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Former Intel Engineer Pleads Guilty To Taliban Aid
theodp writes "Following up on an earlier Slashdot story, software engineer Maher "Mike" Hawash pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban, agreeing to testify against other suspects in exchange for the dropping of other terrorism charges. He will serve at least seven years in federal prison under the deal. In March, federal agents seized Hawash from a parking lot outside Intel Corp., where he worked, and held him as a material witness until charges were filed five weeks later."
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Now when will white males with bald heads be arrested for looking like terrorists?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Whatever else people will say about this guy, he did not get what he deserved. Everything after and including his arrest was fair and deserved, but the five weeks of being held as a material witness were complete bullshit. The officials abused the statute to hold him indefinitely and complete their case research. If it hadn't received the media attention it did, they probably would have held him longer before finally arresting him.
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
They still were. Them happening to be right about him being a criminal doesn't excuse it. If you have all kinds of secrets from the people who are supposed to ostensibly be your boss (We, the people, remember?) you have to expect them to get really cranky and upset with you. The FBI had no business being so secretive about it all.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Remember when 'innocent until proven guilty' meant something?
I'm sure you'll change your tone if the government decides to 'own' you.
That IS funny, isn't it? But, Fox News couldn't possibly be being influenced by large corporations or politicians. They're a fair and balanced news source, they say so themselves!
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Silly me. Of couse the end justifies the means.
Soo many people had rallied around him because of the problems minorities (especially Muslim ones) face in today's conditions. Unfortunately because he has pleaded guilty, next time people will just assume the person is guilty, and they won't rally around the new person, even though he/she may be innocent.
Mark my words, there will be innocents who get caught up, and due to cases like this people will be reluctant to support them. Sad.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
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Remember when the Feds snatching this guy from Intel was a big deal here at /.? When we all thought that the FBI was overstepping their bounds? When we all thought that they were wrong; that an Intel engineer couldn't possibly be guilty?
You're not a lawyer, and niether am I, but I think it should be noted that in the US _justice_ system, regardless of innocence or guilt, a plea bargain is often going to be tempting in proportion to how likely you are to win a case (your legal re$ources vs. theirs). Really, as I recall (I have not RTFA, of course!) he was otherwise facing something like ten times this to life. What would you do, even if innocent?
Bored with karma, be a fan/freak
Could someone explain why people are comparing the Talaban to Al Queda?
Give me a harder question next time, the reason for the comparison is simple. It provided justification for an unjust military action.
This is simply a case of "All of those brown people are the same to the semi literate consumeroids who are watching CNN". The Taliban acted in the same way that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Norway or any other reasonable country would have in the case of Osama Bin Laden.
After 9/11/01 the US asked the government of Afghanistan if they had him, they replied that he was under their control and that they would turn him over, if the US was willing to provide proof that he had done something wrong.
Instead of providing that proof, we and the Russians (our adversary from long before I was born until the early 1990's) started bombing them. We bombed them for no good reason. The international community was largely silent because no one wanted to risk the wrath of the US after ~3000 of our citizens were violently killed in a terrorist attack.
The Taliban was a horrible regime, but they were not a threat in any way to the immediate security of the US.
I have just been wondering, those guys don't care about the US, the just want to make sure they don't alow their kids to eat pork or their wives to be seen in public, (that does not make them terrorists. Wacky, yes, terrorists, no).
Doesn't even make them wacky. Their beliefs were not too much different than those of the Orthodox or Hasidic Jews that we have here.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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All that said, there's nothing for it but to accept the plea as presented until such a time as Mike recants it. And if he'd been successful, and caught on the field of battle, he would deserve having a book thrown at him as much as John Walker Lindh. But having failed at that, I think it's outrageous that he was facing the same or greater sentence than Lindh himself (20 years).
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
If I lend my serviced to Germany to help them fight France as a german agent, am I then a terrorist? No. I would be captured. I would then be help as a POW. (or killed and thrown in a ditch...)
Since you would be considered a spy, if I remember the Geneva Convention correctly, you would probably be shot and thrown in a ditch. However, some cultures have very interesting ways of handling spies. Here in the US most spend a significant amount of time in prison. I wish we'ld go back to shooting spies.
Actually, the complaint was (and remains) that due process was not followed. Why should this matter? Because someone who is locked up, with no prospect for release and a possibility of deportation to a third-world nation for third-party torture, is much more likely to confess to crimes of which he/she is innocent.
And it does happen. People confess to crimes they didn't commit, often because the risk of being executed otherwise is too great. In return for a confession to lesser crimes than in the original accusation, government prosecutors will seek a less harsh sentence.
Due process exists for other reasons as well; if we go around imprisoning people for years before trial, you're right, there is no excessive penalty for those eventually sentenced to more time than served waiting for a trial. But all of the others who are eventually found innocent will have served time for no reason but your willingness to ignore their plight.
So you're asking him to go against his religious beliefs so that YOU can feel safer? (ok so he WAS a terrorist.. but not everyone with scrappy looking beards are, some are just trying to make a living like you and I)
"I have just been wondering, those guys don't care about the US, the just want to make sure they don't alow their kids to eat pork or their wives to be seen in public, (that does not make them terrorists. Wacky, yes, terrorists, no)."
As I recall, the Taliban stoned women to death for adultery, flogged both sexes for (what they considered to be) immodest dress, and toppled walls then bulldozed over homosexuals.
