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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."
look at him.. I don't mean to come off as a racist or anything, but seriously. when you are in fact a terrorist, wouldn't it make sense to sharpen up a little, maybe try and cut down on the co-worker-thinks-im-a-terrorist-because-i-look-lik e-this factor?
bite my glorious golden ass.
... you are a very bad person. You are hereby sentenced to seven years in a federal pound me in the ass prison.
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I worked with him and thought, up to now, that he was innocent.
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.
Damn, I was agreeing with you up to that sarcasm comment. Oh well.
On his Free Mike Hawash site, they still have paypal donations links, and statements about his 'innocence'. I wonder how much money they racked it.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
From the news bit:
"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.
"Yes, your honor," Hawash replied.
I had really hoped that the US Gov was wrong for nabbing a US citizen. I had hoped that there would be a suite against the gov for violating civil rights.
But Damn!
This doesn't look good.
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
Who wouldnt be mad at the US for thier policies?
But to conspire against the US to hurt civilians? He is going down. Thats not the way we do things here.
Remember when 'innocent until proven guilty' meant something?
I'm sure you'll change your tone if the government decides to 'own' you.
yeah but... it's fairly common for innocent people to plead guilty to lesser charges if they and their lawyers are convinced that they're likely to be convicted of something significantly more serious if it goes to trial. (One was a drinking buddy of mine.)
I'm not saying that this is the case here (in fact, it doesn't look like it at all) but it does happen, and I think it's one of the larger flaws in our justice system.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
The Taliban was a legit government, it had absolutely nothing to do with Al Qaeda just like Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, but terrorists were Wahabi, and the Taliban were Wahabi, and they both were around the same area, oh and the Bin Laden was friends with them.
I guess Bin Laden was friends with Saddam too, and Saudi Arabian, South Africa, etc.
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See America? The Patriot Act does work!
... nevermind that we still have hundreds who have been incarcerated for over a year now as "material witnesses" or what have you whose rights to habeas corpus are clearly being denied. But what do I know? Maybe in the eyes of Bush, it's worth it to jail hundreds of potentially innocent people to catch that one person with ties to the Taliban?
Well, once
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
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
FoxNews! The most factually solid news organization ever... anyway, I'm inclined to believe he was bullied into this plea deal.
"Just say you're guilty and we'll be easier on you"
Of course, I don't have any proof of this. But I just get that feeling. There is absolutely _NO_ reason to hold a person without charging them for five weeks. That's absurd. But then again, drumming up some charges does take a while.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
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."-
But they did mention that he worked for intel. Quoted from FoxNews.com Article: "In March, federal agents seized Hawash, 38, from a parking lot outside Intel Corp., where he worked, ..." (Re: "...Fox News fails to mention that he worked for Intel", hackwrench)
Why, are you willing to take up arms against the US and die as a martyr to defend the Taliban?
Then you should be afraid.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
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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
They're a fair and balanced news source...
Fair, balanced, and Slashdotted...
If he didnt plead guilty the Government could just declare him an enemy combantant and lock him up anyway, so it doesnt matter how he pleads, he pleads guilty because at least he will be in a normal prison and not guantonimo bay getting tortured or whatever (who knows what happens over there?)
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"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."
One conspirator is still at large. There are reasons for secrecy, one being not to tip off co-conspirators that you're on to them.
Vote for Pedro
agreeing to a plea bargain doesn't always mean you are guilty. Being convicted doesn't always mean you are guilty. Try to find an article on NPR-This american life, about the innocence project. That is personal terrorism.
***I know nothing about this case i am not commenting on it in specific***
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That is correct. The Taliban != Government.
They were only recognized as such by three countries out of the whole wide world. It wouldn't take many guesses to get all three.
The Taliban was a revolutionary force seeking to oust the legitimate governement recognized by the rest of the world. They held no aspects of government control but operated territory under their sway ( which never even amounted to a clear majority of territory) under pure martial law. They had no civil police. No civil law for such civil police to enforce.
When outside military forces entered Afghanistan they did so in support of the recognized legitimate government which still held the northern portion of the country and said government's military forces bore the brunt of the fighting.
KFG
Because Mula Omars Al Qaeda attacked us first.
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The Taliban was a legit government, it had absolutely nothing to do with Al Qaeda just like Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, but terrorists were Wahabi, and the Taliban were Wahabi, and they both were around the same area, oh and the Bin Laden was friends with them.
It's hard to define what a 'legit' government is. But you can't really argue that the Taliban had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. Everyone in the world knew that the Taliban was helping out Al Qaeda with money, lots of land for training camps, protection from the U.S., etc.
Everyone knew that Taliban and Al Qaeda were in bed. That's why everyone looked at Afghanistan on September 12.
no thanks
The Talaban is not a Terrorist Organization.
Well you are right in the sense that they are not a terrorist organization in that they are no longer an organization of any kind. When they blew up the Budda statues is when I knew that their days were numbered. Karma anyone?
Bin Laden called Saddam an Infidel.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
The royal family of Saudi Arabia are Wahabi, too. As I understand it, Wahabism is to Islam what Puritanism is to Christianity.
-B
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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
No. The Taliban is indefensible. I will speak out when the United States Government breaks the law. And when the arrest a guy who looks the wrong way and practices the wrong religion and hides him away for five weeks and THEN he pleads guilty, I have to believe him before I believe the US government.
So that's what happened to Mike Abrash??? Who woulda thunk...oh Hawash...
Never mind...dumb story anway...
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
o Only two countries, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, recognized the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan.
o The Taliban were kept in power by Arab fighters from Al Qa'ida. In turn, they provided a safe haven for Osama bin Laden's training camps and operations. That's where the world headquarters were, and the Taliban continued to protect Osama bin Laden even after the world saw the full extent of his evil.
o This wasn't very long ago and was extensively reported.
..I'm so glad I use AMD exclusively!
> Yeah, yeah spare me the "I knowed that he was guilty, he got a beard" rant. It proves nothing.
Could be worse; he might be a UNIX guru.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
The other 5 that have been charged so far have all plead not-guilty. How many of them will change their plea now that Hawash has agreed to testify against them?
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
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Well then by your argument Mike Hawash should have simply been arrested, turned over to the military and summarily executed. You know that is the punishment allowed under international law for someone who is a non-uniformed member of a foreign government attempting to engage in sabotage.
Nascantur in Admiratione. (Let them be born in Wonder)
Because the Talaban sheltered Al Quaeda, provided them land to build training camps, and refused to give up their leadership even after the attacks of 9/11?
I think that their direct support of Bin Laden makes a clear case that they are culpable for terrorism. And I don't even agree with the war on Iraq or any of the dozens of stupid things the Feds have done in the name of defending us from terrorism.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I agree, the whole plea bargain thing should be done away with. Either they have the goods on you or they don't, and you should either take the rap or not. Plea bargaining may save the system resources but it also creates a huge hole in the system for (a) innocents to fall into, and (b) actual criminals to slip through to lighter sentences. And of course, once you plea you are forever guilty - innocent people don't cop, as they say. The whole thing stinks.
The Taliban was a legit government
Woah, hang on there. The only country that recognized the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan was Pakistan. Nobody else in the world thought they were a "legit" government, and they didn't even represent Afghanistan in the United Nations.
And they had a hell of a lot to do with Al Qaeda. They provided logistical support and gave aid to Al Qaeda, and they did so knowing that he was carrying out terrorist activities (here is the US's stance on the Taliban). Nobody really disputes this. Some people have even speculated that Bin Laden requested Mullah Omar's approval before any terrorist act.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
Taliban were very bad guys.
They protected bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Gave them money. Let them use training camps. Protected them from the U.S. government.
"if you aren't with us, you're against us" is pretty strong rhetoric... but it definately applied to the Taliban.
no thanks
Actually, you are right. You wouldn't have been a terrorist. You'd have been a covert agent of an enemy power -- a spy. You would not have been held as a POW; you would have been held as an irregular combatant. Guess what? The Geneva conventions don't protect irregular combatants. Combatant nations are not legally bound to return irregular combatants to their countries of origin when conflict ends.
If you weren't shot out of hand, you'd have spent the rest of your life in a French jail, along with the other collaborators.
Somebody explain to me WHY the States gives hugs and kisses to the Geneva Conventions when they feel like it, and piss on them when it suits their own agenda?
I think you just answered your own question, they disregard the Geneva Conventions when it suits their agenda because they can.
Different views and beliefs, Yes. Wacky, no.
> They send suicide bombers into Pakistan to try to murder Musharraf. They are terrorists.
So what about the CIA's assassinations? Does that mean the political parties ruling the USA when it happened were terrorist organizations too?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"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 he was planning to go kill American soldiers. This does not make him a terrorist, true; but in my book, it makes him a very bad guy indeed.
I'm dissatisfied with the United States. I grew exponentially more dissatisfied after Sept 11, as I saw our civil liberties being sucked down the tubes and replaced with FUD, propaganda, and Big Brother-esque invasions of privacy. But you don't see me taking up arms against my fellow citizens.
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
Where does he say he was willing to take up arms against the US? He said he was willing to die defending the Taliban, a very different idea altogether.
> Everyone knew that Taliban and Al Qaeda were in bed. That's why everyone looked at Afghanistan on September 12.
Actually, lots of people looked at Iraq first. I still remember McCain's "nuke Baghdad" comment.
And of course, certain people looked at Iraq again, even after we knew they weren't behind it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I would at least plea no contest and not guilty.
I would also not state in questioning I was willing to take up marterdom<SP> to aid the Taliban.
I would also not have any information to help them catch a coconspiritor<sp>
The FBI may have overstepped its bounds, but this guy is guilty.
If the FBI did overstep its bounds people should lose lose their jobs, but the guy is guilty.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
No harm in blowing up un-Islamic artifacts, no harm in destroying their own country, no harm in making their women not study/go out in public/wear certain clothes.....I could go on and on.
