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By Mike Cowie

Driving, according to the George W. Bush administration, is the newest war crime. Yes, war crime.

Things have been quite farcical in the land of Bush and Dick (Cheney) for years now, but it would seem that, as of the past week, they’ve reached a whole new level of lunacy.

At a trial in Guantanamo Bay, at the infamous land of freedom gulag, some guy named Salim Hamdan was recently found guilty of war crimes for driving Osama bin Laden around from 1997 to 2001. I’m not making this up.

And this was the first trial of the so-called terrorist masterminds held at Guantanamo. These are supposed to be the worst of the worst… and they give us a driver?!

Are these people ridiculous or what?

The guys who dropped the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: NOT war criminals.

The guys who decided to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: NOT war criminals.

The guys who firebombed Dresden: NOT war criminals.

The guys who openly boasted about trying to bomb North Vietnam back into the Stone Age: NOT war criminals.

The guys who launched the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq: NOT war criminals.

But–by some unfathomable and completely warped form of logic–the guy who drove bin Laden around Afghanistan IS a war criminal.

Wait, it gets even better. The Pentagon says that even after he’s served his full sentence he’ll still be held as an “enemy combatant”. Immediately after his trial was completed on Thursday, a Pentagon spokesman came out and announced that: “He will serve out the rest of his sentence. At that time he will still be considered an enemy combatant.”

That’s right, serve your full sentence for some nonexistent crime after some ridiculous monkey trial and then we’ll continue to hold you indefinitely. And why the hell not? If he were released he might go over to Sudan and drive that Omar al-Bashir guy around.

When it comes to farcical displays of hypocritical bullshit and injustice, it just doesn’t get much better than this.

To really put this into perspective, we should remember that any American troops caught committing war crimes–as in actual war crimes–are granted all of their legal rights by the U.S. military while awaiting trial. Furthermore, no one uses “coercive tactics” (a.k.a. torture) on them while they’re being held in captivity. And, if they were mistreated, any “confessions” they made sure as hell would never be used against them.

And, as we’ve seen time and time again throughout the Iraq War, far from being convicted of war crimes, American troops who intentionally slaughter civilians are usually set free or sentenced to a year or two in jail at most, after having the murder charges against them reduced to something akin to spitting in public.

But not Hamdan; evil drivers like him have in no way earned the right to habeas corpus, let alone a torture-free stay in American custody.

Think about it; if it wasn’t for this guy driving bin Laden around, thousands of innocent people would still be alive today. Or at least bin Laden would have had to pay another guy $200 a week to drive him around. Either way, we’re talking serious war crimes here.

To be fair, any calls for justice in Guantanamo Bay are more than just a little misguided. The truth is if you’re going to run a gulag than you’d best follow the time-honoured precedents set in places like the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea and completely mock the whole concept of justice and fairness. Because, as all those who run gulags well know, ridiculousness and injustice are what it’s all about. I mean, the whole point is scaring and intimidating your enemy.

Enemies such as Robert Mugabe’s shoeshine boy and Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speechwriter.

Next up, a trial for that war criminal and evil terrorist Omar Khadr, the one who, when captured at age 15, posed a catastrophic threat to Western civilization as we know it.

And let me just say a big thank you to Bush and Dick, because if it weren’t for them protecting us all from the sinister drivers and 15-year-old terrorists out there we would have long ago seen our way of life destroyed as well as our freedom and happiness completely crushed. Keep up the good work guys!

It’s just too bad it took so long for someone to come along and show the world this higher form of justice. Just think, we could have convicted Hitler’s secretary for genocide, and Pol Pot’s dishwasher for crimes against humanity, and Idi Amin’s bartender for ethnic cleansing.

Mike Cowie is a writer currently embarked on a book about his three-year trip across Asia with his wife, Sonoko. Read more of Mike’s views on his Web site.

August 13th, 2008 | Category: Bush Justice, Camp 6, Camp Bucca, Lawsuit, Lies and War Crimes of the US Government, Maj David Frakt |  Print This Post | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL