Last night on SBS TV (Melbourne, Australia) we spied a lawyer giving a press conference who looked more like a novice standup comedian at his first try out night. He was dying and he knew it. We knew it.
All the same he deserves respect, not derision, for the job he is doing his best to carry out.
As reported today in The Australian David Hicks’s Pentagon lawyer, Major Michael Mori, a US Army officer, has told the US Supreme Court the military commissions likely to try the Australian and other “enemy combatants” are unfair and unconstitutional.
Hicks and other alleged enemy combatants who supported the Taliban or al-Qa’ida have been held for over two years without trial after being captured in Afghanistan. Major Mori, acting for Hicks and other Guantanamo Bay prisoners, this week submitted a “friends of the court” brief that calls for Mr Hicks and others to have the option of an appeal to US civilian courts.
During the press conference, Major Mori sweated profusely, nervously pacing either side of his lectern. He was probably thinking “Guy Pearce and Tom Cruise make this military courtroom stuff look like soda. Why aren’t they clapping?”.
Across the airwaves we then caught George Dubya busy stealing all Major Mori’s thunder. Led by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Powell et al, the applause was especially thunderous at the bit where he poked his finger across the lectern and repeated the case for the legality behind the war on Iraq. Something about the US not being pushed around by thugs. “Forget WMD’s & the UN” we chimed, “who needs ‘em!!?”.
Meanwhile back at improv night, Major Mori soldiered on.
Maybe he should have done a head count before he started. From a quick ‘pop vox’ of the web, we found it hard to find any real coverage of Major Mori’s press conference.
At least he caught some Australian attention. Well he had to, Hicks is Australian after all. Besides the ABC (the Australian National Broadcasting news service) and SBS, The Australian was the only broadsheet to go into some depth on Mori’s media announcement.
In fact, on CNN’s website we searched for and found the following:
Hicks’s trial will not be fair: US lawyer
No Article matches for “Hicks’s trial will not be fair: US lawyer” on CNN.com
Their correspondent was probably at the Bush gig.
News Link – The Australian:Hicks’s trial will not be fair: US lawyer
