What to do?
I'm not a legal eagle...but should David Hicks answer to a charge of treason if and when he returns to Australia? Laws do exist, some retrospective with regards to terrorism. Given his reported actions, associations, place of capture and the war activity which included Australian forces, one would think that his behavior constituted Treason?

Once again, David Hicks has been illegally detained for 5 years. You cannot arrest people, torture them for five years, then make up the charges. Or can you? The basis of law turns on fundamental democratic rights such as access to legal advise, the presumption of innocence, the right to know what you are being charged with, and charges being laid within a short period of days. There have been hundreds of detainees rounded up in dragnets, tortured over long periods, in Guantanamo to see what they knew then released!

This is what 20 communities in the US think about Bush's dictatorial methods and torture.
Twenty communities in the US voted this week to impeach Bush and Cheney. The Bush impeachment measure passed in Middlebury accuses the president and vice president of violating their oath of office to “‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The resolution asserts that Bush and Cheney “manipulated intelligence and misled the country to justify an immoral, unjust, and unnecessary preemptive war in Iraq”; that they directed the government to engage in domestic spying without warrants; that they have “conspired to commit the torture of prisoners, in violation of the Federal Torture Act and the Geneva Convention”; that they have ordered the indefinite detention of prisoners “without legal counsel, without charges and without the opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention—all in violation of US law and the Bill of Rights.”
Full story http://wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/verm-m09.shtml

Neil what we are talking about here is an exchange of ideas.You put your article and ideas up for public examination,some people with good intent,knowledge and intelligence have questioned some of your assertions,like it or not this is part of the democratic process.I have seen some very good posts including Batch,Plantagenet and Bushbasher.Didn't your leadership courses in the army encourage you to acknowledge when others have made a valid contribution or are we all wrong and you are the only one that is right? In the light of what I know,from first hand experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and from what Plantagenet has alluded to,the war in Afghanistan is not winable with the number of UN forces deployed.They have to contend with an awful climate, a topography that is a logistical nightmare and which favours the guerilla and a porous border with Pakistan which is training and supplying the Taliban and which is out of bounds to UN military activity.Ask the Russians and indeed the British about the difficulties of fighting for any extended period of time in Afghanistan.
Hicks deserves to be heard,he deserves to be properly represented and he, like yourself deserves, to be properly treated,which, like it or not, is also part of our democracy.
It seems to me that the ADA is using Hicks as a smokescreen in order to avoid debate on Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bruce Haigh

planetagent,

Have you examined the links between ISI and the CIA? Like the one that George Tenet's counterpart was meeting with him in Washington on Sept 10 2001?

Bruce’s point about acknowledging valid contributions is a good one but the problem is the forum restriction of being allowed to post only two 350-word comments every 24 hours and the consequent difficulty of adequately answering multiple interlocutors under such conditions. Bruce's accusation of a "smokescreen" is unfounded and unfair as the ADA robustly debates the issues he mentions elsewhere.

Assuming all those posting comments are objective and sincere (despite the apparent contrary evidence in some cases) I am happy to continue the debate (on this or other topics) if any of you wish to email me separately or collectively at feedback@ada.asn.au. The ADA never avoids a full and frank debate on a topic but we do expect our interlocutors to observe the normal conventions and courtesies of debate. I suspect, however, there are those in this forum who just want an audience to parade their preconceived positions rather than really debate the issue in question.

The unnecessarily ad hominem attacks by some also do not contribute to proper debate. It is particularly disappointing when incorrect shallow and/or prejudiced assumptions are made about an author’s motivation and background as a base for such attacks.

The article posted stemmed from months of wider and spirited debate among some of Australia’s leading legal experts on LOAC (both military and academic). David Hicks’ own US military lawyer has commented favourably on the longer analysis paper it is based on, although he naturally disagrees with some individual details or interpretations. A previous Labor federal attorney-general has advised the ADA that he thinks the arguments are balanced and comprehensive.

And yet, some of those offering comment in this forum make the assumption that the facts and arguments in the article are somehow biased or wrong, or not even arguable, just because they do not believe them, or do not want to have to even consider having to weigh them objectively (or in some cases appear to have misunderstood them).

Given the flavour and nature of the comments posted by some there is considerable irony in them making accusations of arrogance against others

Executive Director Australia Defence Association. You smear your opponents but you do not state or stand on your disagreements. You claim your opponents do not add to the debate, but you, taking them on concretely, would make the debate truly alive and challenging! In lieu, you tip toe, throw some vague accusations and generalizations up in the air. All done, I suspect to cover your flank, so that your positions are not exposed and out in the open. I also suspect you are playing peek-a-boo with your position on torture. What is your position on allowing hearsay evidence and torured confessions as creditible evidence in these military tribunals? How say you?

Just before the invasion of Iraq, Washington dispatched a senior US diplomat, Marisa Lino, to Europe to demand the governments of the European Union agree to a blanket exemption of all US citizens (read politicians and officers) from the jurisdiction of the newly formed International Criminal Court. Moreover, the US formally rejected the treaty establishing the ICC, the first permanent international institution dedicated to trying cases of genocide, war crimes and other human rights abuses. Then the US admin. insisted that governments around the world sign bilateral treaties agreeing not to turn over any American citizens in the event that they are indicted by prosecutors at the court. The US admin. are not stupid, they understand what illegal wars are and have covered their flank: As well as, all the lies about WMD to justify an invasion. Hicks is caught up in these illegal wars and is being used to justify these outrages as a part of the war on terror - another cover for the flank.