I think you should read this: link
If you know someone just killed one of your neighbors' children, and you hide them in your house and refuse to put them out when the police come for them, why would you be surprised when the police come and storm your house? And who would say the police were not justified?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
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.
The whole thing reeks of a gov't conspiracy. At least, his friends and coworkers seem to think so.
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
Taliban-run government, bad thing. You can look up Taliban elsewhere for details.
Government holds an admitted supporter of the Taliban, one who tried to enter Afghanistan and take up arms against the US military, for 5 weeks without charges.
I suggest you look up the laws on "material witness". The government can detain someone deemed a material witness (with a warrant signed by a federal judge) if said witness is a flight risk. This guy had already attempted to travel to Afghanistan via China, so yeah, flight risk seems reasonable.
Despite your indignation, Hawash's attorney, Stephen Houze, said, "Hawash is not getting a raw deal.
Stephen Houze: This has been a very fair and even-handed proceeding with the government and we're satisfied with the course of action that we've taken"
(source for quote)
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IIRC, the last legitimate governmant in Afghanistan was the one the US helped the Mujahadin to destabilise, so that the USSR could have their own Vietnam. In so far as _anyone_ is currently governing Afghanistan, I don't think it's them.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
> Why, then, didn't they give up bin Laden when we asked?
Because we didn't show them the evidence against him, just as we would have demanded of them if they wanted us to hand over one of our citizens.
OK, that was probably just an excuse on their part, but there's no reason we couldn't have observed the norms.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The Taliban weren't a government.
Prior to 9/11, a grand total of three other nations ever recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan. After that, all three nations dropped that recognition for one reason or another.
To suggest that the Taliban were a legitimate government is to claim that the sole requisite for the legitimacy of a government is to possess a monopoly on the use of force. It's to claim that any group of thugs with Kalashnikovs and the willingness to slaughter all those who disagree with them is every bit as legitimate a government as a modern representative democracy, that Stalin was as legitimate a national leader as Roosevelt, or Kim Jong-Il as Chirac.
In other words, you're claiming that the LA Crips are a legitimate government.
Defending the Taliban against what? Um, The US perhaps?
Personally I think the Telibahn were an oppressive, inhumane lot of religeous thugs that deserved what they got. However the issue is not as clear cut if one is a moslem, I have read the Qu'ran, and if I actually believed that it was passed down from God I don't think there would be much ambiguity at all in what it would tell me to do. Die for Allah, and personally I have never seen such a pios implementation of what the Qu'ran teaches than what the Telibahn did (and I don't mean that in a wholly good way), and the invasion of Afghanistan would cirtainly be classified by a zealous Muslim as an attack on Islam.
Now what he did was planning to act against his country in a violent way. An action that cannot be allowed to continue and must be repremanded in some way. He also planned to help the Telebahn who were a monsterous bunch of tyrants. But surely was a very brave man to be willing to fight for what he believed in, against the country he dispises in a land so far from his own and should be respected accordingly.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
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
> When they blew up the Budda statues is when I knew that their days were numbered. Karma anyone?
So let that be a lesson to those who are tempted to troll away their karma on Slashdot! The universe has a way of evening out the score.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Beyond all that, this guy utterly failed to actually provide any aid to the Taliban, and it seems unlikely that he'd undertake any "true" terrorism
What an incredible statement. The guy tried to get into Afganistan by hiking through China. If that doesn't take some commitment, I don't know what does. What could possibly make you think that he wouldn't try and blow something up? Really, some of you people live in your own warped world...
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.)
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"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."
I think these guys are not as primitive as the propaganda machine makes them out to be. They do hide in caves but at the same time they also use the latest US consumer-grade gadgets, and maybe some military-grade gadgets (by way of France... just kidding), including encryption (thank you Pres. Clinton) which requires at least a couple of days to be decrypted*. I would think not all Talibani would just take up arms. Some white collar/geek Talibanis would resort to intellectual terrorism. This would make a perfect 007 movie plot. *If my memory stand correct, that was the number of days after 9/11 when some of the intercepted communications were decrypted.
He will serve at least seven years in federal prison under the deal.
Would that be a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison?
We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked.
> Remember when 'innocent until proven guilty' meant something?
Back in the good ol' days, before the War on Drugs?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Hey, it's Fox News ... they report ... you decide.
Actually, I work in the Fox News building for another company. Today during lunch they were covering two wood-chopping guys swinging axes out on 6th ave. That's newsworthy.
My "way of life" is NOT the same as my technology void friends. (who say I have no life 2 begin with)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Hey, hey. Ho, ho. TedCheshireAcad is not knowledgeable about the U.S. justice system. But even in this case, he should be. Remember when we all thought the RIAA was overstepping its bound when it sued the 3 college kids for billions in damages? Remember when all 3 settled for between $12,000-18,000. Remember when one of the kids later was _proven_ to have not in fact violated any copyright -- as he was being sued for having coded a searching service for his University's campus, much like Google. In short, plea agreements do not guilt establish. Especially when the the plea agreement stand in sharp contrast to the potential penalties and costs of going to trial.
The United States court systems treatment of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners is proof that when the U.S. government shouts terrorism, you better cop a plea. 'Cause justice ain't forthcoming.
If none of this is convincing, read the affadavit which is the basis of the indictment against Michael. Then read it again. Then tell us the United States government had anything but a smoke and mirrors case against Michael Hawash. (Fox News' reporting isn't even close to accurate.)
Poor analogy. Dubya's perceptions notwithstanding, US != global policeman.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
A terrible tragedy to one of the most ancient, cultured and best educated Islamic dominated countries.
I'd very much like to have seen it in it's better days. The odds that it will ever come even close to recovery in my, or my children's, lifetime is slim.
KFG
Unlike Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, etc., the Taliban knowingly harbored and supported terrorists. When we told them to hand over Osama bin Laden, they flat out refused. The Taliban regime knowingly (key word) supported al-Qaeda. Now, some can say the same about Saudi Arabia, but the Saudis aren't publically defying us (they claim they're fighting terrorists, etc, and they're handing suspects over to us)... although, this doesn't necessarily mean the Saudis aren't our enemies (I, personally, believe they should be considered an enemy of the United States).
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.
as opposed to draft dodger cocaine smoker alcoholic GW Bush on that aircraft carier sweet jesus, americans have collectively lost their minds.
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.
Look up the definition of Treason. Aiding and Abetting. Not so different an idea after all.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Yeah, I bet they weren't tipped off at all. http://www.freemikehawash.org/
If you loved America, then you'd love their right to say and think what they want, fraud. Please, tell me how jailing people who write public, non-violent articles against the Bush administration is protecting me
Well, we'll let you hang out with us when you quit wearing dresses and calling yourself "Sherrie". I mean, it's not that we don't like you, it's that you look bad in those plaid dresses. Blech.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
Errrr, didn't the USSR destabilize the government by invading in the first place?
Actually, if you know your history, it wasn't the Taliban that emerged out of the CIA-backed resistance. Afghanistan stood on its own for a few years after the Soviets were expelled... but a civil war broke out in 1990, I believe. The Taliban didn't emerge until 1995!!
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.
I think you're the one in the warped world if you think all that's the same. Your logic is the logic that actually SUPPORTS the case the terrorists make, that you and I simply by being Americans are therefore responsible for all the stupid verging on evil things that the CIA and our military do in "covert ops" that harm innocent people.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
"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.
You mean like America did exactly the same thing for Bin Laden when Russia was in Afghanistan or have you forgot that already?
They were commiting doing the same things then but to Russia but no that doesn't count does it?
If another country was funding our freedom fighters while we were boing occupied and then after we got freedom turned around and tried to take our freedom from us so that our freedom fighters attcked them I wouldn't turn around and hand them in?!?!?!?
America funded Bin Laden to get rid of Russia (Imagine of they got control of the middle east with all that oil!) and made promises they didn't plan on keeping. Russia leaves and America goes back on it word. You have a large well funded group of people that have been stabed in the back and people got supprised when the reacted?!?!?
I know what they did was wrong but try and imagine what you'd do if you were in that possition.
How many girls went to school under the Taliban?
Non issue. We don't go to war against other oppressive regimes? We used economic sanctions against South Africa for decades before I was born. We give MFN to Red China!!
What did they do to homosexuals? Bury them alive.
Another non-issue. What does that have to do with the safety or security of the US? Nothing!
And you talk about "proof" Bin Laden pulled off the 9/11 attacks after comparing the Taliban to Jews? You anti-semitic utter fucking moron, Bin Laden claimed responsibility - he had the means, the motive, the organization, and the history.
I don't know if you're trolling of if this is a serious response, so I'll treat it seriously.
1. The Original poster said that the fundamentalist Muslims of the Taliban were wacky because they don't eat pork and expect women to cover themselves. I pointed out the Orthodox and Hasidic Jews don't eat pork and their women cover their heads. What is antisemitic about speaking the truth?
2. Jews and Arabs are BOTH SEMITIC PEOPLE!!!! How can comparing two like things be antisemitic?
Instead of tossing anti-semitic and anti-American fantasies, why don't you tell me who you believe attacked the US on 9/11, and that French tanker a few months ago, and that Bali nightclub full of Australians and that hotel in Indonesia a few days ago?
I have said nothing anti-semitic or antii-american. My statements were anti-unjust war. All credible evidence points to Osama and his laughing boys, but that still doesn't change any of the points from my original post, that the Taliban government of Afghanistan acted in a manner that is consistant with what any other reasonable country would have done in the situation.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I don't recall claiming that we were blameless. The fact remains that they should have handed him over in some way or form after it was clear what had been done by his organization.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Remember ...
... they hurt our economy by destroying resources, spreading fear, and general mayhem.
...
... maybe you have a point :)
dark middle-eastern looking men are Terrorists
white balding men are Embezzalers and Stock Manipulators (for instance a certain umbrella organization or "canopy" group we can all think of), they hurt the economy by destroying competitors resources (money, clients, possible engagements/sales), spreading fear and
hmmm
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
The guy wasn't whisked away in the night never to be seen again (despite slashdot headlines to the contrary). The judge signed off to hold him as material witness, so there was indeed "due process" whether you like it or not.
