johncee1945, Your comment to my post is immaterial and unrelated to Hicks. Hicks is a nobody and can not shed any light on your American world domination conspiracy. I suggest you get an atlas and study Afghanistan and then plot out your "Cheney oil route" from the Russian steppes to any middle eastern seaport that would pass through Afghanistan.
I'm sure if you give yourself the chance you'll see that your "oil route conspiracy" would probably end up costing more than some of these other posters "Iraqi oil conspiracy". To date the Americans have spent 500 billion executing the Iraqi war and the more than four years of policing and rebuilding infrastructure. Iraqi oil revenue doesn't even scratch that surface of expenditure. Iraqi oil revenue is calculated in millions of dollars per day total...not billions and only 7.4 billion per year. Even your stupid Americans can tell the difference between million and billion.
People as stupid and greedy as you lot want to make out everyone to be would be at least able to compute profit and loss.
For an example, the Canadian Athabasca-Wabiskaw oil sands constitute about 175 billion barrels of easily recoverable oil alone, and 100 billion have been invested to speed up recovery and wean America off middle-eastern imports by 2015. Iraq has proven reserves of 112 billion barrels. How much oil will America get for their 500 plus billion dollars back of the 112 billion barrels Iraq will ever have?

I saw David Hick's stepmother on television talking about the letters from David that she wished she had not handed over to Australian authorities. In those letters David brags about establishing the muslim religion in a village in India. It was also widely reported on the news about the Indian people who were gunned down as David and his Muslim friends enforced Muslim control on these people.

So here you have what amounts to a signed confession in the form of a letter from David Hicks to his father and stepmother. This is a man who in his own words sees nothing wrong in gunning innocent people down in the name of the muslim religion.

People who say the only evidence is unsubstansiated accusations by the Americans should think about the reality of those letters.

Great point Sharkfin.
I haven’t seen it reported anywhere else.
It should have been headline news from every media outlet.Makes one think about the motivations of some of our opinion leaders!

This is ridiculous. People can form their opinions of Hicks's guilt or innocence all they like, and it's completely off the point. People shouldn't give a damn if I happen to think Hicks is innocent, I certainly don't give a damn if they think he's guilty.

The point is whether Hicks's guilt or innocence will be established by a proper court of law, with proper rules of justice, and whether this will happen some time before the second coming of Christ.

Bingo bushbred

I am tied of the endless denunciations of how evil Hicks is. That's irrelevant. This is not about how evil they are.

It's about how good we are.

The point's not whether or not Hicks is guilty or innocent. It is about Australia standing up to be counted when it comes to providing the protection of the rule of law.

That is what Australia is supposed to stand for- equality before the law and the rule of law.

Does anyone in this list seriously believe that this cornerstone of our democracy is wrong or can be ignored?

If you do then, as far as I am concerned, you're as un-Australian as the terrorists.

How can we call the enemy barbarians while you advocate destroying the very thing we say we are trying to save?
How can we go around the world building democracy while dismantling it at home?

Can't you see that is wrong?

Once we start down the path of justice delivered by fiat there is no turning back. We cease to be a democratic, law abiding country and become the same as Pinochet's Chile and Saddam's Iraq

Let him be tried in a legally constituted court of law. We owe it to ourselves as much as we owe it to him. If we do it then we can stand tall in the face of our enemies and say 'no matter what you do we stay true to who we are. You cannot win'.

However, if we don't we let them destroy our democracy without firing a shot. We become the authors of our own destruction. We stand up with despots and dictators and betray the legacy given to us by our forebears.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance". It is time to be vigilant. It is time to make our leaders own up to the principle of freedom they preach. It is time to proclaim loudly to the world that we are free and we are going to stay that way.

By giving justice to Hicks we both honour and save ourselves.

Part of Hick's problem is that he has not , up till now, been seen as a vote winner.
When the election is over he'll be forgotten again by most pollies,especially by Howard & Co.