Quote for the Day II

"There are certain principles on which there can be no compromise. Fair trial is one of those - which is the reason we in the UK were unable to accept that the US military tribunals proposed for those detained at Guantánamo Bay offered sufficient guarantees of a fair trial in accordance with international standards," - Britain's attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, in a leaked passage from a speech he is due to give this week. In the war on terror, the Bush administration's abhorrent detainee policies have lost the United States even its most loyal ally. To torture-proponent Mark Levin's dismay, even the president seems to agree now. But his statement is a telling one:

"Of course Guantanamo is a delicate issue for people. I would like to close the camp and put the prisoners on trial. Our top court must still rule on whether they should go before a civil or military court. They will get their day in court. One can't say that of the people that they killed. They didn't give these people the opportunity for a fair trial."

So the president has already said that all these prisoners, dozens of whom are detained on the sole evidence of one tortured, broken man, and not even charged with murder, are murderers. Bush's contempt for the rights of accused individuals, so evident from his years in Texas, marches on.