{ - Generic Guy - }
Scuse me? Extradition treaty with a "government" that only two other governments in the world recognized? I'm thinking a formal request was made through reasonable diplomatic channels (probably through Pakistan). Beyond that, what do you expect us to have done when dealing with a government that was not recognized as legitimate?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Actually its more funny that this article made it past the editors. Its on Fox it must be bad.. but wait its about someone we feel should be free. I guess the freedom thing wins out. Even though this guy is gulity. Remeber the "ends dont jusity the means." Howerd Dean about two weeks ago. Tell that to the 50 million people that dont have to worry about a mad man anymore.
Right around the time you offer up anything to indicate he was arrested only based on his appearance.
Pretty lucky guess, if he's pleading guilty and that's all they had to go on when they picked him up.
-transiit
Oh, and I've noticed you've given up on your usual bifurcation sig (You know, shit like "Support transgaming or you're against games on linux".) Too many people call you on the informal fallacy, or just going for what you see as the popular sentiment?
How about I/T departments that are sent overseas?
Instead of trainging terrorists to fight, teach them to code.
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?
With the threats they probably used against him he would probably have said that black was white if they wanted him to. The list of those that agree to pleas but later are proven innocent is longer than most people might imagine. Consider being given the choice of pleading guilty and serving 5 years, or fighting it out in what must at this point appear to him as a frighteningly hostile environment, and serving 20 - what would you do, guilty or not?
"Innocent until proven guilty" is an addage that is appropriate when there is not any evidence available to support a charge. When there is evidence, then you are guilty. Had the FBI/CIA acted upon intelligence pertaining to the 9/11 attacks and made arrests, we would have been complaining about it as we are now... but after the fact, its a whole different story. The government instituted the RIOO act in 1970, tailored towards combating organized crime. It has come time, imho, that combating terrorism has got to involve more prevention than reaction - minimizing the abuse of a terrorist's rights (as that terrorist tries to take ours) is secondary to preventing their hostile actions.
Trivial Omnipotence
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
Actually it's a Public Radio Interational program: This American Life but a lot of their programs are carried on NPR. It's a good show.
- i'd normally feel inclined to give someone the benefit of the doubt, but in light of his guilty plea, i feel no pity for this miscreant... - i hope he leave prison with an anus enlarged by many unwanted advances by fellow 'gender conflicted' inmates... - in other countries he would be beheaded, but in the United States he'll get three hots and a cot, reading material, exercise, and access to a lawyer... that's still too good for this son-of-a-female-dog...
Does that justify all of our response? Does that mean we are justified in treating Saudi Arabia with kid gloves instead of more military? Probably not, but it's really really really stupid to say "why would anyone confuse the Taliban with Al Quaeda?"
I don't even think that just because Mike was trying to support the Taliban that he should be treated like a terrorist (I don't see any factual data to support the assertion that he was any kind of threat to US civilians, for example), but that wasn't the question the original poster asked.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
You're saying you'd plead guilty, then piss the judge off by holding back information and threatening to become a martyr? How would that help you?
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth.
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?
Err.. my apologies for the double-post. RICO act, not RIOO.
Trivial Omnipotence
He obviously hasn't been shaving or something since he's been in jail. He hasn't always looked like that.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Mike doesn't get to choose the plea.
Dying in defense of the Taliban in a general sense is not criminal in any manner. His answer to the question does not establish guilt for what he'd been accused.
"Co-"conspirators had already been named. Mike is just being required to provide testimony against them in exchange for lenience against him. This does not mean he "has" any information which establishes his or their guilt.
We will never know if Mike is guilty due to the plea bargain. I read the affadavit the case is based on -- it is very clear the government's case rested on smoke and mirrors more than any thing else.
The U.S. government overstepped its bounds by holding a citizen without counsel, habeas corpus, charges, etc, etc, for 5 weeks.
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).
Completely ass-backwards. John Walker-Lindh decided his higher purpose in life was to become the best Muslim he could be. If you read the Time Magazine article about him, he comes off as more a misguided kid with too-liberal parents who refused to take the reigns than anything else. However stupid and wrong-headed he was, his goal was not the destruction of the United States, and he never fired a shot in battle. His goal was the life of a devout Muslim, and he decided for whatever dumb reason that it was the Taliban and the Taliban alone who were the only group practicing "pure" Islam in the world at the time.
This guy, on the other hand, was simply angry at the United States and actively plotted to join the battle against his countrymen (he is a US citizen, whatever his country of birth). Worse, he did so with others - which, by definition, is conspiracy.
Whether or not he actually succeeded is by and large irrelevant (though there would have been more charges filed if he'd have been caught gun in hand on a battlefield as Lindh was). Our laws in this country are based just as much (if not moreso) on intent as on action. And quite honestly, that was just as true before we were concerned with terrorism as it is now. You kill someone, it matters why you did it - the charge will be different depending on whether or not it was deliberate, and whether or not you planned it in advance. The same is true of many other crimes, and you've never had to be guilty of actual murder to be guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, the basic equivalent to what this guy pleaded guilty to.
In many countries (supposed "free" ones, even) it is perfectly legal to hold someone in jail without charge for long periods of time, or simply on "suspicion" of committing a crime (without actually being charged with that crime). Our "material witness" status provides basically the same thing. Suspects in crimes are often labeled as "material witnesses" when the government knows that person had something to do with the crime committed but does not have enough evidence to level a formal charge. In the case of someone plotting to kill US servicemen and women, I think it is perfectly appropriate that that person be detained as long as necessary to ensure they do not flee the country, giving them even more impetus to actually carry out the plan for which they are being detained.
I'm all for liberty and freedom and blah blah blah. But it's one thing to be a libertarian, quite another to be stupid and self-destructive in your beliefs. The fact is there are people out there who want to kill you - maybe not you specifically, but you in general, and there's no reason to coddle those people. It was several weeks, as I recall, before John Malvo was formally charged with anything directly related to his little shooting spree (he was also held as a "material witness"), and I don't remember a big uproar around here about that. The fact is we were all sure he had done the crime, and even though he was a minor, and even though he's supposedly innocent until proven guilty, so what if he's being kept in jail without charge? What I'm saying is you can't have it both ways. Either you accept that the government has to have some amount of leeway in protecting the public, or you don't. In either case you take your chances, but I'd personally rather take my chances at being thrown in jail for a couple weeks for something I didn't do (the chances of which seem pretty remote to me) than being shot at by a known sniper or blown up by a known terrorist (the chances of which seemed pretty good to me as I watched the WTC burn outside my w
According to this article, in the prosecution of the "Buffalo Six", they plead guilty mainly because the government was threatening to declare them "Enemy Combatants". In such a case, they could be held without trial indefinitely in solitary confinement, or face a military tribunal and possible execution.
Or you can do 7 years (less, with good behavior) knowing you are innocent. What would you do?
He was held for five weeks without being charged with any crime. Is that "due process?"
It doesn't matter if this guy was indeed guilty or whatever. If he had been guilty, then they should have charged him with a crime at the time. They didn't. They held him for months without charging him at all. This is absolutely improper.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
First; there is under international law in this area (the Geneeva Convention, which USA signed and ratified) any category as "irregular combatants" or the often used "unlawful combatant". Classifying a person as such a thing is actually in itself a violation of the Geneva Convention.
However there are categorys , such as mercenaries, who are not accorded the full protection of the Third Geneva Convention. But, and here comes the crucial part: If there is any doubt whether someone is a POW, an independent court must decide their status.
In this case I'm not shure wheter he is in any way "covered" by the Geneva Convention as the article is not very extensive on information.
But the US government don't have a very good track record when it comes to following the GC.
For example in the Guantanamo Bay case, since the status of the prisoners is unclear (POW or not POW) the case should have been decided by an independant court such as a court in Switzerland, Sweden or any other national court in a country that is not a part in the conflict.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Hm. Providing land for terrorist training. Providing money. Accepting logistical and military aid. Refusing to assist in arrest.
That sounds like a lot more than "association".
I'm not talking about Mike here, I'm talking about The Taliban. I'm not defending our policy towards Saudi Arabia. And I'm not towing any party line, I was simply answering the really fucking stupid question "why would anyone confuse the Taliban with Al Quaeda?" I think it's clear that the two were closely related, and I don't recall saying that all our actions in response to that fact were justified.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
If you think killing 10,000 of inocent + a couple of guilty people is just then I pitty you.
Look at any Enron for example. 98% of the people in the company knew nothing and were doing the right thing. There were a couple of people in the company who did the wrong thing does that mean we should killeveryone who work for Enron?
The Taliban lived with the people. They were the people. How many people starved to death because the American were blowwing up sheep with missiles worth $1.4 Million? Do you think it was the Leaders or the people at the bottom? Would you like to be killed because you voted for the greenies last year?
All I'm trying to say is look at thing objectively!
Umm...
- Iraq was not in the name of terrorism, it was in the name of preventing proliferation of WMD
- The Taliban was put into government in Afghanistan by the USA
- Aiding and abeting terrorists does not make them culpable
- Even if it did, someone helping someone who helps terrorists is not a terrorist
Just a few clarifications..."But everyone should know everything." -markab
Fair enough. So instead of "the police" how about "that neighbor"? In a situation where there really aren't any police, what's the right thing to do? The UN does NOT count as "the police".
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I remember hearing a story done on this once on NPR. A 12 year old girl was murdered in her house and the only other person *in* the house once police arrived was her 15 year old brother. I don't remember everything about it but what I clearly remember is that he was bullied into confessing that he killed his 12 year old sister (later they found the actual murderer). They (the NPR show) played the tapes of his confession. It was disgusting... basically these two 'cops' were telling him that he failed a [fabricated] lie detector test and insisted that he was the one who killed his 12 year old sister until he began to break down and start to believe that he may have actually done it and couldn't remember it. I'm not sure about this case but from what I've seen out of the current administration in particular with regards to "Homeland Security" I have no reason to put trust what the feds say is even "usually" true; especially when they kidnap people and hold them for five weeks illegally and hold secret court hearings.
The exact same way Joe McCarthy got so many "communists" to testify against each other.
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.
I think that their direct support of Bin Laden makes a clear case that they are culpable for terrorism.
No you have it wrong, this conversation is supposed to be about the Taleban, not the US Government.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I'll probably get modded down for this, but oh well...
I'm still undecided about a possible Al-Qaeda/Iraq relationship. They share(d) similar goals, and they might have been working together on some level. But it probably can't be proved either way at this point.
However, you can't conclude that they weren't working together simply because bin Laden said so. I'm always amused by the anti-USA people who rant and rave about how the government lies and come up with all kinds of theories, but because bin Laden said this, why, it obviously PROVES al-Qaeda and Hussein weren't allies!
And no, I'm not implying that you're definitely one of those people.
And you have knowledge that this was Mike Hamwash's goal? Sounds to me like his goal was defense of the Taliban, same as Lindh's.
As for Malvo, they had reason to believe he was responsible, they should have charged him, period. I was not aware that he was held as "material witness" and I'd be just as against it for him as for Hamwash. If you have a crime to charge him with, charge him and hold him, end of story.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
True that, and Bill O'Reilly is the pit-bull used to attack opinions that waver from the FoxNews marching tune!
--------
Free your mind.
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
Could someone explain why people are comparing the Taliban to Al Queda? To my knowledge, the Taliban was a ruling party of a country that had a military as well as all other aspects of governmental control. This would make individuals who helped and served under them solders or agents (spies, commandos, ect...). The Taliban is not a Terrorist Organization. So why are people who helped them being compared and tried as terrorists?
Well, we were at war with them, so attempting to help them would be considered Treason. but the standard of evidence for that is quite high.
If he really wanted to help the Taliban stay in power, then he should be shot. But who knows, maybe he just signed this confession because he didn't want to try to risk the other charges?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
No.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is an addage that is appropriate when there is not any evidence available to support a charge.
"An adage" is a very peculiar way of describing the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Supreme Law of the Land.
It has come time, imho, that combating terrorism has got to involve more prevention than reaction
The entire modern system of justice rests on the pillar of adjudication. Take that away and you have a mockery.
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
Seemed to me like *ALL* the women of Afghanistan were terrorized by the Taliban. Do you have to be an international terrorist to be called a terrorist??? They were far from an official government. They were just a bunch of thugs who were in control of a (big?) part of Afghanistan.
Every time a bomb goes off, many groups claim responsibility. That doesn't constitute proof
Okay... okay... you got me. The US Government actually conducted criminal investigations into what terrorist groups killed our citizens in the pre-9/11 attacks. Strangely enough... the trail led back to Al Qaeda, bin Laden, and Afghanistan.
My thoughts (and others) are not proof... but they did represent how pretty much everyone knew bin Laden to be a bad guy who would do JUST that sort of thing.
What planet are you from, btw? I can understand hating war, not liking America, and all that. But can you not see that the Taliban and Osama bin Laden were Bad Guys who should have been dealt with somehow, even before all the 9/11 craziness?
no thanks
So what do you think of Bush, whose administration paid the Taliban $40+ million not long before 9/11? I smell hypocracy.
"...held him as a material witness until charges were filed five weeks later."
Is anyone else disturbed by this?
>There's a reason it's the right wing.
because it needs a left wing. So they can work together to run everything for their real goals and desires which they truly have in common.
-pyrrho
I'm curious, can you show me the section of the Geneva Convention that requires an independent court? I read it and it said if there is doubt it must go before a tribunal, how that tribunal is to be constituted is unspecified.
Nascantur in Admiratione. (Let them be born in Wonder)
The FOX article was pretty light on but I'm guessing your new Patriot Act helped hold him for so long. Somewhere else on /. a poster said that a judge signed off on holding him as a material witness. Surely you guys have a seperation of powers? Your judiciary decides who's guilty and innocent on the facts available. Why is a judge deciding whether or not a man can be held without charge? Seems like a rubber stamp to me.
It seems like the executive is getting permission to do something from someone who does not have the power to give that permission. Yes, the legislature may have granted the judiciary the power but it does not fall under normal judicial powers, totally circumvents due process and, I would guess, would be unconstitutional.
Well at least he's better of that the guys living in dog kennels at Guantanamo Bay.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
So because he wanted to provide mercenary military aid on the field of battle, suddenly he is equivalent to people who kill civilians because they want to make a statement? Going to a war zone to defend those you think are right is the same thing as planting a bomb in your home town/state/country (where it may kill your own family members)?
/.
I see your point but I honestly think that in this case (fundamentalist muslims/taliban/etc.) they truly are one in the same -- by their own admission in fact. See, these groups (taliban et al.) unabashedly promote and support all means to accomplish thier goals ("proper" war or terrorism -- war zone or your home town/state/country).
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)".
I mean, c'mon. They don't even try to hide the fact that there is nothing taboo, no "below-the-belt" restrictions, no Geneva Convention. It's all about what some charismatic (and rich) nut claims that Allah wants. 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.
This guy was, IMHO, acting treasonously and he got caught. They held him without any fanfare for 5 weeks because there were others to nab in his ring and they wanted to minimize the public knowledge of what was going on. The 5 weeks still sounds long to me, but it sure does seem a whole lot less sinister than the comments on the first story on this guy here on
everything in moderation
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?
Oh wait, that would be the CIA
Hindsight is 20/20. If anyone knew what was going to happen in the future I'm sure we wouldn't have trained them. Problem is that we can only deal with what we know at the time to make decisions. I don't know all of what was going on when we trained them, but I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The Taliban needed to die and now they are dead, what exactly are you complaining about?
(9/11, btw, did not alter my opinion about them in anyway)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
My thoughts (and others) are not proof... but they did represent how pretty much everyone knew bin Laden to be a bad guy who would do JUST that sort of thing.
/. why we shouldn't have been in a war.
I'm the sort of guy who'd pee on someone's rose bush if I didn't like them. That doesn't mean that just because my neighbors rose bush smells of urine, that I'm to blame. Like I said before, all evidence indicates that Osama's merry little band is to blame for 9/11, but that still does not justify the bombing of Afghanistan. Osama was/is not a member of the Taliban.
But can you not see that the Taliban and Osama bin Laden were Bad Guys who should have been dealt with somehow, even before all the 9/11 craziness?
Osama, of course. Taliban? No. They were the legitimate government of a soverign nation. They had broken no international laws. They didn't pose an immediate threat to the safety or security of my country. There was no justification for attacking them.
My irony meter just exploded, here we have a right wing republican (me) trying to explain to the left wing peacenicks here on
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
that the Taliban government of Afghanistan acted in a manner that is consistant with what any other reasonable country would have done in the situation
A reasonable country would have extradited a known terrorist ringleader, and wouldn't have been given him and his Really Evil organization support to begin with.
Or do you think they were afraid the U.S. wouldn't give bin Laden a fair trial? Yeah, that sounds about right.
ps- you don't have to prove the guy did it before the trial actually begins. What's the point of a trial, then?
no thanks
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.
or blowing up federal buildings? Oh wait, he wasn't bald.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I felt very much the same way he did.
Before 9/11 I was just an average minority guy. On 9/11, I was as shocked and devastated as everyone else. I spent hours in front of a TV with my co-workers wondering at the hugeness of it all and at the pain of it all.
But over the weeks that followed, things began to change.
I have always worn a little facial hair, and I have a dark complexion. I never thought twice about it, I thought I looked better with a little facial hair.
Well... After 9/11, I got accused by people I formerly thought I knew very well. Apparently many of them had no idea about my ethic background and were prepared to simply assume that everyone who wasn't white, black or chinese was Arabic. People would stop talking about 9/11 and the pain they felt when I came in the room. They would give me looks that I'll never forget.
I began to be accused in public places. People would actually yell out on busy streets: "Hey, check out the terrorist!" and people would catcall, throw drinks out of their cars at me, give me poor service at restaurants...
After 9/11, I began to realize that my "fellow Americans" actually hated my guts and wanted me dead. In fact, when I began to observe peoples' interactions with one another, I realized that much of the NAACP's lobby is actually right on the money... White America still wants minority people dead.
Once I came to this realization, it wasn't hard to begin to feel like I don't belong after all. Like maybe these aren't my people. When someone demanded to search me before letting me into their stupid little restaurant, it was easy to begin to feel as though I was betraying those who were like me if I was to allow myself to be searched or treated in this manner.
9/11 showed me that America is a hateful place. It proved that unlike in Europe (that Americans seem to hate with a passion), in America 3,000 white dead outweigh by a generous margin 3,000 Afghani dead or 3,000 Iraqi dead.
No, I'm not Arabic, either, or a Muslim. But I've been accused of as much umpteen times since 9/11 even though I was born here, and my parents were born here. That's right, accused. Being non-white is an accusation in the US.
So I can understand this guy's feelings after 9/11 because I had them too, and I wasn't even of the same heritage. And I, too, now wear a much longer beard than I ever did. Why? I suppose it's my little demonstration of anger at the way I was treated after 9/11.
This American Life is not NPR, its distributed by PRI (public radio international) out of WBEZ in Chicago. You can find archives on http://thislife.org
A reasonable country would have extradited a known terrorist ringleader, and wouldn't have been given him and his Really Evil organization support to begin with.
A reasonable country would have extradited him, if and when we provided them with some proof.
Or do you think they were afraid the U.S. wouldn't give bin Laden a fair trial? Yeah, that sounds about right.
How many fair trials have been given to the men detained in Cuba?
you don't have to prove the guy did it before the trial actually begins. What's the point of a trial, then?
Let's for a moment, pretend that we're talking about a US Citizen in a regular criminal case(which you apparently are). You have to have SOME evidence, or you can't even get an indictment.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
...when he attempted to enter Afghanistan and take up arms against his country.
Now let him lie in that bed. 7 years ain't a bad deal considering what he tried to do.
Same with those damn witches, but we dealt with them eh?
I have to say that I suspect this guy to be guilty, but there has been sufficient monkeying-about with his due-process rights that it is not safe to accept anyone's testimony including his own on face value. All these cases should be tried in the clear light of day, in the open where we can all see what the facts are and where twelve members of the public can decided what to believe instead of some administration appointees and their fucked-up apparatus that failed to prevent 9-11.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
No shelter was provided, nor was land provided, nor did they build any training camps (though our government did.)
And they offered to turn over bin Laden & Co. after the attacks, just not on the ridiculous terms set by the U.S. They wanted them to stand trial in some third country, that was hopefully impartial.
And by the way, there is absolutely no evidence that bin Laden committed the 9/11 attacks in the first place. None whatsoever. FBI Director Mueller has admitted as much.
There is however very convincing evidence that Israel at least knew about the attacks in advance.
Sorry, but that's just the way it is.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
From the article:
It's amazing what you run across when you RTFA...then again, you wouldn't have been able to get in a gratuitous jab at Fox News if you had done that.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Secretive has NOTHING to do with being right (especially in an investigation). If someone you arrested for child molestation didn't do it, would you (as an investigator) want to put your name on the report as being the accuser? You just destroyed someone's integrity as a human being just by being the accuser. Sucks, but true.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
Osama, of course. Taliban? No. They were the legitimate government of a soverign nation. They had broken no international laws. They didn't pose an immediate threat to the safety or security of my country. There was no justification for attacking them.
I wouldn't argue with you over the Taliban's soverignty (though many would). But they kinda DID pose an immediate threat to the safety and security of the country. And did for a number of years before 9/11/01.
I mean, if you said the same for Iraq. Yeah, I can see where you're coming from.
But the Taliban kinda WERE supporting the terrorist organization bent on destroying Americans, which they had been doing to some success. Which is kind of illegal. Internationally illegal.
Soverignty not a factor... religion not a factor... the fact that they were bad guys not a factor... they were still supporting an evil terrorist organization that was killing people. And they didn't STOP or anything when we asked them to. They kept on doing it. I mean... I'm interested to know how you reconcile that with your position.
no thanks
ChewPlastic.com?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Innocent people do not plead guilty.
What makes you say that? Do you have any evidence for this claim? Certanly there is a lot of evidence that it's false.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Wake up - things aren't so black and white - one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
He was considered a material witness, not necessarily a criminal, therefore they had reason to charge him at the time.
The reason he was held in custody is because he was considered a flight risk.
There's nothing illegal or unusual about how he was handled. If you chose to disagree on whether he was a flight risk or not, that's a separate matter.
Let's for a moment, pretend that we're talking about a US Citizen in a regular criminal case(which you apparently are). You have to have SOME evidence, or you can't even get an indictment
Sure. We figured out that some of the hijackers had Al Qaeda connections, and that it was probably an Al Qaeda operation. bin Laden fashioned himself the leader of Al Qaeda. Reasonable to assume he knew something about what his Evil Terrorist Organization was up to.
Or else we could have used all the evidence the FBI and such was collecting about him regarding pre 9/11 stuff. I mean, the guy had a bit of a file down at the Bureau, ya know? We could have extradited him easy on that stuff alone (in fact we tried to a few times)
no thanks
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.
Woah, first off I'm sure he gave his pledge of allegiance honestly. The USA was a very different country 14 years ago. It was a country where we tried and convicted Americans that promoted terrorsism like John Poindexter and Oliver North. Now one of those traitors is heading up the TIA and the other is a motivational speaker.
Just because someone is naturalized does not mean they ever had to take an oath of any kind. I was born at the only hospital near the military base my mother was living at. She immediately applied for my citizenship and I have been a naturalized citizen since before I knew we were still following that tragic example of the Spartans*. Or much less that we still used that other tool of oppression the super class conscious British Empire invented, the passport. She could have been anywhere outside the United States and could have applied for my citizenship, at the time any white child born to an American citizen had the right to citizenship. Now you are an alien under our laws until you are naturalized but then it was just a formality, if your mother was a citizen you had the right to a citizenship and could apply for it when you felt like it.
*The Spartans kept redefining citizenship after their pride ran even higher at the defeat of Athens, narrowing and narrowing it until there were just a thousand full citizens left. Then they battled the tiny city next door, who after decades of being plundered had learned to fight. They put ten men on every one Spartan, they wiped out four hundred of them in one fell swoop. Sparta soon lost not only it's slave class but all the tens of thoasands of people who had their citizenship stripped for not being patriotic enough or not paying their taxes promptly enough or marrying the wrong woman, etc. A few hundred years later they were a turist attraction for the Romans; a Colonial Williamsburg of their day, except they whipped boys to death in dramatic retellings of their former glory.
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 law is an ass and it needs very careful guidance in order to make sure that it doesn't get it wrong.
People accused of crimes need to be tried publically with all the evidence available for the perusal of citizens.
If you honestly believe that "those guys don't care about the US, the [sic] just want to make sure they don't alow [sic] their kids to eat pork, etc etc etc" you're very wrong. The creation of the Talebani state was not only about Afghanistan, but was about the entire world. They made this very clear.
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
First of all, the doctrine in question is not "innocent until provent guilty", it is "presumed innocent until proven guilty." This is a very important distinction.
A person's guilt or innocence is established the moment a crime is (or is not) committed. It is completely independent of the amount of proof the State has.
It is only when the State seeks to extract punishment that our judicial system dictates a presumption of innocence until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
And secondly, the Fifth Amendment makes no explicit mention of this doctrine. The closest it comes is the guarantee of "due process"; but this vague term does not immediately imply a presumption of innocence or a particular burden of proof. The Sixth Amendment details the rights afforded a person in trial (jury trial, right to call rebuttal witnesses, right to counsel, etc.), but again, does not mention the presumption of innocence.
The presumption of innocence is a much older doctrine, I believe several hundred years before the U.S. was founded, which has (very deservedly!) served as a benchmark for benevolent systems of justice.
Wow...typical lawyer speech. Defense of the Taliban during wartime would be considered treason; at least by military rules...which we're not dealing with here. It's civilian rules..which I guess by your standpoint they're innocent until proven guilty. I think you should be their lawyer.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
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.
Actually, lots of people looked at Iraq first. I still remember McCain's "nuke Baghdad" comment.
Yeah... the same people who still think the 9/11 hijackers were mostly Iraqi.
Fortunately back then... we didn't go try and prove Iraq had an Al Qaeda link which didn't exist. I mean, Afghanistan's was pretty obvious. But Iraq's was nonexistent.
no thanks
"...John Walker-Lindh decided his higher purpose in life was to become the best Muslim he could be. If you read the Time Magazine article about him, he comes off as more a misguided kid with too-liberal parents who refused to take the reigns than anything else. However stupid and wrong-headed he was, his goal was not the destruction of the United States, and he never fired a shot in battle."
Actually John Walker Lindh did fire a shot in battle.
In The Hunt for Bin Laden - Task Force Dagger - by Robin Moore they talk about him.
CIA operatives Mike Spann and Dave Tyson interview JWL at Qala-i-Jangi and are recorded on tape talking to him.
Something goes wrong, Dave leaves Mike behind and runs.
Delta, the Green Beret Boxer element under Lt. Col. Bowers goes in with some 10th Mountain Light Infantry.
When Spann's body is recovered his wounds and questioning of prisoners indicate he was taken alive, tortured, legs broken, shot in either kidney with a handgun and then shot in the back of the neck.
Now back to John Walker.
He was with a cadre of Al-Qadea that refused to surrender. They went into a dungeon and waited out ice-cold water being poured into the dungeon, then waited out diesel being poured in and lit. Then they poured in gasoline and jet fuel. Then they gave up.
When JWL walked to an aid station he was interviewed by a Newsweek reporter and said he was Suleyman al-Faris. He was wearing an old Pakistani Army wool sweater and an olive-drab shirt, standard issue Al Qadea combat clothes. He had gun powder stains across the right side of his face which matched the powder stains seen on those who fire AKs for a living on other Al Qadeas.
In JWL's interviews to Newsweek he plays down his role and what he was doing in Afghanistan. In his interviews with US Soldiers he didn't play down his role. He supported the attack on the USS Cole, he admitted to knowing about the 9-11 attacks were coming as far back as June 2001. He was informed that OBL had sent operatives to the US, he said OBL was his leader and that Americans must die to "cleanse the world of the infidel." He'd been assigned to the Takhar Province but after the Al Qadea forces there were bombed he and his comrades marched a 100 miles to Kunduz. He admitted the Taliban didn't want him since he only spoke Arabic, so he went to Al Qadea. He admitted his goal was to be martyred dying in combat against the Americans.
The Americans got him from the Northern Alliance, the other Al Qadea and non-Afghani Taliban who revolted were executed.
JWL bragged that he'd met OBL. He said OBL "thanked me personally for taking part in the Jihad."
He was a member of Al Qadea who was allowed access to Bin Laden, Al Qadea was known to initiate non-Muslim-born converts by watching them perform acts of violence including murder and torture of prisoners.
JWL admitted he attended the al-Farooq Al Qadea terror training camp west of Kandahar. It is known that he visted the terrorist training camp of Mir-Bach-Kot north of Kabul. He trained others in English and how to deal with western hostages.
Several Al Qadea prisoners have admitted that Walker "the American" helped train sleepers to infiltrate the US by explaining western customs and thinking. Some also accused JWL of hiding grenades on his body used in the uprising. Members of Al Qadea interviewed said JWL interpreted the conversations between Al Qadea and Spann during the uprising. They also say he interpreted Dave and Mike's conversations before the uprising. Interviews and the time-line makes it quite possible that the uprising started as soon as the JWL interview ended in the prison courtyard.
JWL never answered the questions of Mike Spann's sister. Why wouldn't he answer Mike's questions before the uprising and did he know of the hidden weapons and the plan to rise up.
