....and then a firing squad.
Military Tribunals Begin
JIHAD WATCH
From the AP via Fox News:
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration filed charges Thursday against David Hicks, an Australian suspected of aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan and the first terrorism-war era detainee to be charged under the new law for military commissions.
The decision was made even though officials of Australia already had asked the United States not to bring such charges. Australia has been a steadfast ally to the Bush administration in its war on terrorism.
Hicks, whose case has drawn international attention, is a former kangaroo skinner captured in Afghanistan in December 2001. He has been held at Guantanamo Bay , Cuba, for more than five years without trial.
According to a Defense Department announcement, Hicks is being charged with "providing material support for terrorism." He faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment."
Additionally:
"Hicks would have a trial in a special military tribunal, established in a law that Congress passed last year, rather than a civilian court. Opponents have vowed to challenge the constitutionality of the military tribunal proceedings.
An earlier formulation of such military tribunals was declared unconstitutional last year by the Supreme Court."
One must wonder what these opponents would have us do. Well, the answer to that is quite clear actually. They want to treat terrorists like American civilians. They want terrorists, the very same people seeking to destroy the American way of life, to have the same protections as any other American citizen. I must ask why. The only answer I can come up with is that it will give terrorists an opportunity to express their views publicly and attack the Bush Administration. Their views will certainly be carried on CNN, NBC, MSNBC and more. Their words will be treated as fact and turned, somehow, into a bitter indictment of the policies of this Administration.
How lost we've become as a nation when our declared enemies' words are worth more, and believed more quickly, than our elected officials'. Well, maybe not our elected officials'. Just anyone with an (R) after their name that happens to call 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. home.
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