ON MAY 22nd the Democrats dropped their centrepiece of their Iraq policy – the setting of a timetable for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. This was a concession to legislative reality: they only have the slimmest of majorities in the Senate, and Joe Lieberman regularly votes with the president on matters Iraqi.

- The Economist

It seems that the president’s position isn’t so weak after all. He gets his $100 billion to fund his ‘surge’, without making many concessions at all. Mr Bush basically told the Democrats that he’d veto any other attempts to force a timetable for withdrawal, saying that “it doesn’t make sense to tell the enemy your plans”.

The Democrats could either starve the troops of funding, which had much wider implications and would probably have caused major backlash, or stop pushing for a timetable. The president is still shown to be a formidable figure, even after polls show an unpopular president in an unpopular war.

Also this week, Iran has ignored yet another UN resolution.

To ignore one unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution may be considered impudence; to defy a second looks like policy.

Iran is enriching uranium at an ever increasing, and ever alarming rate. Even now, the six countries leading the diplomacy at the UN – the council’s five permanent members (America, Britain, China, France and Russia) plus Germany – are starting work on a third resolution. Iran, however, looks set to ignore this one as well.

On May 1st, President George Bush cast only the second veto of his presidency, rejecting an attempt by both chambers of Congress to bring American troops home from Iraq. Never before has Congress passed a bill requiring the commander-in-chief to withdraw from a still raging war.
- The Economist

Other United States political figures moved to attack the President.

With this latest veto threat, the President has once again chosen confrontation over cooperation. For four years, the President has refused to pay for this war responsibly, and it is his veto of the Iraq Accountability Act which gave him more than he asked for that brings us to this point today.

- Nancy Pelosi

Earlier today I said the compromise under discussion is a concession, and now the president is already saying he’ll veto it. The president has just demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he cannot be negotiated with, he cannot be compromised with.

He is dead set on pursuing his discredited strategy in Iraq without regard to the cost in lives, the evidence of its failure, or the clear will of the American people.

- Senator John Edwards

The vast majority of people don’t think the president should have vetoed this bill. The bill authorised 124.2 billion dollars of spending, provided the president begin pulling troops out of Iraq by October 1.

Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure — and that would be irresponsible.

- President Bush

It’s pretty much a delaying tactic. It’s inevitable that Congress get their way: they don’t like being vetoed. In fact:

A bipartisan majority of Congress sent the president a bill to fully fund our troops and change the mission in Iraq. The president refused to sign this bill. That’s his right, but now he has an obligation to explain his plan to responsibly end this war. … But if the president thinks that by vetoing this bill he’ll stop us from working to change the direction of the war in Iraq, he is mistaken.

- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev

There are signs, however, that the president’s belated surge tactics are working. Reinforcements have been sent to the most violence-ridden areas in Iraq, and already there has been a drop in one of the brands of violence.

The less crazed killers – Shia and Sunni militias fighting over power and turf – have greatly reduced their kill rate. But the al-Qaeda types, who want to spill as much blood as possible in pursuit of impossible goals, are proving impossible to deter. They are the ones who carry out the sensational suicide attacks, General David Petraeus told Congress last week.

- The Economist

Congress would do well to listen to General Petraeus, the commander of American forces in Iraq.

So what do the two sides think? The Democrats want the bill that originally authorised the war to be revoked. Both Bill Richardson and Joe Biden, presidential aspirants, want this. Another idea is to only fund Mr Bush a few months at a time, keeping him on a proverbial leash. The two top candidates (Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) support a more gradual process.

The Economist believes that a sudden withdrawal from Iraq could be disastrous.

If the Democrats simply cut off funding for the war, they could be blamed for whatever follows a sudden American withdrawal. That would include, at best, a huge loss of face for America and at worst, genocide in Iraq and a spreading of jihad beyond its borders.

The Democrat front-runners suggest a different course of action.

A better plan, the party’s leaders are suggesting, would be to give the money he needs but demand that the Iraqi government meets “benchmarks” on the road to a political settlement. If the Shia-dominated Iraqi government can agree on a formula for sharing power and oil revenues with the country’s angry Sunni Arab minority, that might forestall civil war and allow America to withdraw with honour. If they fail to meet the benchmarks Congress sets, they might be deprived of non-military aid.

- The Economist

Would it work, though? Many think the Sunnis and Shias aren’t fond enough of each other for such a scheme to work.