JWL will serve less time than someone caught with three rocks of crack, less than someone with a few ounces of smack and only twice as long as James Traficant will serve for bribery.
600 fighters went into that prison, 600 revolted, 86 survived the Delta operators, the snipers, the JDAMs, the AC-130s, the Northern Alliance and the cold. John Walker Lindh was one of those 86.
Replieth the clueful article-reader, quoting the fine article:
everything in moderation
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.
Like you're making of this poster's verbiage?
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
If he really didn't commit the crime(s) then how can he offer up information via his buddies?
Uh, yeah, my friend Jane was like building pipebombs in her basement and smuggling greenbacks into Afghanistan in body cavities and recording morale-boosting Taliban-praising music for the troops and...
It's a good thing I don't know any Janes, because that's probably enough to get them all locked up with the keys thrown away.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
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?
Well may be a little but offtopic, but maybe not. I like the US, I like the american culture, but things are not looking good in the US right now. Ok, we all don't agree with taliban methods, and this guy shouldn't be doing this. But what about Mr BUSH? The US are being put aside the world, US are becoming MORE AND MORE ISOLATED, it's very sad, the land of the free, and home of the braves are not FREE anymore, people can't live the way they want, and home of the braves? with all this FEAR from the terrorists? Please, american people, you are fighters, you DON'T LET ANYONE CHOOSE YOUR DESTINY, STOP THIS CRAZY MAN CALLED BUSH AND HIS NUT HELPERS, this old farts guys called the FALCONS, they are endangering the US as a nation, you are losing sovereignty. I always wanna to go the US, I have been there one time, as a child went to disney world. Those were good times. But now, when you can't catch a plane withou showing visas, even for americans, show that the fear is high and something terrible is close to happen. That reminds me of the nazys, when they shout "Papiere Dokumente" I always wanted to go the US, but now I don't want anymore, and I feel sad about that. I'm in Brazil. And I really hope US people take back the control of their country. About Brazil? Because of endemic corruption is a much harder task, but we don't have to worry about taliban, yet.
lol
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
Ever heard of the Witch Trials? The Inquisition? Maybe he is guilty. Maybe he has relatives in Afghanistan. Maybe his children. Would you take up arms against your own kids? I've got relatives overseas. If the US declared war on them... ain't nothing black and white.
I could give the long list of the US Gov. aluminum hat conspiracies (MK-ULTRA, radiation experiments on the tards, spraying biological agents on San Francisco, etc.), but it wouldn't matter. Since those things have never happened to you personally, they don't exist. You are a void.
If it were as easy to be optimistic; to shut out the rest of the world... nevermind. Just a hate filled rant. Go America!
No... It's a visual pun.
Or at least it works as one. I suppose it's been used by those who don't known how to pronounce "faux"...
The enemies of Democracy are
Did you think if the subject heading said "funny" you would be modded as such?
RTFA.
And I quote: "In March, federal agents seized Hawash, 38, from a parking lot outside Intel Corp., where he worked".
What's your GCNSEQNO?
I had some experience in some investigations. A media outlet always uses the images that reinforces the prejudices of their audience. In this way slashdot is no difference even with the moderation methodology.
Without being tipped off or having outside information there is nothing to give this guy away. After Adobe vs Dimitry and some blatant abuse of the DMCA and RIAA actions of course a lot of people called the FBI overstepping. We would not have been human to do otherwise.
On the other hand the moderation system, like that in the mainstream media, reinforces our own prejudices. So this was probably moderated up because of past injustices and our own prejudices.
Read some Plato. He was relevant in his time, still current 20 years ago and seems even more so with these events. [Start with "The Republic".]
djve
"There is magic in the web." - Othello Act 3 Scene 4.
"Devil's advocate, since I don't know much of anything about the case:
The exact same way Joe McCarthy got so many "communists" to testify against each other."
Interesting concept: admit you know nothing about the case, then offer a pithy statement about an historical period about which you know nothing.
Say, were there any Communists in the State Department?
Ever heard of the Venona Cables?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I'm certainly not a supporter of the Taliban (or Islam, or any religion for that matter), but it's worth looking at how and why they came to power.
Support for the fundamentalist regime of the Taliban largely came from those who were despairing of the constant fighting and corruption of the warlords who ran the country. The Taliban promised an end to the fighting and corruption which they largely achieved through their extreme fundamentalism and strict control of society.
Since the US overthrew the Taliban, the situation has returned almost exactly to what it was prior to their rise to power. Any guesses as to what might happen in the future when the Afghanis again get sick of the corrupt warlords (particularly the Northern Alliance who might not be religious fundamentalists but are just as guilty of horrific acts)?
Repeat after me: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".
Well may be a little but offtopic, but maybe not.
I like the US, I like the american culture, but things are not looking good in the US right now. Ok, we all don't agree with taliban methods, and this guy shouldn't be doing this. But what about Mr BUSH?
The US are being put aside the world, US are becoming MORE AND MORE ISOLATED, it's very sad, the land of the free, and home of the braves are not FREE anymore, people can't live the way they want, and home of the braves? with all this FEAR from the terrorists?
Please, american people, you are fighters, you DON'T LET ANYONE CHOOSE YOUR DESTINY, STOP THIS CRAZY MAN CALLED BUSH AND HIS NUT HELPERS, this old farts guys called the FALCONS, they are endangering the US as a nation, you are losing sovereignty.
I always wanna to go the US, I have been there one time, as a child went to disney world. Those were good times.
But now, when you can't catch a plane withou showing visas, even for americans, show that the fear is high and something terrible is close to happen. That reminds me of the nazys, when they shout "Papiere Dokumente"
I always wanted to go the US, but now I don't want anymore, and I feel sad about that.
I'm in Brazil. And I really hope US people take back the control of their country. About Brazil? Because of endemic corruption is a much harder task, but we don't have to worry about taliban, yet.
In short, the Taliban / Mullah Omar was getting annoyed and tired of Bin Laden in 1998, so much so that they were getting ready to kick him out. And then Clinton launched missile attacks against Al Quaeda training camps. This caused Mullah Omar to change his mind (if the enemy of your enemy attacks you yourself...) and stick up for Bin Laden.
Some claim the missile attack was a diversionary tactic by Clinton to take attention away from the Monica stories just coming out. Although, in retrospect we do now know that Bin Laden was a very worthy target- too bad the missiles missed. Regardless, in an alternate world where Omar did kick him out, Bin Laden might not have had the base to launch his 2001 attack. Instead of 'for the want of a nail, the battle was lost,' it could be that 'for the want of a blow job the WTC was lost,' alternate-historywise.
If that's the known risk factor, then what are these people bitching about? Hmmmm.....prison in America or death. Either way, the choice was made, they took their chances and BOOM....the consequences. Is it right? No. However that IS our current state of affairs and most people worldwide know it; that's why they come here....to roll the dice.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
apparently so does the Associated Press, since they wrote the story...
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
Because the Taliban are in that boat, so is anyone who wants to help the Taliban? I don't see that argument making much sense. I have seen no facts on the ground that Mike was any threat to civilians here at home. Until I do, I am going to presume that even if he really is guilty of what he has plead to (and no reason to de facto assume otherwise, suspicions aside), he was not what I'd consider a terrorist. A traitor perhaps, but that is indeed a different kettle of fish.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
To clarify, this is a little right, but, imho, mostly wrong.
It is true that the CIA supported the Afghani mujahideen in the 80's. If you're interested, the word "mujahideen" is of an Arabic base and comes from the three letter radical j-h-d, with a rough meaning of struggle (one meaning of jihad is, literally, to struggle). A mujahid is someone who struggles/practices jihad. Mujahideen is the plural.
Anyway, off that tangent. Yes, the CIA funded Afghan mujahideen/freedom fighters in the 1980's. There was an Afghan govt later formed of those same mujahideen. It was not however, until 1996 that the Taleban seized Kabul and ousted the former Mujahideen govt.
Incidentally, Taleban comes from the Arabic radical t-l-b. A Talib is a student. Taliban, in pashto means students. The Taleban are the products of radical (and backwards!) madrasahs, religious schools, many of them in Pakistan. The allegation that the CIA funded the Taleban is totally incorrect. There were no doubt American arms under Taleban control, but you must remember that warlordism in Afghanistan is nothing new. You can go back thousands of years and little in Afghanistan has changed. Alexander the Great encountered very fierce resistance on his way to Central Asia. Warlordism and yet another meltdown of Afghan society in the 90's brought about the Taleban, NOT American support.
Get your dick out of your ass. The Taliban were just bullshitting us. There was plenty of proof for extradition, and everyone knew it.
Could I please see this proof? After all, the Taliban has fallen. Surely, no US spies could be hurt by releasing whatever proof they had at the time.:P
Anyways, the Taliban should have been taken out much earlier for violating human rights. Unfortunately, US botched the War in Afghanistan completely and those violations are still just as common.:(
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Rounding people up the way the government did after 9/11 was just less public than the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII but not any less heinous. Remember folks, we actually have a history in this country of yanking the rights of fellow citizens for our own sense of security. The fact that the government is being more selective this time doesn't excuse their behavior.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
I'm amazed at the kneejerk reactions on this thread.
If the goverment knew it would be this easy, they would have started years ago.
Even the supposed learned tech elite here snarf the party line and eat it up.
