Justice for some.

In case the power's been off in your neighborhood this week, I should mention that the first American war crimes tribunal since the end of World War II has been in session. Who's the first accused war criminal to take the stand, the Herman Goering of the global war on terror? Well, it's some dude who drove Bin Laden's car. Or so they say. Actually, the evidence about that is a little thin, and some of that is testimony extracted under torture (or "enhanced interrogation techniques" as the dark comedians of the Bush administration term it). Another problem: a lot of the folks at Gitmo (Hamdan included) were handed over by surrogates in exchange for a bounty, so you tend to get a high error rate on your collars (e.g. a lot of people who owed a neighbor money or just got on the wrong side of somebody). Happily, the tribunal doesn't rely on the same standard of evidence as one might expect in, say, a mainland American court of law. I suspect many of these cases, like that of Hamdan the "driver", would simply fall apart in domestic courtrooms. Not on Fantasy Island, however.

Okay, so you've got one of Bin Laden's alleged schleppers. He's standing trial in a military courtroom. He is a Yemeni man accused of working with el primo terroristo, and the jury is made up of uniformed American military officers. (Wonder how that is going to come out?) And if that isn't sure-fire enough for you, the jury need only render a majority vote to convict. Now, these proceedings have a history of questionable policies and practices, including credible accusations (some by senior military officers) against the commanders in charge of stacking the legal deck against the defendants (like insisting there be no acquittals). Still not comfortable with the potential outcome? How about the fact that, if acquitted, the defendant will stay at Gitmo until the end of the global war on terror (i.e. forever)? Same deal if he is convicted and sentenced to time served. (These Bush critters sure are risk-averse, aren't they?)

With this monstrous individual on trial and Radovan Karadzic at the Hague, we should be feeling pretty safe, right? Well.... there are a few bad characters still on the loose, my friends. In fact, there's one group of people currently at large that are responsible for what's probably the most serious war crime of recent years. These criminal leaders:

• invaded a sovereign nation that posed no threat to their country;
  
  


• brought about the deaths of as many as one million civilians, both directly and as a result of their actions;
  
  


• allowed the total dissolution of order, massive looting, destruction of public property, and collapse of public services while acting as an occupying power;
  
  


• created a situation that produced 4 million refugees, more than 2 million of whom have fled the country;
  
  


• violated their own laws of land warfare as well as international law by fundamentally altering the economy of the invaded nation;
  
  

...and actually quite a bit more than that. Pretty heinous, eh? Makes Karadzic look like a piker, frankly. And yet they hide in plain sight... even dancing on national television, with no worries about being carted away.

Schleppers beware: this war is on you.

luv u,

jp