The plot is thickening. The latest skirmish in Washington has yielded few results, but perhaps people are learning. Time will tell.

There has been much speculation about the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear an appeal from a group of Guantanamo Bay inmates until they have exhausted their legal options. Was the court signaling that the appeal had no merit? Were the court’s liberals waiting for a better chance to review President Bush’s unconstitutional detention system for ”illegal enemy combatants”?

Whatever the justices’ intentions, we saw one clear message in their decision, and we hope that Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, and Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, saw it too. It is past time for Congress to undo the grievous damage done by President Bush’s abuse of the Constitution when he created his system of secret prisons and public internment camps to detain selected foreigners indefinitely without any real legal challenge.

In the months since Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the administration has pushed ahead with the show trials permitted by the law. Each development in that courtroom brings fresh evidence of how urgent it is for the courts to strike down that law and for Congress to rewrite it.

The plea bargain: Last month, after being held at Guantanamo for five years, David Hicks, an Australian citizen, pleaded guilty to a single, relatively minor charge in exchange for his freedom. This deal should infuriate any side of the debate.

Americans who support Mr. Bush’s policy on prisoners accepted its premise: that the people in Guantanamo are so dangerous that letting any out will compromise American security. If an injustice were committed here or there, Americans would just have to grit their teeth. How does that square with allowing Mr. Hicks to go home and quickly go free? Worse, the plea bargain seemed timed to help Prime Minister John Howard, a Bush ally whose inaction on the case was becoming a re-election issue in Australia.

For Americans who are sickened by the Guantanamo prison, the Hicks bargain was emblematic of its lawless nature. If there was evidence that Mr. Hicks was a terrorist, we have yet to see it. He was declared an illegal combatant by a kangaroo court created to confirm that designation, which had been applied long before. He was denied a lawyer and censored by the court when he tried to pursue abuse charges. Under his plea bargain he gave up his right to sue, repudiated his own accounts of abuse and was even barred from talking to the news media about his experience.

To understand why Mr. Hicks still found that sort of deal attractive, remember that once a person is declared an ”illegal enemy combatant,” he faces a lifetime in detention. He might be released by a ”combatant status tribunal,” but his chances are very slim, and the process mocks civilized standards of justice. If the prisoner is one of the very few that the Pentagon plans to charge with a crime, he will be brought before a military tribunal. That court may use evidence obtained through hearsay, coercion or even torture. If convicted, there is little likelihood that he will be released after serving his time. If acquitted, he just goes back to being an illegal combatant who can be held for life.

The censored confession: On March 14, Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, accused of the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and other crimes, went before a combatant status tribunal. According to a transcript, Mr. Nashiri said he was tortured. But it is Mr. Bush’s policy that no prisoner may allege torture in public, so this is what appeared in the transcript:

PRESIDENT (of the tribunal): Please describe the methods that were used.

DETAINEE: (CENSORED) What else do I want to say? (CENSORED) There were doing so many things. What else did they did? (CENSORED) After that another method of torture began. (CENSORED) They used to ask me questions and the investigator after that used to laugh. And, I used to answer the answer that I knew. And if I didn’t replay what I heard, he used to (CENSORED).

Officials defended this censorship by arguing that interrogation methods are so secret that they cannot be discussed, even by the prisoner. But they also said that Al Qaeda members are trained to claim torture and that Mr. Nashiri lied. If so, why censor the transcript? His answers can’t help Al Qaeda. Tragically, the most likely answer is to spare United States intelligence agents and their bosses, who could face charges if the Military Commissions Act is ever repealed or rewritten. The law gives a retroactive carte blanche to American interrogators for any abuse they may have committed.

The lawsuit: The case the Supreme Court turned down this week was filed by Guantanamo inmates who contend that their detention was illegal and that the Military Commissions Act is unconstitutional. We agree. Holding people without evidence or charges or trial is barbaric, as is denying them the right to challenge their detention in a real court, a right generally referred to as habeas corpus.

Both violate the Constitution, and the court should strike down the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which limits avenues for appeal. But Congress approved the military commissions, left in place the combatant status review tribunals and suspended habeas corpus. Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi have a moral obligation to lead the way to righting these wrongs.