I don't think "wacky" appropriately describes them.
He's a bad guy because, even though he is a citizen of the United States, he admitted in court that he and his friends are and were willing to take up arms against the U.S. and its civilians.
But damn the U.S. for trying to protect its citizens from those willing and able to murder them! Damn the U.S. for protecting its national interests.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
I, for one, don't know if he is guilty or innocent, but I sure-as-hell am not going to believe a plea bargain arragement. Most of you predicted that the Patriot Act would be used in exactly that way - to force plea agreements.
As far as I am concerned, the government's case remains unproven.
After 9/11/01 the US asked the government of Afghanistan if they had him, they replied that he was under their control and that they would turn him over, if the US was willing to provide proof that he had done something wrong.
Get your dick out of your ass. The Taliban were just bullshitting us. There was plenty of proof for extradition, and everyone knew it.
bin Laden was known by everyone to be the head of the terrorist organization that was dedicated to killing as many Americans as possible. They took responsibility for bombing the USS Cole, the two African embassies, and many other terrorist acts.
On Sept 11, I and quite a few other people around the world, when we thought about who to blame, thought first of Osama bin Laden.
Why? Because everyone in the fucking world knew he was the head of an evil international well-funded terrorist organization dedicated to killing Americans! (and based out of Afghanistan)
ps. mod parent down as flamebait. I can't believe I got sucked in.
no thanks
The problem now is that we'll never know whether he's actually guilty, or whether he was forced into the plea. You can hope that he was, indeed, guilty, and that the FBI was quite right in bending the Constitution to keep him around until he finally admitted it. Or you can say that it's never right to break a person's rights in order to get them to admit their guilt, regardless of whether you *know* they're guilty (even if you couldn't prove it in court) or not.
The problem with the former approach (hoping that he's guilty and accepting the methods involved in attaining the admission of guilt) is that the constitution wasn't just some fancy of some guy. It was the result of millenia of people being raped, tortured, and murdered. In many cases, that rape, torture, and murder was designed to elicit confessions (from those who weren't the ones being killed, obviously :). Relatively speaking, this particular stab at Rights (note the capitalisation there) has thus far been very short-lived. A few centuries, barely that. If it slides into the same environment that was prelevant for thousands of years previously, it wouldn't be surprising (statistically speaking).
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
The interesting thing about this case is that he was a NATURALIZED CITIZEN. In exchange for citizenship, he had explicitly sworn an oath/affirmed that he had renounced allegiance to all foreign states.
When he decided to aid the Taliban, did he bother to publically declare that he had changed his allegiance? No!
If he had been born a US citizen, I'd cut him some slack and merely imprison him for the duration of hostilities. As a naturalized citizen, he deserves either deportation or more jail time for lying during the naturization process.
If he really didn't commit the crime(s) then how can he offer up information via his buddies?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Bah... I'm putting on my tinfoil hat again... and I don't even live in the US ;-)
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Yeah, I bet they weren't tipped off at all. http://www.freemikehawash.org/
According to the article: "In March, federal agents seized Hawash, 38, from a parking lot outside Intel Corp., where he worked, and simultaneously searched his home."
Note Intel Corp., where he worked.
Get your facts right. They report you discredit with FUD
They still DID overstep their bounds. We have some laws in this country which provide protection to citizens from potential abuse of power by law enforcement. Such as locking someone up for weeks without pressing charges, denying them access to a lawyer, etc. There's also unreasonable punishment- I'd say spiriting someone off and denying you've done so to their family etc certainly qualifies.
Police are required to file charges within a certain, rather short period of time(24 hours? I forget), or let you go- one or the other. You can't just lock someone up, and THEN go looking for evidence of a crime; you have to FIRST find the evidence, THEN arrest them and THEN charge them with a crime.
I don't care if he was guilty- their actions are improper, unjust, and remind me more of, say, dictatorships and communist governments than the country that supposedly leads the "free world". Inefficiency in law enforcement is the price we pay for our freedom, rights, and protections. When we throw any of the three out the window, what's left to protect? One only need to look as far as 1980's eastern germany to see what road we are headed towards.
Please help metamoderate.
"if I were a dictator" right there you're saying you wouldn't be on the front lines defending that freedom you would so aggresively send others. If I were dictator this fucking asshole would be filled full of lead until there was nothing left of his body If you were dictator I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't assasinated and overthrown for being such a stupid jackass. Sorry.
That sentence referred to a hypothetical "someone" in an explanation of why due process is important. Deportation isn't really a factor for American citizens (though it could well become one with camps like Guantanamo Bay and the Justice Department's "enemy combatant" categorization). Being held without a lawyer, in a hidden location, without any charges against you -- essentially being "disappeared" -- is a factor even for American citizens. If you're a non-citizen, that's when the deportation-and-torture scenario becomes a possibility. Does that make it alright with you?
The Taliban were just bullshitting us. There was plenty of proof for extradition, and everyone knew it.
And you know this because of what? Woman's intuition? Our government didn't even take the time to find out if the Afghans would keep their word. They just bombed them.
bin Laden was known by everyone to be the head of the terrorist organization that was dedicated to killing as many Americans as possible. They took responsibility for bombing the USS Cole, the two African embassies, and many other terrorist acts.
Every time a bomb goes off, many groups claim responsibility. That doesn't constitute proof.
On Sept 11, I and quite a few other people around the world, when we thought about who to blame, thought first of Osama bin Laden.
