The terrorists are winning, Mr Blair

[T_i_B]

Bloody hell, a geat article from the Telegraph!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/08/05/do0502.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2003/08/05/ixopinion.html

There is some inevitability that the most scandalous decision yet made by this Government emerged on a blazing hot weekend, as the world abandoned seriousness and turned for Barbados or Tuscany or some other version of oblivion and rest. As the holidays loom, we have now at last learnt that the nine British terrorist suspects held by the Americans in Guantánamo Bay are going to be tried there.

It is the decision itself that is wicked, the strongest signal yet that this Government has no interest or belief in the essential foundations of this country's legal and political systems.

It becomes clearer by the day that its heart lies more with authority than with justice, more with the imposition of its will than with the rights of any citizens and more with its desire for re-election than anything to do with good government. Its controlling spirit is the essence of illiberalism. The millenarian phrases so breezily bandied about by the Blair gang in the mid-1990s, "New Labour, New Hope", "Things can only get better" - how sickeningly hollow they sound now, the pompous and deceitful thumping of the humbug drum.

The Government has wavered over the Guantánamo question. In July, noises were made and answers were given in Parliament which suggested that ministers did not like the sound of what the Americans had in mind: military tribunals held partly in secret, with no jury, no proper appeal system and a final executioner's word to be given only to Donald Rumsfeld; the lack of access to a lawyer for more than 18 months for the 680 inmates; the unbroken solitary confinement; the 25 suicide attempts; the construction of the execution chamber on site; the inability of any lawyer who was not a US citizen and not vetted and approved by the US Defence Department to represent any of the suspects at trial.

[samsingh]

1. Blair is all about

Blair these days.

[Cha]

2. Kick

:kick: