Nevermind: Hamdi wasn't so bad after all.

By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Thursday, Sept. 23, 2004, at 2:37 PM PT

If you've followed the government's claims in the Yaser Esam Hamdi case, you would think the guy was some unstoppable, lethal killing machine, the Taliban's own Hannibal Lecter—a man so evil, he requires permanent warehousing down a bottomless hole.

So the Bush administration's decision to release Hamdi is stunning, given that only months ago he was so dangerous that the government insisted in front of the U.S. Supreme Court and the world that he could reasonably be locked up for all time, without a trial or criminal charges. At oral argument before that court, Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement insisted that "o principle of the law or logic requires the United States to release an individual from detention so that he can rejoin the battle," especially, while we "still have 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan."

A scant few months later Hamdi will be on a government jet, flying home to Saudi Arabia with an invisible "whoops" note pinned to his lapel.

What does John Ashcroft think Hamdi will do back in Saudi Arabia? Open a Krispy Kreme franchise and give speeches about the wonders of American democracy? The administration thinks it has solved the problem of his future menace with a clutch of mostly unenforceable restrictions: He is, according to the proposed agreement, barred from traveling to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, Syria, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the United States. He must renounce his American citizenship and is barred from suing the United States for injuries sustained during his detentions. <snip>

http://slate.msn.com/id/2107114/

add his injustice to the list.

It's the so-called "principled" conservatives who claim to be so moral, so righteous, so Godly, so believing and in compliance with Constitutional principles. Why haven't they expressed outrage over the deprivation of this innocent victim's guaranteed rights?

Had some bigoted right wing redneck been deprived of his automated gun for even half a day, the reichsters would be enraged.

But because it's an American Muslim whose rights were deprived, it's no big deal to these hypocrits.