The Hamdan Case: Don’t Shoot the Driver

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  • Posted By: bajan man @ 08/07/2008 12:08:55 PM

    The world can go to bed at night comfortable in the knowledge that there is one less chauffeur on the road with the potential to cause an accident. WHAT A CHARADE!

  • Posted By: olderwiser @ 08/06/2008 5:37:39 PM

    I found no scum bag definition, but did find a scumbag. Says it's an undesirable person. Thanks Robt55. Are there any scumbag doctors or other professions?

    • Posted By: kidmm @ 08/07/2008 8:59:27 AM

      A "scum bag" is archaic slang for a condom (early 20th century, WWI and 1920s). As you might imagine, it was considered an insult to be called one.

      • Posted By: olderwiser @ 08/07/2008 11:03:14 AM

        The blogs are really great places to mingle with the whole gamut of American life and thought. You can stand in a crowd and listen without having to leave the comfort of your nursing home. I will love this place until they pry my computer from my cold dead hands. Thanks Kidmm, for the info. Need to get out my magnifying glass and my Oxford English Dictionary more often. We should all know what the words mean that we so freely use.

  • Posted By: Cloudosmoke @ 08/07/2008 9:44:05 AM

    Anyone associated to terrorism should be tried according to their duties. They should be tried to the capacity they serve as well as have all conditions looked upon. The Bush admin wants to have a catch all prosecution minus constitutional rights and that's not right. He wants to hang everyone that is associated with any extremist movement.

  • Posted By: robt55 @ 08/06/2008 5:27:14 PM

    Just what we need; more scum bag attorneys prosecuting a war. I love the use of ???terrorist???. He was no ???terrorist??? he was a Baskin-Robbins employee who moonlighted as a driver for Bin Laden. It's because of these leeches that convicts are still awaiting the outcome of their trials years after victims are forgotten about. The entire judicial process is filled with nothing but a bunch of self serving, low life, smarmy, rock dwellers.

    • Posted By: joe_mama @ 08/07/2008 7:02:55 AM

      "more scum bag attorneys "

      These are military attorneys and they were assigned these cases. They won't make a dime on them, and, if they turn them down, they risk not getting cases in the future.

      Please know what you're talking about before you start talking ... it's make life much more enjoyable for all.

      JM

    • Posted By: raddave @ 08/07/2008 4:17:05 AM

      these bunch of self serving, low life, smarmy rock dwelling scum bag attorneys are military lawyers, as in they are in the miltary. That doesn't sound like self-serving to me. If a prisoner is awaiting the outcome of their trials, they are not convicts, they are the accused. Our legal system is based on the principle of due process

    • Posted By: Swstlove @ 08/06/2008 5:44:47 PM

      ....and this Haman was only working at the Bin Laden Factory in the car pool as a 'driver' and one day Bin needed a 'driver' so that's how come he got involved? Gimmer a break. This guy had to be in on a WHOLE lotta what ol' Binnie was up to and that's how come he landed in Gitmo to start with. The guy committed war crimes big time during his term as the designated driver and he's getting off e-a-s-y.

      • Posted By: olderwiser @ 08/06/2008 6:57:35 PM

        I believe that you have created a crime of "guilt by arrest". If he was arrested, then he's guilty. "Had to be" is not very good proof. The case stinks.

        • Posted By: TheVigil @ 08/06/2008 9:43:32 PM

          The whole thing stinks. The violation of due process stinks, the loss of "innocent until proven guilty" stinks, the neo-McCarthyist hate for Muslims and Arabs and Pakistanis and anyone else from within a particular set of longitude lines stinks, the torture stinks, and the "secret" concentration camp that we call a "detention center" where camp inmates are catching hepatitis and pneumonia and jaundice and losing the ability to use their limbs despite no proof of their own guilt really, really stinks, both figuratively and literally.

          For all the blasting that the neoconservative movement has done of Hollywood, Newsweek just covered another piece explaining how the TV show "24" and its protagonist Jack Bauer were referenced more times than any real human person in providing the rationale for Guantanamo Bay and its policies. One thing I found particularly compelling was that in real life, a "time bomb" - a person who has critical time-sensitive information about a near-window terrorist attack on whom torture is used to extract *theoretically* time-critical information used to prevent the terror attack - is almost never found. Yet Jack Bauer finds an average of 12 of them every season (each season on that show representing a 24-hour period.) Bush and the others think they're in a movie about fighting terrorists, and as a result they make decisions that are completely out of line with reality. Very few competent career intelligence officers ever believe that torture improves the quality of intelligence, for the simple reason that prisoners will lie to escape torture.

          I would add my voice to the others accusing Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Rice, Gonzalez, and the others who instituted this terror policy of war crimes against humanity. I think they should be tried at the Hague. But - just like Lyndon Johnson and Kissinger and the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, despite the increasing evidence that the Gulf of Tonkin incident may have *never happened* - their trial will also never happen. My only hope is that there's an afterlife where these ugly and self-justifying men and women can learn the nature of the evils and pain they've inflicted.