Your thoughts are not proof.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Given sufficient motivation innocent people DO plead guilty - it wasn't too long ago in soviet russia (no, I'm not making that tired joke) that Stalin killed millions - many of which were upstanding members of the community who confessed to crimes that never occurred. Look at just about any dictatorship and you'll find evidence of innocent people pleading guilty to criminal acts in order to avoid or end terrible punishments.
I'm not saying that America is a tyrannical dictatorship - I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader - but the statements you made about a government unquestionably having MY best interests in mind fly in the face of dozens of years of history: sometimes they do not. Vigilance and over our governments is what keeps them from degenerating to the depths of those decrepit examples of our past.
Aren't there some billy goats at the ol' bridge you should be bothering?
When stacks of +5 posts said "The FBI is overstepping its bounds, whether he's guilty or not"? Yes, I remember that.
If he's guilty of "conspiring to provide services to the Taliban" because he plead guilty to it as part of the plea bargain, then I guess he's innocent of "conspiring to levy war against the United States" and "conspiring to provide material support for terrorism" because the government dropped those charges as part of the same bargain. In other words, he's not a terrorist, just someone who tried and failed to fight on the receiving end of a conventional war.
The War on Terror breaks the rules once again to catch yet another non-terrorist.
Yes, apparently we both are.
-- . . ramblin' . . .
... you are a very bad person. You are hereby sentenced to seven years in a federal pound me in the ass prison.
You know, it's really sick that we make jokes like this. The constitution outlaws 'cruel and unusual punishment' but the threat of being corn holed is actively used as a deterrent, and not much is done to prevent it. I think homosexual rape probably qualifies as 'cruel and unusual'
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Whoa there! Aren't you the same person who played Thoreau in a different thread?
It's an open secret of law that innocent people plead guilty all the time. Consider, for example, the recent furor in Tulia, TX, where a police source went bad and turned in dozens of innocent people on drug distribution charges. Those people -- uniformly poor and African-American -- chose almost to the one to plead guilty to lesser charges. Governor Rick Perry is currently reviewing papers to dismiss all charges and convictions in that case.
Likewise, in Dallas, the local police department has come under intense fire for planting fake drugs on poor Latino residents, many of whom accepted plea bargains (usually due to inattentive defense counsel, a real problem down this way). Because evidence was moved upwards into the federal courts, even those cases are now under review as judges seek to determine which defendants were truly innocent of charges.
Then there are those quasi-Art. III courts, such as the IRS and immigration courts, where people frequently accept deals even though they may not be guilty at all.
Why do people do this? Simple: it takes time and money to fight in court. If you're hauled in front of an IRS judge on charges you're innocent of, you may still rationally accept a lesser penalty knowing that it's less money than hiring an experienced tax attorney. (I've got a former IRS prosecutor as a friend who quite cheerfully explains every trick up that particular profession's sleeve.) If you're poor, a minority, or an immigrant resident, you may not have the resources or even the knowledge necessary to fight a criminal charge when it comes down the pipe; your defense counsel, who's either a private attorney getting less than scale for his time on your case, or a public defender who has literally hundreds of other cases sitting on his desk, has no incentive to spend more time than is absolutely necessary on your case -- and cutting a deal with the prosecutor is the fastest way to dispose of a pending case.
Now, this doesn't obviate the fact that Hawash doesn't seem to be an innocent party. He's admitted to conspiracy to provide material support of a foreign terrorist organization, starting on October 20, 2001, two years after the official designation of the Taliban as an FTO and following the declaration of hostilities against the Taliban by the United States.
The information set out in the plea arrangement is pretty precise regarding his actions, and the end result is not particularly favorable for Hawash -- if the judge accepts the sentencing level set out in the agreement (and there's no guarantee he or she won't apply an upward departure), Hawash gets a minimum sentence of over eight years. Now, the prosecutors certainly dangled a much harsher sentence over his head, but the specifics in the agreement (such as Hawash going to China and attempting to cross the border into Afghanistan) are precise, and serious, enough that I can't see him being truly innocent in this case.
Nonetheless, just as I can remain conservative while damning every sentence from an Ann Coulter or Michael Savage, I can affirm my belief in Hawash's guilt while saying of your statement: wrong, wrong, naive, and wrong.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
It's a good thing I didn't make a donation at http://www.freemikehawash.org/ when this first came out.
But guilty or not, it didn't seem right for him to be held in prison for several months without being charged, calling him a "material witness". One could say they forced his confession, because they admittedly weren't going to let him out until they heard what they wanted.
Umm...no. Bin Laden may have been trained by the US, but the Taliban were a Pakistani creation.
Even if it did, someone helping someone who helps terrorists is not a terrorist
And if you bothered to read anything else I've written in this, you'd know that I was not saying that Mike was or should be treated as a terrorist. Quite the opposite, in fact. It remains that asking "why would anyone consider the Taliban the same as Al Quaeda" is a really stupid question.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
That is no more damning than when a captured US soldier is forced to denounce the actions of their government by their captors. We have no idea what kind of threats were made against that guy before his "confession" was extracted.
I seem to remember this one white guy that blew up this one federal building. Maybe it was too long ago for everyone to remember. I don't remember anyone breaking windows at white owned businesses after that. Do you?
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
"...held him as a material witness until charges were filed five weeks later."
Is anyone else disturbed by this?
