Glenn Greenwald: The President's praise of fair trials and the rule of law

It is truly vile to listen to George Bush anoint himself the Arbiter of Due Process and Human Rights by praising the Iraqis for giving a "fair trial" to Saddam when we are currently holding 14,000 individuals (at least) around the world in our custody -- many of whom we have been holding for years and in the most inhumane conditions imaginable -- who have been desperately, and unsuccessfully, seeking some forum, any forum, in which to prove their innocence. This lawlessly imprisoned group includes journalists, political activists, and entirely innocent people.

The Bush administration has been steadfastly refusing to grant the very "fair trials" which served today as the basis for the President's pious, patronizing praise for the Iraqis (which, in reality, is intended as self-praise). The President and his followers -- including the majority of the 109th Congress, which just enacted the Military Commissions Act -- have made unmistakably clear that they do not actually believe in fair trials, literally.

George Bush ordered U.S. citizen Jose Padilla abducted and shoved into a black hole for almost four years, all the while torturing him and refusing him any contact with the outside world, let alone any due process. He did the same to U.S. citizen Yaser Hamdi and legal resident Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri. In all of those cases, he claimed -- and still claims -- the power to hold them in that manner forever, and claims they are not entitled to any process of any kind.

The President -- the American President -- has also ordered foreign nationals abducted both inside the U.S. and from other countries, including our own allies, and sent to Syria and Egypt with the knowledge, with the intent, that they be tortured. None were given any trials, "fair" or otherwise. In fact, some were unquestionably innocent.

Read the whole of Glenn Greenwald's excellent post and check out his link to Dahlia Lithwick's 'Top Ten Most Outrageous Civil Liberties Violations of 2006'