- The New York Times

David Hicks is guilty; he has said so. In years to come, we must not let the revisionists cloud that fact. But did Australia fail him? The Prime Minister, John Howard, who likes to present himself as a politician of principle, would say no. He has defended Australia’s involvement in Iraq as an example of doing what he believes to be right, not what is popular. Mr Howard says, correctly, that government policy cannot be a slave to opinion polls. That being Mr Howard’s view, it is a pity the Prime Minister did not take a principled stand at the outset regarding David Hicks. Instead, Hicks was surrendered without demur to the American military. Only when the clamour of protest in Australia became too loud to be ignored did Mr Howard and his senior ministers discover that even a terrorist deserves due process. By then the Government had achieved the seemingly impossible by making a willing recruit to Muslim extremism into an object of sympathy.

The Government found itself confronting widespread concern at Hicks’s treatment in Guantanamo Bay and at the processes of the special military commission which would try him. Those concerns were justified. Yet the abiding issue from the Hicks case is not the treatment of one individual – important though that is – but the right of every Australian to proper legal process, and the duty of the Australian Government to defend that right.

Of course, there was no talk of a fair go for Hicks when he was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, and later shipped to Cuba. “Fair enough,” Australians would then have thought, Hicks had only himself to blame for the trouble he found himself in. Most were probably indifferent and some were very definitely hostile. The Australian Government, too, was happy enough for the Americans to keep Hicks. In truth, the Government would not have known what to do with him; after all, Hicks had not broken any Australian law. As well, it was at least arguable that the Americans should be given an opportunity to interrogate Hicks. The Government of Tony Blair would later demand that its nationals be returned to Britain, but Australia quietly abandoned Hicks to his fate.

WHAT the Australian Government could not have envisaged in early 2002 was that five years later, Hicks would still be in detention and would still not have been validly charged. It could not have foreseen Hicks would be appearing before a special military commission whose procedures were being condemned by eminent legal figures in Australia and the United States. That’s how things stood at the start of 2007. By then an increasingly embarrassed Australian Government was moving publicly and noisily to have the Hicks case resolved. Quite quickly, a new charge was brought against Hicks. Behind the scenes a plea bargain was sealed; Hicks had pleaded guilty to one count of material support for terrorism and had been sentenced to just nine more months in custody. Hicks is expected to be back in Australia soon to serve the balance of his sentence in an Adelaide jail.

For Hicks, this is the end of his interment in Guantanamo Bay. For his father, Terry, it is the end of a long quest to bring his son home. For the Howard Government, it is the prospect of defusing an increasingly divisive issue before it can intrude any further on the federal election expected at the end of the year. For many, it is the satisfaction of being able to call Hicks a convicted terrorist, condemned out of his mouth. Yet even Hicks’s most vehement detractors cannot be satisfied with such a “trial”, its outcome determined in high-level backroom deals. It has left critics with the opportunity to say that Hicks’s confession is inevitably tainted by the grim circumstances in which it was offered; Hicks’s hearing was first and foremost about grabbing an opportunity – perhaps a once-only opportunity – to go home. The place of truth and justice in the hearing was far less clear.

The Government will, however, be hoping that Hicks’s return means any further rumblings about the case will be only muted. Yet the matter may not so conveniently fade. It appears likely that the legality of the military commissions will be challenged in the US Supreme Court. If such a challenge succeeds, would that invalidate the prison sentence handed down to Hicks, and should he then go free? There is also scope for a challenge in the High Court of Australia to the jailing of an Australian on the order of a quasi-judicial body such as a military commission. All that, however, is for the future.

Mr Howard is correct: a government shows its mettle by doing the hard things because they are right. The test is a government’s willingness to put principle before popularity. Hicks was certainly never popular. At best he was seen as foolish and misguided; at worst a disloyal and dangerous traitor. But even the most adverse opinion of Hicks could not absolve the Government of its obligations to demand that he face a fair trial in a reasonable time frame. Hicks was entitled to expect that his Government would stand up for that right and demand that he be charged and that this be done swiftly. The Government failed to do so until the political pressure became irresistible.

- The Sydney Morning Herald

The Economist describes Iraq as “George Bush’s nemesis as well as Saddam’s”. Although being hailed as liberators, the Iraqis’ view of the coalition is far from savoury.

It is hard to imagine any post-war dispensation that could leave Iraqis less free or more miserable than they were under Mr Hussein.
- The Economist

Various reasons given included “a good idea badly executed”, the idiocy of the Bush administration, or even the Iraqis’ inability to accept the Americans as their saviours and liberators. Time described the situation as a case where “reality ambushes intention, leaving people at war with even themselves”.