Probably the same time they stop looking like middle eastern gentlemen at a time when the country gets attacked by them. Right or wrong, looks (and appearence) play a great role in identifying suspects. If the attack were carried out by middle aged, caucasion males with pension plans linked to a Mexico bank account, I would EXPECT to be at least questioned.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
He went to aid the taliban after we started the fight with them, after 9/11, fuckhead. This guy, supposedly, went to go fight solders on the battlefield not murder civilians. There's a pretty big difference.
Someone please mod this asshole down.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It's called the consitution. It's there to make sure that under no circumstances can the Government take away my rights as a citizen.
There's a fine line between cracking down on terrorism, and terrorising the citizens to crack down on terrorism.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Generally, a jury of one's peers decides guilt or innocence. The judge's job is to preside over the trial process, ensure all the rules are obeyed, and mete out a sentence. The judge's other job is to decide on the legality of certain police measures, and issue warrants when necessary.
Yes, in their role as the watchdog over the policemen's shoulder, judges can be both our friends and our enemies. Judges are people, and people are either good or bad. Good judges use their power wisely; bad judges abuse their power in order to pursue some private, impartial agenda.
The Patriot Act provides a powerful tool to these bad judges, just as it provides a powerful tool with which good judges may shortcut the legal process a little bit more, in order to save lives. I'm afraid the bad judges are getting more mileage out of the damned thing than the good judges.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Sorry, I forgot - its ok for them to use terrorist tactics against non-Americans but not against Americans, because non-Americans are sub-human. Thanks for reminding me.
The problem with the Hawash case was never his guilt or innosence, but the whole issue of how he was arrested in the first place.
Hawash was secretly arrested. With a secret warrent. Based on secret evidence. The feds wouldn't even admit that they had arrested him until eleven days had passed. He was not charged with a crime until he had been held for more than two months.
The Constitution specifically states that people get speedy trials. The police are not allowed to arrest people and hold them without pressing charges. That is one of the main things that's wrong with communist nations like China and Cuba. The whole idea of "find charges, then arrest" is central to real justice. "Arrest, then make up charges" is a sure sign of Stalin and his ilk.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
When we all thought that the FBI was overstepping their bounds?
They were.
When we all thought that they were wrong; that an Intel engineer couldn't possibly be guilty?
With the kind of sentence the terrorism charge carries, I'd plead guilty too in exchange for its drop.
This case and all the other similar cases were botched completely. He deserves to go free in spite of any confession or verdict or whatever because of the sheer unethical nature of the proceedings.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Remeber when the war was going on?(some say it still is but that is debatable) All the news stations were reporting that the was was "Bogged down". Then a week later the war was over. What happened? It was just bogged down how did they when already?
Or the truth is that Foxnews was the only station that said the war was going to plan. But maybe that was FoxNews making up the news. Or maybe it was a different side? The correct side or maybe it was the right wing of the country pushing FoxNews to say that. Or maybe the agendas of the other networks was showing though. Like CNN showinf dead Iraqi children but never showing someone dying from 9/11. But then again that was here in the United States and they must not have reporters here. Or maybe they are just showing there anti-us attitude again.
Ohh if you havent guess I am a republican and FoxNews seldom shares my views about politics. They are way to liberal for me. Colmns and Gretta are nut cases.
Maybe that in the ignorant person in me talking. But I would rather be ignorant than uninformed like you. If you watch CNN you only see Anit-US stories.
I think it was meant from the opposite point of view. He was a terrorist, and he knew he was. So he should have tried his best to look like Captain America, as a strategy to divert any well founded suspicion. The 911 hijackers did something similar. As I recall, they mostly shaved and wore suits, to blend in and inspire confidence.
Thats funny, because after it happened, people with buzzcuts and who liked to wear camo got looked at suspiciously. My school banned camoflauge, as did several others. all kinds of groups that had nothing to do with terrorism or racism got infiltrated by the FBI.
I remember that stuff, why don't you?
man, i'm a white, balding male in australia (about 6-7 generations white) and have always had a pretty hefty beard, and i got wierd looks and called names by people after the whole WTC thing.
Even security at my university where i worked stopped me and asked to see my ID.
Just because it didnt happen to you doesnt mean it doesnt happen.
That means the guy that thinks it is right to go to a war zone (where, BTW, attacking and defending merge into one, so your spinny use of "to defend" and "to provide mercenary military aid" was kinda annoying), by definition of the religious authorities from whence he gets his definition of "what is right", also thinks it is right to plant "a bomb in your home town/state/country (where it may kill your own family members)".
Not all people blindly agree with all of the dictates of their faith: see Catholics and birth control, most world religions in general and religious tolerance, etc.
I don't propose we sink to that level, but we certainly would be stupid and naieve to ignore the fact that there are no "honorable" jihadists out there. If they're looking to help Taliban, and we can get a hold of them, we should decide what to do with them under the assumption that they may do 911-ish things given the chance.
Taliban != al Qaeda. The Taliban was the government of a country that was invaded. Invaded justly, as far as we can tell, but invaded nonetheless. To accuse him of being a terrorist & a traitor, rather than just the apparently substantiated claim of him being a traitor, is a bit of a stretch.
I still have a bad feeling about this... I'm sorry, but it reeks a little of The Crucible. Sure, he could have easily done what he was accused of, but to quote Reagan: "Trust, then verify."
