, the least you could do is wear crossed ammunition belts with a big old Ivory handled pair of pistols and dispense with your pretensions toward peace. Shrub the Magniloquent looks like he’s achin fer a nice set o Bearskin Chaps anyhow and so why fight it. Hit the road with a Wild West Show and tell all these evildoers that the only Peace we want is a good piece of the action.
I hate to be cynical but Albert Schweitzer these boys and girls aint and everybody knows it. Too bad we can’t trade insults to intelligence on the New York Stock Exchange.
I think I saw some pictures of various hopeless political leaders shaking hands (except the only secure one of the bunch, the Saudi King who just helped bail out Citibank) and declaring themselves “hopeful” and desirous of peace. Did anything come of it? Will anything come of it?
When your government’s biggest chunk of dependable GDP is armaments, the least you could do is wear crossed ammunition belts with a big old Ivory handled pair of pistols and dispense with your pretensions toward peace. Shrub the Magniloquent looks like he’s achin fer a nice set o Bearskin Chaps anyhow and so why fight it. Hit the road with a Wild West Show and tell all these evildoers that the only Peace we want is a good piece of the action.
I hate to be cynical but Albert Schweitzer these boys and girls aint and everybody knows it. Too bad we can’t trade insults to intelligence on the New York Stock Exchange.
Cripes, sorry about the double post, the Admiral must have choked on his pipe stem and added the Bovard Comment stream to his forward list.