The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case which could decide if Australians David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib are being detained illegally at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.
The Supreme Court will decide whether the detainees have the right to have their appeals heard before American courts.
Western values worth fighting for: PM
Prime Minister John Howard has told an audience of World War Two veterans, military and political leaders in London that Australia will continue to defend Western values in the campaign against terror.
And you thought the concept of a fair trial was a western value didn't you?
I noticed yesterday that one of the Australian lawyers speaking for Hicks/Habib had received a letter from the PM. This is the second letter I've heard of him writing in the past week, the other being the letter to the widow of the only Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan to apologise for forgetting to invite her to the War Memorial ceremony where that Bush guy laid a wreath for her husband.
It seems strange to me that on these issues, with important principles at stake, our Prime Minister can't even bother to pick up the phone or organise a personal meeting but instead brushes them off with a letter. If he was congratulating them for something, I'm sure he'd rush to them for another photo opportunity but when it comes to something tricky, he weasles out of it by writing a letter (or perhaps by signing something written by his staff). Does that seem half-hearted to you? I guess it minimises the media coverage because writing a letter is a difficult thing to cover on TV news. It seems similar to Bob Carr's approach in NSW, where he gets ministers to make announcements of good things and leaves the department heads to announce bad things. We all know which is the more attractive story to the media.