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
Group 3 is the group that produces most of the Taiwanese spies who steal American technology to give to Beijing. Both spies mentioned in "Two Men Arrested for Planning to Smuggle High-Tech Encryption Devices to China" are born and raised in Taiwan but emigrated to the USA. Katrina Leung is also from Group 3; she was recently arrested for giving national security secrets to Beijing. Please read "FBI Changing Counterintelligence Tactics". Group 3 is also the group that produces people like Maher Hawash.
Many of us in the SlashDot community attended college and obtained a technical degree. More than 50% of our classmates w
its ok for them to use terrorist tactics against non-Americans but not against Americans, because non-Americans are sub-human. Thanks for reminding me.
/., writing free code, and eating chips all day is not always an easy job. There are decisions made every day that I would never want to have to have make, but someone must. I wish everyone could sit around, smoke the peace pipe, and sing kum-by-ya but that isn't going to happen. At times picking a side and lending aid is the right thing to do.
Yep that's it. I hate to break it to you, but the world is dangerous place with many dangerous people. Protecting your way of life of hanging out on
IIRC, we gave aid to Laden to fight in a war. I don't think I have ever seen any proof showing that we helped him plan or instigate any terrorist acts against civilians.
Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban. Prosecutors agreed to drop charges of conspiring to levy war against the United States and conspiring to provide material support for terrorism.
Plea bargains are a travesty of justice. Telling someone "we can prosecute you for a crime on which there is the death penalty, or you can plead guilty to a lesser charge" creates a grave risk of making the innocent plead guilty. This is really not all that different from the interrogation and torture techniques used by the inquisition or totalitarian governments. Furthermore, it allows the guilty to get away with lesser charges.
I think the utilitarian argument for these kinds of arrangements doesn't work: no matter how many criminals we catch through plea bargains or how many crimes we prevent, the cost of such arrangements--sacrificing a fair trial and a thorough, public examination of the charges and evidence--is just too high. Plea bargains are killing the patient in order to save him.
"You and the others in the group were prepared to take up arms, and die as martyrs if necessary, to defend the Taliban. Is this true?" U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked Hawash during the hearing.
This, too, is rather chilling. It's not that conspiracy might not be a prosecutable crime under some circumstances, and maybe this is one of them. But in this phrasing, he didn't actually admit to doing anything, he was just "prepared to do" something.
I don't care if they thought Stalin was Jesus. Until they made any movement (like killing people, or stealing) they have a right to walk the streets like anyone else.
Wake up. There is such a thing as the outside world, and whether you like it or not it isn't part of any society, it just is regardless of what influence one person has on another.
I don't want a paradise on Earth. I want a place where I can live and learn things you'll never get trained or taught to do or understand. I want a place where I can test the world to see what's true and what isn't for myself. I exist dammit. I'm not just taking up space. I am. Therefore I will think. Therefore I will not be molded without prior agreement. As if Lieberman will get elected in 2004. HA!
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I took the liberty of reading the article, and found, in one of those paragraph things near the top of the story thing, the following set of words:
So, in what part of this do you not see "taking a conviction on lesser charges out of fear that you're looking at a much greater time if you're convicted on the original charges" ?
I wonder what it is that you are trying to protect. It's obvious by now that the "way of life" you are trying to protect is one of savagery and evil. Putting your selfish interests over and above the lives of tens of thousands of people, giving yourself the license to kill anyone you want, whenever you want, for whatever you want.
It's sick, immoral and evil. You are no better then Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. I am sure they both feel and talk exactly like you.
War is necrophilia.
Neocon legend. There are no such papers. McCarthy was a demogogue who insinuated crimes and ruined people. He was a bully and fool, and if he is a demon, he was a demon of his own making.
There is also a neocon legend that the FBI was on Martin Luther King's side all the time. But they were trying to find out why all that violence kept dogging him around the country. Really.
If you doubt that these stories are legends, then try Googling for the stories which you think exist.
While the Taliban was in power, the US gave quite a bit of aid and assistance to them. After all, they were our buddies- they were going to crack down on drugs! It's easy to turn a blind eye to everything and anything else that the US supposedly stands for, provided they tell us they'll crack down on opium production.
I mean, it's a well known fact that the US can never do any wrong- so, why is this guy going to jail?
Perhaps we should put this retarded administration on trial, along with the schmucks in previous administrations who thought it was a good idea to put a bunch of folks through Terrorism for Dummies, CIA Edition. Hell, perhaps we could even go so far as to look at our current actions- the CIA sponsors guerilla training like that given to our buddie Osama in a number of countries. You see, when the US wants something from some un-developed nationn we train a bunch of locals to despose the current dictator and put one in that is more to our liking... It's usually about getting some resource that the other guy didn't feel like sharing. Oil? COULDN'T BE!
USA! USA! USA!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Pretty lucky guess, if he's pleading guilty and that's all they had to go on when they picked him up.
Don't be so sure. I don't know if he is in fact guilty in this case, but people have been known to plead guilty when they are in fact innocent.
Here's a possible scenario. They pick him up on secret evidence and secret warrant, then hold him secretly with no access to a lawyer or his family. That's pretty scary right there.
Next, they tell you, "listen buddy, you look just like one of Osama's boys, so when we put you before a jury of your *peers*, they'll have no problem locking you away for the rest of your life being gang raped by muslim-hating white supremicists"... OR, if you plead guilty, we'll take it easy on you, put you in a nice prison, and you'll see your family in 7 years."
