David Hicks for Australian of the Year?
 

Australian Defence Force members may be interested in the following verbal faeces from the Sun-Herald (Sydney) of 9 July.
If you also feel moved to comment, please drop a line to Alex Mitchell or Kerry-Ann Walsh at [email protected]

How can he be Aussie of the Year if he has just become a Pommie??:eek:

And a "Pommie of convenience"at that!:mad:

As a serving ADF member, my blood boils reading this absolute tripe written by latte-quaffing airheads who really have no idea what they are on about and how stupid they sound!

Why are we bothering to lift a finger to assist some idiot who knew exactly what he was doing?:yuk:

Because he is an Australian Citizen (as far as I know he was unsucessful in the UK attempt) , and as such enjoys the rights of same and is entitled to the protection of the relevant Australian consular office overseas. You cannot selectively apply and renege citizenship rights on the basis of what someone may have done, or indeed with regard to their stupidity, either way they deserve representation and this has been disgracefully lacking in a most obvious and damaging manner. :D

I make no comment with regard to the detention facility nor methods. :=

I do agree however that the sun herald is a load of dogs doo. :p

G-mo Bay can't be that bad if they give you access to passport application forms and a photobooth....

I can't believe that he definitely knew that he was possibly involved in attacks against the West.

These training camps have been in existence for many years, mostly well before 'Al-Qaeda' even eventuated. Trainees from ALL over the world trained in these, and not necessarily for the same purposes. A small percentage of these were approached for attacks against civilians etc, and they were free to (and they did) refuse.

I have no doubt that he was a mercenary, but I'm not convinced that the newspapers in Afghanistan camps were of the standard that we enjoy in our own Mess.

Besides, he did at least TRY to join the Australian Army, didn't he?

1) The quote from the Sun H is rubbish, so fits the tone of the paper suitably

2) The seperate matter of an Australian citizen being held for 4(?) years without charge (let alone trial!) is shameful, and our government should hang it's head in shame for allowing this to occur.

3) The matter of his guilt or innocence is not something that we can/should decide here - it needs to be decided in an appropriate forum, somewhere, and soon!

Article 39 (my bolding)

7gcbc He is a British citizen now but the British government have declined to ask for his return to the UK as he was an Australian at the time of his capture.
Runaway Gun In letters to his father he is quoted as saying that he was shooting hundreds of rounds at the Americans and it was a just way to overcome "Western Jewery and return the World to the peace of Islam" - not word perfect but pretty close, he knew exactly who he was shooting at.

Let him rot in hell !

He's a traitor of the highest degree. Though, all the 'lefties' over here would like nothing better than to offer him a state reception and many thousands of $$$ in compensation - given half a chance! :*

Indeed it sends a strong message, a message that you may not have anticipated the contents, a message which, teaches us once and for all, that the only real worth of an Australian passport is getting past the jobsworths at MLB, that and of course , wiping one's arse ........

why not try Hicks then if we are so sure, why ?

Little words, big unanswered questions, the USA is a laughing stock. :D

I think it is very simple; even if we do not condone or even if we detest what an the guy did then we achieve nothing by descending to the level of the terrorists. So we only end up wallowing in **** if we allow people to be held without charge & without fair representation to (international) law.

I don't agree with the newspaper quote - but I'm bloody glad they are allowed to make such a statement - even if I don't like it.

Fair enough parabellum, I wasn't aware of that. He's a very silly galah, and probably now wishes that the Americans were either better shots, or used even bigger bombs.

Concur 110%.

How ironic then that this newspaper (toilet paper, more like!) champions the right of a person who in turn has allied himself with an organisation that would gladly eliminate the priviledge of free speech given the chance.

Aussie_Aviator
And where is the proof of that - proof that has been proven/tested in a court of law/tribunal/commission or some other forum that exercises the law of the land (see my previous post for that phrase).

The moral compass of too many people in our society appears in need of some serious re-calibration. Some people seem to be having real trouble picking the good guys from the bad. For example, it's possible to argue about the international legal niceties of Guantanamo Bay, but still recognise David Hicks as a self-confessed Jew-hating Islamofascist who watched September 11 on TV and went out and picked sides (hint: it wasn't ours he chose). You don't have to agree with the trial process to recognise that the bad guys in this morality play are inside the prison, not the White House or The Lodge.

Same problem with lots of other issues (just read the Sydney Morning Herald letters page if you want examples) - people pilgering on about North Korean missile tests - apparently George Bush and John Howard are the goats here (of course), because invading Iraq has somehow compromised our legitimacy when it comes to dealing with the Dear Leader. What kind of universe do you have to live in to blame the democratically elected leaders of free nations for the actions of a psychopathic dictator who starves his people to death in pursuit of his weapons programme? And if you really need to have it explained why a nuclear armed North Korea is a whole lot different than a nuclear armed America, your world view is seriously compromised.

7gcbc - you keep going on about a trial. I'd like to see Hicks tried too (preparatory to locking him up for about another 30 years) but all the legal opinion is that this simply isn't possible under civil or criminal law in Australia (his actions predate the introduction of the relevant offences of training with a terrorist organisation or preparing for a terrorist act). So unless you've got another idea, this leaves us with 2 options:

1) Let him go and bring him home (he can live in your suburb if you like); or

2) Let the Americans try him under some process (which they were about to do until one of his fellow inmates challenged the process in the Hamdan Supreme Court case).

I sincerely hope you aren't advocating 1) - so let's get on with finding a way to do 2). I agree that it's taken too long - but the alternative of simply releasing him is not that palatable to me I'm afraid.

SW

Swing - actually the recent decision to extend the cover of (some of) the Geneva Conventions to the Git-bay inmates goes a long way to re-establishing the moral high-ground to their incarceration (well, maybe not high-ground, more grassy knoll perhaps).

I completely agree that Hicks appears to be (from what little evidence has made it's way to the public forum) in no way an 'innocent', and he needs to answer for his activities in some way.

The difficult question is 'how long is too long' when it comes to laying charges against someone? The difficulty that our (Aussie) government had when proposing a 14-day period for terrorist suspects seems laughable when you consider Hicks et al

Fish - I agree with you that a fair and timely trial is in everyone's interests, and is in fact a fundamental right in a democracy. The problem is what you do when that proves difficult or impossible to arrange.

We differ slightly though, in that I'm not sure that extending Geneva convention rights was all that reasonable actually. The people in Gitmo don't seem to me to have satisfied too many of the criteria which would grant them access to those protocols - specifically, they weren't organised in a clear chain of command, they weren't wearing uniforms and they don't subscribe to the laws of war. The Geneva Conventions say that if you don't play by the rules as soldiers, then the PoW rules don't apply to you. They were specifically written this way in an attempt to protect civilians.

The court also said that the military commissions violated Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions - which refer to "armed conflict not of an international nature" - ie civil wars. How madmen in Afghanistan plotting to blow up skyscrapers in NYC could be said to be in a conflict "not of an international nature" beats me. Guess that's why I'm not a Supreme Court judge..

And finally, to pick up on your point about the moral high ground - I'm not sure that we necessarily have to adopt that position. I'm reminded of a scene from the movie Mississippi Burning, about the pursuit of the Ku Klux Klan over the 1960's murders of civil rights workers. In response to a colleague questioning his interrogation methods, Gene Hackman says "these people crawled out of a sewer.....maybe the gutter is where we need to be [to fight them]"

A long bow perhaps, but if you take the view (as I do) that we are in a struggle to the death with these people, better be sure you don't turn up to the gunfight with one hand tied behind your back.....