The Supporters of Terrorists

Janet Albrechtsen, a writer for The Australian, quotes journalist Debra Burlingame (28 March 2007, 'Gun-toting jihadi was not an angel'), whom sums up the PR campaign whipped up by lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detanees "...(to) put a sympathetic 'human face' on the detainees and convince the public that it had a stake in their plight". This is the image of David Hicks fead to the western media, one so desperate for an Al Qaeda martyr at the hands of the Satan inspired US government, and a media that has bought their party line - hook, line and sinker. But alas, the Left's handwringing and moralising over the Hicks case proves to be nothing more than blind emotion, as their case is torn apart by anyone armed with the least amount of critical thinking ability.

The absurd line, that Hicks confessed to crimes just to get out of the Gitmo torcher chamber, is undermined by his own father. Terry Hicks has admitted to the media that David confessed to him that the Americans "are the enemy", and he planned to fight them. This shows the ridiculousness of Green's leader Bob Brown's protest, "His guilty plea is simply a plea for release, for exit from the inhumane Guantanamo Bay gulag,". And personally I find it pretty hard to believe that such an elaborate agenda for Hick's terrorist activities could be so readily fabricated by the prosecution. There is just too much there, too easy to falsify, the Telegraph's Luke McIlveen lists his activities

"AFTER training with the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1999, Hicks joins terror group Lashka-e-Toiba in Kashmir and fires upon Indian soldiers in 2000;
HE travels to Afghanistan to join al-Qaeda in early 2001, meeting bin Laden several times in mountain training camps;
HE is recruited by al-Qaeda commander Muhammad Atef to learn kidnapping techniques and conduct surveillance on US targets;
HE reports for duty in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York, opting to fight with al-Qaeda near Kandahar airport;
HE is given an AK-47 assault rile, then fits himself out with ammunition and grenades;
HE joins fighters in Kabul, spending two hours on the front line with al-Qaeda fighting Coalition forces before retreating;
HE tries to flee to Pakistan and is captured in November 2001 in Baghlan, Afghanistan."

And what of the supposed torturous conditions he was kept under, resulting in symptoms like; sunken and dark eyes according to his lawyers, loss of weight and depressed mood by Australian Democrats senator Natasha Stott Despoja and his Australian lawyer Stephen Kenny, a generally deteriorating condition reported by the Sydney Morning Herald's David Marr? Well even the ABC was supprised to report of David's appearance, "He has gained considerable weight and has chest-length brown hair. His face is not as gaunt as his lawyers have claimed…". The SMH even found him in "reasonable health (and) reasonable spirits". So much for the "torture chamber".

To return to the Albrechtsen article, she sites the June 1942 case of German saboteurs landing on Long Island, New York, with terrorist intentions. They were similarly arrested and tried by a military commission, and the constitutionality of that commission was up held by the US Supreme Court. She goes on, "Last year the US Supreme Court once again upheld military commissions as an appropriate means for trying those captured and charged with breaking the laws of war, specifically in relation to the war on terror."

Piers Akerman also makes the point that Hick's defense team have lengthend his stay with their appeals.

So the David Hicks cheer squad would do well to remember some of these inconvenient facts regarding his detaineeship, before shouting 'injustice!'. Despoja has commented on the whole Hick's affair as "unfair", but in response to this I would say that, no, what Hicks is getting is not unfair, what is truly unfair is the bleeding heart of the left as it cries for a self confessed terrorist, but scarcely a wimper is ever heard in protest about the lives destroyed by the organisations he was fighting for. To talk of double standards would be a gross understatement. Hick's is nothing but yet another covert opportunity of the anti-America crowd to vent their venom.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21458490-32522,00.html

Damien