What does his lawyer tell him? Oh wait, he didn't have access to one for quite a while... in fact, nobody did.
What do you do given a choice like that?
Prosecutors have a lot of power in our system, particularly when they can frighten you into pleading guilty out of fear for what a guilty verdict means.
Australia's David Hicks has been held by the US without charges and without access to a lawyer and without any contact with his family for a couple of years now. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd been tortured daily - that would be why they're holding 'terrorists' in Cuba ... Cuba doesn't have such strict laws re: people's rights, and it's even more corrupt than the US.
So what do you Maher "Mike" Hawash's and David Hicks' his options were?
I think they would be this:
Plead guilty and tell the media what we want the world to hear, or be executed.
Which option would you choose?
If the US was serious about protecting their citizens from terrorists, they should consider impeaching their president, and changing their foreign policy. That would be a far more effective terrorist-deterrant than kidnapping individuals and making an example of them. That's only going to piss off more people.
None at all. And we slaughtered and tortured tens of thousands of people because we didn't want to observe the norms.
It was a good excuse on their part. A bluff. We could have called it, and they would probably have given him up.
Instead, we enthusiatically blew up and burned tens of thousands of people who had nothing to do with 9-11. We shot one of our own citizens, and left him in a dark coffin untreated for days. We watched Taliban members die in railroad cars, literally cooked to death.
Proxy is the key word here. We wanted to kill someone to make ourselves feel better, so we've annointed proxies to kill.
The real bad guys got away, but we don't care anymore. We cheer loudly at clips of our Afghan and Iraqi "victories" on TV, and laugh at bin Laden jokes on the Tonight Show.
Could we please, please, please stop seeing these self-important, self-aggrandizing rants from Damn-the-Man slashdotters who don't even care to learn about the difference between a guilty plea and an Alford plea, and why it's so significant that Hawash didn't plead Alford?
Which lawyer did he get, to explain this theory (which I've never heard of as a foreigner that has lived in this country for a quite while) to him while he was not allowed to contact the outside world?
I don't consider a confession of someone who has not been allowed a proper trial worth anything.
his hair is short and reasonably neat. Obviously been cut in the last month. If they aren't letting him near razors, whoever cut his hair could have shaved him.
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It doesn't really matter; Ernesto Miranda, of "Miranda Rights" fame, kidnapped a girl and raped her. Even though he was later re-tried and convicted, the Supreme Court decision set a legal precident.
While a convicted felon loses some of their rights, until the point of their conviction they've got all of their rights and should still be treated as such until a conviction is reached. Innocence or guilt are irrelevant when it comes to imporoper imprisonment.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
The Washington Post just ran a pair of articles on the Lackawanna Six and Jose Padilla, American citizens who got associated with bad guys. The Lackawanna Six (and John Walker Lindh and now Mike Hawash) pleaded guilty to avoid the fate that befell Padilla. When the government didn't have enough evidence to charge him with a crime, they simply designated him an enemy combatant and carted him off to a military prison, with no right to trial or to a lawyer. Hawash, Lindh and the Lackawanna Six chose prison, even though the evidence against them was weak, because the alternative was indefinite solitary confinement and possibly even a death sentence from a military tribunal. So how meaningful were their guilty pleas?
We have laws in this country to punish treason, conspiracy, or any other crime these men committed. But citizens charged with those crimes have rights, like the right to be convicted by the government's evidence. So far, this administration has been unwilling to take the chance of letting a defendant exercise those rights.
There is not a chance in hell the the DOJ would have allowed a nolo or Alford plea in this case. If Hawash had agreed to anything other than a guilty plea, he'd by in Gitmo now (and for longer than 7 years, probably), without the feds bothering with specific charges. And as others upthread have written, probably his family would be rounded up for deportation in "secret evidence" against them.
Repeat after me: THIS IS NOT A NORMAL CRIMINAL CASE.
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Can someone help me out here? When the Mujajideen in Afghanistan were bombing and attacking russians and the (then legitimate) Afghan government, with US training and equipment, they were lauded as freedom fighters. An element of the Mujahideen became Al Qaeda, fighting to end the occupation of Palestine by Israel, and attacking the interests of Israel and its supporters. As soon as they started attacking American interests, they suddenly became an evil terrorist organisation. Hmm. Nice logic.
> Indicators, they are your friends! >
You're not alone. Unfortunately, I don't think Canada is far enough.
The Taliban was a horrible regime, but they were not a threat in any way to the immediate security of the US.
Are you insane or just plain dumb?!
The Taleban provided both moral, financial and military support to a terrorist group (Al-Queda) that attacked US military (Pentagon) and civilian targets (WTC) without provocation or warning, killing thousands. Following the attack the Taleban refused to hand over the remaining terrorists hiding in their country, futher supporting the terrorists and thus proving that they form an alliance with the group that attacked the US, which makes them part in the war the Taleban started/declared by attacking the US.
Remember that an attack on the military of another nation is a declaration of war in itself, and the Taliban clearly supported the actions of Al-Queda both before and after the attack, thus they declared war on the US. I hardly find it surprising that the US responded by taking the war they were forced into back to Afghanistan.
Any regime/country actively waging war on the US is clearly a threat to the security of the US! - I think we're actually around the definition of 'threat to the security' here.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Did the CIA help him out after he admitted terrorist actions? No. But the Taliban did.