      • Posted By: tlhwraith @ 08/06/2008 5:53:54 PM

        Isn't that what trials are supposed to be for? I think the point is that the Bush Administration didn't do their jobs, and that is to detain people because of EVIDENCE, not because they didn't like them.

        People seem to lose sight of things real quick. Our entire justice system was founded on the idea of innocent until PROVEN guilty. The problem here is that we as a people turned our back on that when it became to inconvenient and jailed a bunch of people apparently without any real evidence they did anything substantial.

        I'm not saying this guy is innocent, I don't know either way, the point is that our legal system and our country should have done the right thing, assume he was innocent unless we had compelling evidence otherwise.

        "First they came for my neighbors, and I said nothing"

  • Posted By: onepatriot @ 08/07/2008 7:00:29 AM

    Can you imagin if this were 2000 years ago you could hear bush saying crusafi him, he is a terrierst he is surrounded by thieves robbers and criminals he works on the sabbath.
    I don't know Hamdan , I don't know all the truth and with Bush we may never know but if Bush can call anyone a terriourst he is playing god and if I were him I would really be nervous because he will some time stand before the real God and that should make his very nervous.

  • Posted By: Aldous21 @ 08/07/2008 2:16:56 AM

    chuckmcfarland:

    So you advocate and support Rendition, Suspention of Habeas Corpus, torture and God Knows what? Simple Yes or No would do.

  • Posted By: CliffyWorld @ 08/07/2008 1:39:54 AM

    Please read article related to this topic at http://www.cliffyworld.com/blogs

  • Posted By: CliffyWorld @ 08/07/2008 1:38:35 AM

    Please read article commenting on this subject at http://www.cliffyworld.com/blogs

  • Posted By: Hearwegoagain @ 08/06/2008 11:26:10 PM

    I guess in President Bush's view he can say, "Mission Accomplished!"

  • Posted By: olderwiser @ 08/06/2008 7:26:21 PM

    Our own president was afraid of our own law. He created a jurisdiction out of nothing, and then created law out of nothing to do what is rapidly amounting to nothing. Except, of course, keeping a lot of people away from the law that he is afraid of. Every one of those prisoners should have been tried years ago. Those who were proved to be guilty should have already been sentenced long ago. Most of all, those who were not guilty should have been released long ago.
    Please, let us never again elect a president who is afraid of our own law. I want the people in the press to be sure and ask every candidate from this day forward, and to print the answer in bold print over and over again, "Mr. Candidate, are you afraid of the individual rights created under the U.S. Constitution?" And don't quit until you get an answer.

  • Posted By: tlhwraith @ 08/06/2008 5:57:39 PM

    The moral of the story is that we shouldn't abandon the very principles that REALLY make use a great nation, the notion of being a just society that protects the rights of everyone against the tyranny of government. Everyone seems to forget basic civics when it comes to "the war on terror", our founding fathers didn't trust the government to do the right thing all by itself, because they knew that power corrupts absolutely, especially when it isn't checked by the will of the people.

    As a people we let the Bush Administration run all over the principles of this country for the illusion of safety and security. In the process we've let the spy on us, jail people with little or no evidence, and even declare war on countries for made-up and transparent motives. at some point I hope we as a people get our government back in line somehow, but I don't see either of our Presidential hopefuls being too quick to right all the wrongs done by our current President.

  • Posted By: Porpus @ 08/06/2008 5:57:34 PM

    What is the sentence associated with this conviction? I have read in other articles that it can carry life inprissionment. Doesn't sound like a small victory to me. Also I dispute the premiss that our troops were treated better when we had the "moral authority". How were our troops treated in Somolia, Vietnam, etc.?

  • Posted By: 7thson @ 08/06/2008 5:42:35 PM

    I love the way the press can't decide if this was a victory or a failure. I just read the AP article blasting the Bush administration for condemning a man to life in prison with a kangaroo court, and now I'm reading that the wimpy charge the defendant caught is but a scintilla of his potential charge, and the Bush Administration failed even in trying this weak case, and "losing".

    One thing is certain. No one who wasn't in the courtroom knows anything about what the defendant did or didn't do, and those who condemn either side are demonstrating their idiocy.

  • Posted By: 7thson @ 08/06/2008 5:41:54 PM

    I love the way the press can't decide if this was a victory or a failure. I just read the AP article blasting the Bush administration for condemning a man to life in prison with a kangaroo court, and now I'm reading that the wimpy charge the defendant caught is but a scintilla of his potential charge, and the Bush Administration failed even in trying this weak case, and "losing".

    One thing is certain. No one who wasn't in the courtroom knows anything about what the defendant did or didn't do, and those who condemn either side are demonstrating their idiocy.

  • Posted By: olderwiser @ 08/06/2008 5:35:42 PM

    I've heard the term many times but no one has ever defined what a scum bag is, to my knowledge. Is it in my dictionary? I will check and report back.

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