Now that military officers... have reached a split verdict convicting Salim Hamdan, a onetime driver for Osama bin Laden, of supporting terrorism, but innocent of terrorist conspiracy, do you feel safe?
Or are we superpower Americans still at risk until we capture bin Laden's dentist, barber, and the person who installed the carpet in his living room?
...
Hamdan was not defended by the slick lawyers that got O.J. Simpson off, and he most certainly did not have a jury of his peers. Hamdan was defended by a Pentagon-appointed U.S. Navy officer, and his jurors were all Pentagon-appointed U.S. military officers with an eye on their careers. Even in this kangaroo court, Hamdan was cleared of the main charge...
Do you think you are made more safe when you stand there while "your" government implements its own version of Joseph Stalin's show trials?
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One would hope that the Hamdan verdict would be enough shame and ridicule for the U.S. in one day. But no, Bush didn't stop there. On his way to the Beijing Olympics, President Bush expressed "deep concerns" for the state of human rights in China. But not in Guantanamo, nor in Abu Ghraib, nor in the CIA's torture dungeons used for "renditions," nor in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the U.S. is expert at bombing weddings, funerals, children's soccer games, and every assortment of civilians imaginable.
As the good book says, clean the beam from your own eye before pointing to the mote in your brother's eye...
What would President Bush say if, heaven forbid, the Chinese were as rude as he is and asked Mr. Superpower why the land of "freedom and democracy" has one million names on a watch list. China with a population four times as large doesn't have a watch list with one million names.
What would President Bush say if China asked him why the U.S., with a population one-fourth the size of China's, has hundreds of thousands more of its citizens in prison? The percentage of Americans in prison is far higher than in China and is a larger absolute number...
China's human rights policy is not perfect. China's greatest human rights failing is that China is the Bush regime's prime enabler of its war crimes and human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. By financing Bush's budget deficit, China is financing Bush's gratuitous wars. Indeed, China can be said to finance the weaponry that the U.S. gives Israel to enable the suppression of the Palestinians and with which to bomb the civilian population of Lebanon...
Do You Feel Safe Now? Proud? - by Paul Craig Roberts
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