The consensus is obviously negative, but leaders continue to endorse and justify the current situation in Iraq, and the need to continue the war. While George Bush’s appeal to US Congress for more troops is old hat, John Howard this week pleaded for more time to help stabilise Iraq.

I am not asking Australians to discount the enormous difficulties in Iraq or to change their views about the original decision. I am asking them to consider the situation we now face and the stakes involved.

What Iraq and her people now need is time, not a timetable. They seek our patience, not political positioning. They require our resolve, not our retreat.

I share the concern and distress of all Australians about the continued violence and suffering in Iraq, and their frustration that it is sometimes hard to see progress.

- John Howard, in an address to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (21st March, 2007)

Labor (unsurprisingly) disagreed with Mr Howard, jumping on the bandwagon in saying that the war ”was poorly planned and Iraq is a mess”.

The report to the Congress of the Iraq Study Group bluntly stated that “The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating”, and recommended the withdrawal of troops and the launching of a “robust diplomatic effort”.

However, Mssrs Bush and Howard continue to claim that leaving Iraq now would “look too much like declaring defeat” (The Economist, March 24) and “would undercut the forces of moderation in Iraq” (John Howard, March 21). How the war will pan out, time will tell.

With David Hicks’ trial drawing closer, speculation mounts as to whether he will plead guilty to terrorism charges in order to return to Australia. Alexander Downer, Australia’s Foreign Minister said (with some conviction) that Hicks will be able to get out of Guantanamo Bay regardless of the outcome.

When the trial has concluded, Hicks will be able to get out of Guantanamo Bay. He will be able to get out of Guantanamo Bay because if he is convicted and he has to serve a sentence, he will be able to serve that sentence in Australia. If he is acquitted, he will of course come back to Australia anyway.

- Alexander Downer

The Prime Minister expressed his sentiments about Hicks’ trial, saying that he is “pleased the arraignment is coming” and that he looks forward to a “speedy trial”.

The Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, although “no defender of Mr Hicks, of what he’s done or alleged to have done”, said “I defend the legal rights and human rights of every Australian citizen and he will not be receiving a fair trial through this US military commission”.

How truthful his account is, we may never know. He admitted plotting an inordinate number of events, including the 1993 World Trade Centre attack, the bombing of nightclub in Indonesia, the failed assassination attempts on former US presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, as well as the attempt on Pope John Paul II’s life during a trip to the Philippines.

“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” the statement read in Sheikh Mohammed’s name said, according to the transcript.

“I was the operational director for Sheikh Usama (Osama) Bin Laden for the organising, planning, follow-up, and execution of the 9/11 operation,” he said through his representative, a member of the US military.

- The Australian

Sheikh Mohammed also boasted the planning of attacks on the Library Tower in California, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Plaza Bank in Washington State, and the Empire State Building in New York, all to be carried out following the September 11 attacks.

Other claims included the bombings of US military vessels and oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz and Gibralter and the port of Singapore, as well as the destruction of the Panama Canal.

Alexander Downer himself stepped in to make a few comments on Mohammed.

“Eighty-eight Australians were killed in the Bali bombing and I’m delighted that he (Mohammed) is in Guantanamo Bay,” Mr Downer told reporters.

“I’m delighted that he’s facing justice because people who aid and abet terrorists or who are terrorists, they should face justice.”

Mr Downer said Mohammed’s actions were “truly deplorable” and all Australians should be reminded of the importance of fighting terrorism to avoid a repeat of the Bali and September 11 attacks.

“I went up to Bali and I saw the remains of 88 Australians, I was with their families,” he said.

“I knew exactly what the consequences of Bali were (and) that has hardened my resolve against these terrorists.”

Mr Downer said he had no concerns about the way in which Mohammed’s confessions were obtained.

- Australian Associated Press

The attack was carried out by two suicide bombers, who detonated themselves simultaneously in a busy street. They attracted people by offering pilgrims free cakes. Most of those killed were heading for the holy city of Karbala.

 The attack follows Monday’s bombing in Baghdad, which killed 26 people and set numerous shops and cars ablaze in the city’s bookseller’s district.

 In other news, a court hearing for Australia’s David Hicks has been set for March 20, in which he will be charged with providing material support for terrorism.

 The charge is the first brought against a suspected al Qaeda or Taliban member under the Military Commissions law passed by U.S. Congress last year.

“It is not before time. It has taken too long,” Prime Minister John Howard commented.