Apples and oranges.
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Quoting from the [oft referenced here but should be re-read. If you can read it without fear, why?] article on Why the Lackawanna 6 pled guilty:
Yup, thats the system I learned about in civics class:The government can choose to give you access to the Bill of Rights unless it really need you to be guilty. In that case the Posse'll just come on by to take you away. Oh, and when the BoR says that "persons" get these rights they really meant "upstanding uncriminal citizens-by-birth and taxpayers" so it doesn't apply to YOU.
Can some biologist please, PLEASE gene-mod a frog so that it'll actually hang out in ever-warming water so that I can use that cliched, false but I still want to use it proverbial frog in a pot analogy now?
you're an idiot. read this and get your facts straight before you start to spout off. this is the plea agreement.
I won't argue with you about being an idiot - it may very well be the case.
All I was saying is that just because someone pleads guilty, that does not mean they were in fact guilty. There have been cases where people plead guilty becuse a prosecutor has scared them enough that they are not willing to risk going to court and being found guilty.
I believe that in this case, the chances are pretty good that Hawash is indeed guilty. But, I also question the way he was held for so long with no access to family and lawyers. That should not happen in America.
I, for one, do not hope that the current anti-terrorist doctrine works. More to the point, I believe that it can not. It is not possible to protect a free society from the depradations of true believers willing to kill themselves to make a point.
It is better to live in a free society, and risk death by a terrorist attack, than to live in a "safe" police state.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Yes, Amerika is Savage and Evil (tm)! That's why with the ability to literally snap its fingers and destroy the entire planet or any portion (Country) thereof, it never has.
So can any country that possesses nuclear weapons, such as France, Russia, or China. Or even India. If someone did not notice, government of any of those countries is either few keypresses, or few months of missile-building away from turning Washington, DC and NYC into two holes in the ground, not to mention various other nasty things that can be done with existing nuclear weapons. I don't see any of those countries demanding to be treated as The Owners Of The Earth, or randomly attacking the rest of the world.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
True, but despite our claims to promote tolerance and equality, America often falls quite far from our lofty ideals. Perhaps it's not as bad in other parts of the country (though I doubt it), but I live in the south, and racism still runs rampant here today. The part that scares me is that while I live in a city where it's not as bad, if you go out to some of the more rural areas, the biggotry you'll find is nothing short of appalling.
I have to think that the isolated nature of the United States lends greatly to this, despite the US often being called the great "melting pot" of the world. Whereas Europeans are forced to deal with their neighbors as most European states are smaller than many American states, the US has only two direct neighbors, and we don't even treat them that well. Ever heard disparaging remarks about Mexicans? So really, I have to agree with both of your posts. The Earth is a hateful place, but for whatever reasons, America seems to have a special affinity for hatred.
But it's not a war against Al Qaida, it's a war against Global Terrorism. How will we know when Global Terrorism surrenders? It's like the War on Drugs - it will never end. The changes we put up with for the sake of this "war" are permanent.
Ronald Reagan? He aided the Taliban. In fact, he even called them "the moral equivelant of [America's] Founding Fathers". The filthy traitor.
Since we're at war with the Taliban / al Quada, it follows that we've always been at war with the Taliban / al Quada, just as the Russians have always been our friends and allies in our holy war against te'er, right?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It was money provided through a United Nations aid program for food. Let's not misrepresent facts, alright?
Cultural, like being American? After all, America was found guilty of committing terrorist acts in Nicaragua.
So YOU stop being a dope, dumbass. Extremism can happen in any culture, just ask the folks in Oklahoma if you don't believe me.
I'm not the guy you were replying to, but you seem to have some facts wrong. The USA is not in a state of war; no war has been declared by Congress since WWII, so we haven't been in a state of war for nearly 60 years.
Moreover your basic argument is completely wrong. In times of war, in times of danger, that is when we MOST need our civil liberties defended. These are the times when a free and open government is most essential to our very survival. Freedom is not a luxury that we cast aside when times get tough, it is the very thing that allows our country to live at all. Freedom is not an impediment to our society, our survival, or our government, it is the very basis of all three.
If soviet style government works so well, why is the Soviet Union now vanished, while we stand strong? The truth is that secret police, hidden trials, and so forth simply don't work. If they did we'd have been the government that fell, not the Soviet Union. Do not fool yourself. The "pinkos" aren't those demanding that the US government obey the law, but those in the government trying to destroy our civil liberties.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Are you trying to make some kind of enlightening post on the state of our country and how bad it is. If you do not like it then maybe the country is not the problem you are. Or maybe your right and the United states is full of about 300 million lemmings and one free thinker, you. Wake the f up and realize although you have been taught to question what goes on around you and your not able to understand everything every one is doing it doesn't mean if you didn't set it in motion it is bad or evil.
I cannot believe so many slashdoters feel like our government is somehow inferior because of its faults. Then they turn around and gloss over the faults of other countries. Is there some unwritten law that technophiles must be either anti-socials or anti-America.
I guess once you have your education, it's OK to support a religion that stops all other women from getting theirs?
I guess anything to make big, mean, nasty America pay for the atrocites against Allah.... like tall buildings and shaved faces.
Even as a critic of Israel, I have to voice my dissent with THAT.