The beatings grew less frequent, and became mainly a
threat, a horror to which he could be sent back at any moment
when his answers were unsatisfactory. His questioners now were
not ruffians in black uniforms but Party intellectuals, little
rotund men with quick movements and flashing spectacles, who
worked on him in relays over periods which lasted -- he
thought, he could not be sure -- ten or twelve hours at a
stretch. These other questioners saw to it that he was in
constant slight pain, but it was not chiefly pain that they
relied on. They slapped his face, wrung his ears. pulled his
hair, made him stand on one leg, refused him leave to urinate,
shone glaring lights in his face until his eyes ran with water;
but the aim of this was simply to humiliate him and destroy his
power of arguing and reasoning. Their real weapon was the
merciless questioning that went on and on, hour after hour,
tripping him up, laying traps for him, twisting everything that
he said, convicting him at every step of lies and
self-contradiction until he began weeping as much from shame as
from nervous fatigue Sometimes he would weep half a dozen times
in a single session. Most of the time they screamed abuse at
him and threatened at every hesitation to deliver him over to
the guards again; but sometimes they would suddenly change
their tune, call him comrade, appeal to him in the name of
Ingsoc and Big Brother, and ask him sorrowfully whether even
now he had not enough loyalty to the Party left to make him
wish to undo the evil he had done. When his nerves were in rags
after hours of questioning, even this appeal could reduce him
to snivelling tears. In the end the nagging voices broke him
down more completely than the boots and fists of the guards. He
became simply a mouth that uttered, a hand that signed,
whatever was demanded of him. His sole concern was to find out
what they wanted him to confess, and then confess it quickly,
before the bullying started anew. He confessed to the
assassination of eminent Party members, the distribution of
seditious pamphlets, embezzlement of public funds, sale of
military secrets, sabotage of every kind. He confessed that he
had been a spy in the pay of the Eastasian government as far
back as 1968. He confessed that he was a religious believer, an
admirer of capitalism, and a sexual pervert. He confessed that
he had murdered his wife, although he knew, and his questioners
must have known, that his wife was still alive. He confessed
that for years he had been in personal touch with Goldstein and
had been a member of an underground organization which had
included almost every human being he had ever known. It was
easier to confess everything and implicate everybody. Besides,
in a sense it was all true. It was true that he had been the
enemy of the Party, and in the eyes of the Party there was no
distinction between the thought and the deed.
Oh, if only I had mod points. This is the first historically correct version of events I've seen on Slashdot regarding Afghanistan, the CIA, and the Taliban.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
The Taliban were oppressive. They didn't like foreigners. Sure, but what makes them TERRORISTS? So what if I decide to join the Taliban and decide that I want to die for them?
Very simply actually, I'm glad you asked! What makes them terrorists is the support (in terms of government condolence, material supplies, and training camps) that the Afghan govt operated in conjunction with al-Qaeda. Secondly what makes them terrorist supporters is giving home to bin Laden. Thirdly what makes them terrorists is their refusal to hand over bin Laden and other KNOWN al-Qaeda terrorists, and giving them sanctuary, refuge, and generally hiding them.
Let's face it--no one likes the Taleban. But the US wasn't going to attack the Taleban either, UNTIL it became clear that they were a terrorist state.
Actually you know, aside from the charges of INTERNATIONAL terrorism, a very strong argument can be made that they waged a campaign of terror against their own people.
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
They paid the Taliban alright. "Yet the Bush administrtion did more than praise the taliban's proclaimed ban of opium cultivation. In mid-May 2001, secretary of state Colin Powell announced a 43 million grant to afghanistan in addition to the humanitarian aid the United States had long been providing to agencies assisting afghan refugees." Link
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth.
Could I please see this proof?
Sure -- it's right there next to the weapons of mass destruction. See?
Thank you so much for being a voice of sanity. After reading what passes for reasoning among the "damn the man!" crowd of Slashdotters, I was getting ready to just walk away from Slashdot altogether.
Thanks for confirming my faith in at least a small fraction of the Slashdot readership.
Wait, you mean when you plead guilty in court, it means you're innocent?!? Holy shit, better start writing letters to the producers of Law & Order, seems they've been getting some of their facts straight. Like when they have judges inform defendants that pleading guilty is the exact same as having a jury find them guilty. Guess that doesn't happen in real life, huh?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
It sounds more like treason, not terrorism.
yeesh.. thanks for bringing the Japanese-American thing up. I drive by where they were kept back in WWII whenever I go to my wife's parent's house. Bleak reminder of just what attrocities can occur at the hands of our govt. Kinda ironic, the camps being on the Navajo reservation....
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
He was a contract employee. He didn't actually work for Intel.
since the US virtually created Bin Laden during the 1980s - I guess we should be bombing Washington DC right now.
In the early 1980s funding anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan was the right thing to do at that time as part of the cold war. There is no way the US government could know what would come of that twenty years later and to blame the US government for Bin Laden turning into a murderous terrorist is inane.
things aren't so black and white - one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
That's a cop-out. You can be a freedom fighter without targeting non-combatant civilians. Bin Laden and company have no problem targeting civilians; that's why they're considered terrorists. Bin Laden standing against Soviet military troops in Afghanistan was a good thing. Bin Laden sending planes full of civilians into a civilian-occupied building is not.
That's all fine and dandy until you actually start to examine the 'rights' afforded to the individuals who carried out these crimes. They were NOT citizens and they were NOT born here; the US gave them PERMITS to VISIT (and some of those are suspect at that). The harsh reality is that the rest of the planet does not live by the US's laws and being the 'melting pot' that we are we have to change and adapt with the rest of the planet. Until this happens we will always have right-wingers and hippy wannabees that think the earth revolves around US ideologies. This is a mistake and will eventually bite us in the ass. Relate US history with Roman history and you'll see similarities that are frighteningly real....not because of the government specifically; but the people.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
But isnt the Constitution a living breathing document?
Why cant it now have this view. After all if people arent responsible for there own actions how can a piece of paper.
But besides that innosent until proven guilty is in the court of law. Police are not in the court they are there to arrest people. The court is there to prove or disprove innocense. Police and News organisations dont have the same budden of proof.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia recognized them, but they withdrew that recognition soon after September 11th, 2001. Pretty easy to guess why...
deus does not exist but if he does
The Geneva Convention applies to everybody, no exeptions, ever, anywhere, no matter how heinous the crimes they might be charged with, even if they are guilty.
That's the whole point of the Geneva Convention.
Bush Jr knows shit about international law, and appears proud of it. His 'advisors' just don't care. But in law, neither ignorance nor apathy are defences.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
The US is the source of the Patriot Act, RIAA, SCO, and is generally a bully in forign affairs. Every article I read on slashdot makes the idea of taking up arms against the US more and more appealing.
I think I'm joking...but honestly...i'm not sure.
Additionally, JWL joined up in Afghanistan before Sept. 11, and my understanding of the law was that since he joined before they were "the enemy", it wasn't treachery.
In either case you take your chances, but I'd personally rather take my chances at being thrown in jail for a couple weeks for something I didn't do (the chances of which seem pretty remote to me) than being shot at by a known sniper or blown up by a known terrorist (the chances of which seemed pretty good to me as I watched the WTC burn outside my window on 9/11).
Agreed, but with reservations. Preferably, the government would do this *extremely* selectively, so that when they did it, it didn't come across as Gestapo bullshit. Some of the crap the government has pulled, though - (I don't know if you guys heard about the US veteran of Gulf War I: A New Hope who was detained for being a suspected terrorist. The grounds - he played paintball too much with some people who had been to Pakistan)... it makes it harder to take them at their word. And for the record, my personal experience in Sept. 11 was hoping that my father wasn't in the wrong part of the Pentagon at the wrong time (he was OK).
I'm not saying the US government is made up by a bunch of saints or that they're always looking out for the interests of its citizens. What I am saying is, in this case at least (and no doubt many others like it), I am glad this guy was in jail from the beginning. He's an admitted conspirator against the United States and its citizens.
As I said in an above post - probably. The plea bargain still smells a little fishy to me. I dunno, I hope I'm wrong on this.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
why don't you tell me who you believe attacked the ... Bali nightclub full of Australians and that hotel in Indonesia a few days ago?
I think you'll find that in both cases, it was Jemaah Islamiah, which, while being a terrorist group, is only linked to Al Qaeda because now *all* terrorist groups are linked to them. Its an easy catch-all for the media and government to say that Osama is behind everything - helps convince people that he is a bad man. I'm not disputing that he's a bad man, but do you seriously think that he said to the JI people "hey, why don't we bomb the Marriot hotel in Jakarta?" I don't and wouldn't.
Oh and dont forget that of the 202 people killed in Bali, only 88 were Australian and about half of them were Indonesians, but I guess in the world of worthy and un-worthy victims, an Indonesian life isn't as important as an Australian or other "western" life.
yeah, and when people governments fund terrorist groups, and encourage them to kill citizens, they themselves become terrorists.
Taliban Inside!
With the not so new taliban inside your Intel servers are more powerful then ever! Its a good thing, we promise!
Ok, well, maybe not.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Please, please, please, for the love of Bob, people, think a little bit before you go about saying "he just plead guilty because he was looking at 20-to-life, we don't actually know what he did."
There's a special kind of plea you use when you're 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. It's called an Alford plea, closely related to a nolo contendre plea.
Nolo has been expressed in layman's terms as "I didn't do it, judge, and I'll never do it again!" You neither admit guilt nor protest your innocence. As a result, many judges refuse to enter nolo pleas; they demand that you either admit or deny responsibility, and if you insist on nolo a "not guilty" plea will be entered instead.
An Alford plea is a far different thing. An Alford, in layman's terms, is "Judge, I didn't do it, but I'm terrified of the original charges and I think they could convict me on it." An Alford plea allows you to formally and legally protest your own innocence, while at the same time stipulating that the government could convict you if it went the whole nine yards, and thus avail yourself of the plea bargain.
Mike Hawash didn't plead either nolo or Alford.
Mike Hawash plead guilty.
Guilty, as in "yes, Your Honor, I fucking did it! "
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?
"That America didn't even go to war against the Taliban!!!!!! "
So what was Operation Enduring Freedom? A chance for the military to go for long sunset walks on the beaches of Afghanistan? Considering Afghanistan is land locked, I'm gonna have a hard time believing this one. I'll just keep believing we were over there waging war against Al Queda and the Taliban.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Osama bin Laden was among the Mujahiddin that fought against the Russians. Wahabis were running all over the place. If you can't see the connection between the Wahabi Muslims (Mujahiddin) fighting against the Soviet invasion in the 80s and the current al Qaeda and Taliban, then you're not paying attention.
