The David Hicks "Plea": Only an Australian Story?

Yes, David Hicks is not the storybook sympathetic character. He did go train with the Taliban, and he was guarding a tank as the Americans invaded Afghanistan. But there is no disputing one fact: he never fired a shot at anyone. Nonetheless, captured as he attempted to return to Pakistan from the war zone next door, he was captured, and, next thing he knew, he was doing a hard five in Gitmo, with no charges, then a barrage of charges, then, finally charged with violating a law that was passed while he was spending his fourth year in Cuba. Last week, his guilty plea was a one-day story here. But this Australian op-ed gives some idea of the passion the story has stirred down under, in a national election year, and suggests some of the machinations behind the plea/agreement to gag order/waiver of all statements of torture. This story from Australia's ABC unearths Hicks' sworn statement to British authorities, in which he details the torture he now has sworn to the Americans he won't say happened.

A one-day story in the USA? Almost as proud a moment as the time President Bush gushed that he didn't kinow what Geneva's language, "offense against human dignity", could possibly mean.