Difference 1: the Israelis aren't blowing up the holy sites of other religions (in fact, it has only been under Israeli stewardship that all three religions which claim that land as a holy place have had access to their own holy sites)
Difference 2: the Israelis aren't forcibly converting the masses to Judaism, and in fact teach evolution in schools, unlike the Taliban or, heck, Kansas.
Difference 3: the Israelis aren't stoning adulterers or crunching gays under walls (though clearly they have human rights problems of their own, including collapsing houses on people, but they are in fact still fighting a war with the Palestinians, and not meting out death as punishment through the legal system*)
Difference 4: Israeli women can work, wear whatever they like, learn to read, get an M.D., be Prime Minister (and leave the fscking house, for crying out loud), even though this is not in accordance with right-wing Orthodox Judaic beliefs.
Difference 5: Israel is not ruled by the iron grip of religious fundamentalism. It is a parliamentary democracy, like Britain and Canada. Israeli Arabs do, indeed, vote. The "Jewish" in "Jewish State" comes from its judicial system, which does base its decisions on Jewish law, but just as in the United States and other Western nations, there is a separation of power between legislation and the courts.
Difference 6: Israelis protest against their army's actions, and aren't hanged, stoned, shot, or maimed for doing so.
Should I go on?
* There is only one death penalty in Israel, which is reserved for Nazis.
How do you know US bullets did that? You were aware, right, that we bullhorned them to surrender. You do realize that they started firing RPGs and lots of bullets at our troops first, right? You do realize that any "civilian" would have gotten their butt out of there as fast as they could have once the soldiers started showing up, right?
You do realize there is a moral difference between deliberately targeting civilians and accidentally hitting civilians while engaging military targets, right?
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
The Taliban is not a country. In fact, the Taliban has never been a country. They were not generally, in fact, Afghani - many (I believe most) were foreigners who simply took over, as 1) Afghanistan wasn't able to resist, and 2) they wanted a country in which to practice the most extreme version of Islam. So it would be a mistake to assume there was hardly anyone in Afghanistan who voluntarily supported the Taliban.
Second, this guy was Palestinian as pointed out. So he's not defending a country - he's committing acts of aggression against a country he does not like by aiding an extremely violent terrorist regime with a history of targeted violence against civillians.
That's terrorism in pretty much any book.
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As someone trying to make a case against prejudice and stereotypes, I found the following very interesting:
White America still wants minority people dead.
This is one the most aggravating posts I've seen on Slashdot in a while. In trying to show how you were pre judged because of your appearance, you go on to portray every white American as people who wish every minority would die!? Did you not learn anything about the stupidity of prejudice in your experiences?
Slashdot for you. The factually false post bashing the US gets +4 Interesting, while the corrections pointing out facts that put the US case in a more favorable light get no higher than +2.
Figures.
-jimbo
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And then, after that, we hear "he looks like a terrorist(as laughable as that idea is)! He must support terrorism! Kill him!"
Let's turn the tables for a second: What if I had gone to live in China after marrying someone there, and had become a citizen. Let's also assume that I am originally a citizen of Canada (to establish the Pakistan-Afghanistan type of relationship). Then, out of anger at sanctions, China declares war on the U.S. The Chinese start doing all sorts of stuff to Americans in that country that are outside global human rights' agreements, and grossly immoral from almost any view. All over the world, similar views are being adopted, and it seems as if the Asians of the world are out to eradicate everyone who is, say, white and North American. I might be kinda pissed off -- maybe I'd even go to America and try to join the army, to protect my own and my family's right to freedom and non-discrimination. Doesn't sound so crazy, I think.
And finally, here is a great point: He obviously didn't care THAT much. After being turned away from Afghanistan, it's not like he went nuts and started shooting the border patrol. He didn't even DO anything. If he'd been that upset, he would have not come home to the U.S., but instead waited for an opportunity to get into Afghanistan.
In fact, I find it deplorable that we can even convict him of anything. He was going to go to a combat area to fight -- it's not terrorism. If he wanted to fight for what he believed is right in a way that doesn't involve non-combatants, I don't think that is terrorism in any way, shape or form. Instead, it's the most American way of voting possible, the same way the Revolutionaries voted. Though faced with impossible odds and nothing but his own ideals, "Mike" was willing to lay down his life for what he believed in sanctioned military conflict. Though he didn't get a chance to act upon those ideals, I would find it hard to believe that anyone could label such action criminal.
-----[0_o]-----
We are not amused.
He's not JUST pleading guilty. He's pleading guilty and providing information/evidence against the other six. Which tells me he was probably involved somehow.
That said, I still think the way he was treated is bullcrap. Guilty or not, some of his rights that we have (supposedly) guaranteed to us in this country were taken away. Sure a lot of people will say "He was guilty, who cares." Yeah, a lot of people don't care until one day maybe they get falsely accused, get snatched up, and aren't given the rights of the accused that is expected. I can't find the part in the constitution that talks about "If it's a matter of national security, then we rewrite the rules."
With the implementation of the Patriot Act the 4th amendment of the US constitution is basically null and void - its gone, and that's only the beginning. The replys of americans to Ians statement speak for themselves though: anyone opposing the actions of the US government is a "traitor", "unamerican" and should get lost. Right. Perhaps they're not aware that anyone questioning the decisions of the "Fuhrer" in Nazi-Germany was considered a traitor, too. Heil America
That Intel would be employing Middle Easterners, much less the Terrorists themselves. They can kiss my business goodbye - never again will I buy a chip from a company that employs those later found to be complicit in international terrorism.