It’s bad enough that the Howard government has become a group of Bush administration sycophants, but they have similarly adopted the policy of politicizing any arrests that can be linked to terrorism, never admitting to mistakes or recognizing incompetence and worst of all, punishing the victims of their witch hunts for embarrassing them.
Stating that the “disgraceful treatment of Dr Haneef has all the hallmarks of a typical Howard government political play”, the daily criticised the Aussie PM for denying his involvement in the case by claiming that “he knows nothing”, and none of the key decisions in this case were made by him. “When will Howard take responsibility?” it asked.
Howard and his hangers-on are only too happy to grandstand when there is political mileage to be made, but like we have seen so many times during US Senate hearings, all too willing to feign ignorance when the bovine excrement is exposed.
Had Haneef’s barrister not leaked the police report to the media, there is every chance that Haneef would still be in custody, but as we have seen all too often, defending ones self in this climate of modern McCarthyism is not to be tolerated.
“You can’t blame Immigration minister Kevin Andrews. He acted on our information,” the police chief said, and also called on the Bar Association of Queensland to “severely reprimand” Haneef’s barrister Stephen Keim for leaking his client’s police interview to the media.
The decision to cancel Haneef’s visa is nothing more than an example of spitting the dummy.