David Hicks, terrorist mastermind?

Yes, according to John Howard and the Australian government.

No, according to the private views of US military prosecutors, who have described him as a “bumbling wanna-be” who would have been more danger to Al-Qaeda than to anyone else. Among other things they have described Hicks as:

• a total liability for Al-Qaeda in any terrorist attack
• a man of “no personal courage or intellect”, who rolled over as soon as he was questioned
• a foot soldier, not a leader or a planner
• having read “Soldier of Fortune” too many times
• not having the capacity to plot anything major
• a big talker, who never killed an American and never planned to
• not able to keep his mouth shut
• having “talked from the second we caught him. We never had to use any techniques at all on him in Guantanamo - there was no need.”
• having “talked to everybody … ASIO, the AFP, the CIA, the FBI, M15, anybody who’d come in with a hamburger, he’d tell them whatever they wanted to know”.

Pretty much accords with my thoughts on Hicks …mildly dangerous idiot who thought it’d be fun to play with terrorists and got caught up in something way bigger than he had the capacity to handle. Dickhead, certainly …big league terrorist ….ummm, no.

Certainly, what he did calls for criminal sanctions. He is no hero in anyway, shape or form, as some would have us believe. What was wrong in the Hicks case was that it was allowed to drift on for 5 years, in a legal fog (the US government had to invent something to actually charge him with), and even worse, he was completely abandoned by the Australian government, which was more interested in crawling up George Bush’s arsehole than anything else, like ensuring at least some form of justice for a citizen.