Yes, but remember, one who defies his government and loses is a rebel/traitor/terrorist/crminal, but he who does so and wins is a pioneer/revolutionary/martyr/hero, or at least an agent. Not condoning violent revolution (more of a proponent of Gandhi), but that is the nature of history...
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
Taliban unveils Pentium licensing terms
Tuesday August 5, 9:08 PM EDT
KABUL, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Taliban, which claims its blueprint for proprietary chip is embedded illegally in versions of the Intel Pentium microprocessor, unveiled on Tuesday details of a controversial licensing plan for companies using Pentium.
The plan, which will initially cost $699 for a computer with a single central processor running Pentium, has irked advocates of the IA-32 architecture.
Taliban, based in Afghanistan, sent shock waves through the ranks of Pentium users in March when it sued U.S. government for $1 billion, charging that the world's largest computer company had taken parts of the Taliban chip and introduced them into Pentium, violating Taliban's intellectual property rights.
This is a case of an American trying to take up arms against his own nation...that is treason, not legitimate mercenary action. Those of us who take their citizenship seriously understand this. And since he was naturalized, he, unlike most of us, had to actively take an oath to abandon all other national alliegances, and to take up arms to defend the US.
So, using your example:
If you were not French and did this, and were not wearing a German uniform, you would be a spy, and probably just be summarily executed after some painful questioning.
If you were French and you did this, you might get lucky and be convicted of treason, then executed.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Get a clue - Bin Laden was from Saudi Arabia, the Soviets invaded Afganistan.
An unjust war? The Taliban government provided shelter, money, land, and all the material support that they could muster to one Osama Bin Laden. I just don't buy the claim that there is no such thing as a just war... This one was just all the way to the hilt.
The Taliban subscribe to an indefensible thousand-year-old philosophy that is incompatible with the mores held by the rest of the world. They would like nothing better than to force all of us to live by their brutal, theocratic ethos... had they the power, they would wield it to slaughter all of us "infidels." Don't believe it? Listen to some of their rhetoric... if you're not concerned, you have not been paying attention. These jokers have been hitting us for years, getting better at it all the time... we should have started cleaning house years ago.
If nuclear proliferation continues... if chem/bio weapons continue to spread... AND if we don't deal with these bozos RIGHT NOW, we are setting ourselves up for a nasty future, full of fundamentalist death-dealing. Do you think these guys wouldn't detonate anything they could get their hands on in Times Square?
You can claim that Christianity, Judaism, etc are no better, and about 500 years ago you'd have been right. Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Shintoists, Zoroastrians, etc, etc all seem to be able to coexist in many places... militants like the Taliban, Osama, etc MUST be dealt with, and the sooner the better.
I have no problem hunting them all down and putting a bullet in every one of their heads. The brutal reality is that we'd better do unto them first... or in another decade or so, they'll be doing unto us.
And when that happens, we will have no excuse.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Actually Joe McCarthy has been deomnized in the school system. I dont rember the exact year but around 1997 the papers were released and everything that Joe McCarthy claimed was right. He had wire taps in Russia that he didnt want to release because then we wouldnt have know all the liberal traitors that existed
Another thing -- you can't call *any* state a "terrorist" state. A terrorist is, by definition, a person/group that works outside of the boundaries of civilisation, through use of media, violence or both. An established country, with universally recognised borders and a government (no matter how oppressive) cannot be a "terrorist" state. In fact, terrorists can't possess/own land -- if terrorists invaded the US and conquered it, they'd no longer be known as terrorists but as the new government on the block. The people running Afghanistan used to be terrorists, according to the Taliban, but now are they called that? Of course not.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
I can see the new ad campaign now:
Osama Inside(tm)
ba bing ba bing...
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
I'm guessing you've never heard of Salman Pak, a training camp 20-25 miles southeast of Baghdad that sources ranging from Rush Limbaugh to the Guardian report as having been a likely al-Qaeda training site. So much for "no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda"...
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
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.
In no way is this a defense of the Taliban, but it's entirely possible that they had no liking for bin Laden either. Rather, they walk a delicate line; if they help the US too much, they appear to be hypocrits and risk losing support and power. Bear in mind that the Taliban is not necessarily monolithic; the individual who supports siding with the US is putting his neck on the line. So instead, they went through the usual rigamorale of demanding evidence, though they may very well have been putting on a show and ultimately intended to turn over bin Laden. However, they may not even have had him. If the most advanced army in the world can't find him in the caves of Afghanistan using thermal imaging, spy satellites, and god knows what other technology, how the fuck did we expect the Taliban to?
In response to your comments that bin Laden probably knew what his organization was up to, you really don't know shit. You clearly have absolutely no idea what's going on past what you read on CNN.
A British journalist who's name I unfortunately can't remember spent some time with bin Laden years back, and commented that "he's not really the sort of guy you can picture speaking into a satellite phone saying, 'initiate plan B'" (paraphrased--I apologize). He's an ideological leader, but from all accounts--including those of our own intelligence, for what it's worth--al Qaeda is much too distributed for there to be any single leader.
And, no, the fall of the Taliban is no great loss. But I doubt the people of Afghanistan are glad that there is now lawlessness outside of the cities, that warlords are fighting for control, or that we killed more civilians with our bombs and guns than were killed in America on September 11th.
Yeah. Go us.
And, please, call me an anti-American. It only shows your own ignorance. When you have to resort to name-calling and ridiculous comments--like calling the parent poster an anti-semite--you just show that you have no valid arguments and don't know enough to have an actual debate.
The US wanted to overthrow the Taliban for a while, allegedly, in order to build an oil pipeline through Afghan territory. In comparison, we profit quite a lot from the Saudi willingness to sell oil to us.
Things aren't always what they seem.
Yeah, were are those papers? Is that the same list that McCarthy claimed that he had, but that he never made public? Were all that evidence that he claimed that he had, but that he never revealed? Is that why the soviet union exists no more, and where are all those communist in the Department of State?
Been reading Ann Coulter again, haven't you?
"Masters in Computer Information Systems"!!!, do they actually offer that now? Where I work, at the undegraduate level, CIS is for kids who can't pass a logic course, can't cut it in economics, but can pick up Visual Basic, understand spreadsheet notation, and have a superficial understanding of databases and networks. In other words, the same guys who gave Comp. Sci. and Comp. Eng. a bad name.
Isn't it amazing how if you tell the media something for long enough, an entire country can start to believe it.
I think that points been pretty much proven with your comment about going there expressly to remove the taliban...cast your mind back buddy...remember bin laden...wasn't that kind of why you went there...hey, by the way, where is _he_ now....did pretty well on that one didn't you
Once he is in custody one look at his passport will tell that he traveled to a proscibed country at a suspicious time, then further investigation shows that not he was not just an advocate and a witness but a participant, so OFF TO PRISON.
Sounds like a fair reason to lock someone up in a prison camp for two years without access to due process or a laywer to me...hang on, let me just go tell all those american soldiers that had the _exact_ same thing happen to them in vietnam that they are all a bunch of girls and what happened to them was fair and expected.
Al Queda and the Taliban
Al Queda yes...taliban no...they just go in the way (as anyone would when you invade their country)...but guess what, after 2 years of spin doctoring...now everyone is in the habit of tagging those two words together...and hence, they both get held in the same light...I wonder, if the Mormans did something bad to the UK, and we started tagging 'Mormans and America'...you would think the same way.
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.
If Iraq wasn't in the name of terrorism (which I agree), then what exactly was the catalyst for Iraq? What heinous event triggered America's assault from two years of inaction under Bush Sr., eight years under President Clinton and two additional years with W?
An interseting statistic: something like 73 percent of our troops (or brigades or some such) are deployed right now, according to some TV general I saw on a cable news channel. I donno how we count that number, maybe people stationed overseas are considered deployed. But if this number is anywhere near accurate, I wonder why I haven't heard much about spreading the Department of Defense (formerly the Department of War) thinly? They say that the most important factor in today's military action is mobilization. As in it doesn't matter how many men you bring in to save an allready demolished town.
I donno, maybe its not true.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
this sounds an awful lot like the communistic scares of the 50's
Yeah, those that trained Bin Laden should indeed be punished. Oh wait, that would be the CIA - I guess the world isn't black and white after all.
Sigh. The world does have some gradation in shading, however.
Repeat after me: The CIA never funded Osama bin Laden.
He's a freakin' multi-billionaire, he didn't need the funds.
They funded other groups such as those led by Abdul Haq who cooperated with bin Laden in ousting the Sovs. However, those groups didn't agree with the Taliban, which Osama supported, and so most of them were killed or fled the country. In fact, Haq was killed when he went into Afghanistan to try to rally people around him. If you want to blame the CIA for something, try for not supporting Haq or hooking up with the military to get him out when he realized he was being surrounded.
The CIA has much to be ashamed of, you don't have to invent stuff because it helps your immediate rhetorical need.
First you'll have to find those ten thousand people the U.S. didn't kill. (Go ahead, that should be interesting.)
Then ignore the tens of thousands who were slaughtered by the Taliban during their mercifully short reign of ignorance.
Wow, maybe we should reinstall Saddam so he can get back to killing 50,000 Iraqis per year.
First off, Rush Limbaugh is not a reliable source.
Second... if the reports of those two guys is true, then this would be a big thing that the media and the Bush administration would be screaming about. Why aren't they? Is it all based on unreliable intel?
Quite possibly.
no thanks
A company that has never copied software might still pay the BSA rather than lose many person-days and computer uptime to the BSA's audits. A person that has a legit reason to own a smartcard reader might still want to pay $3,500 to DirectTV rather than pay $5,000 for a lawyer to fight it (and risk having to pay for 10 DirectTV lawyers at $300/hour/each if DTV wins). A person who wasn't planning or supporting terrorism (whether or not he was guilty of gross stupidity) might take 7 years instead of the possibility of being Padilla'd.
He very well might be guilty- I'd have liked to see an honest trial to prove it. But in today's anti-terrorism legal environment I'm afraid that I can imagine actually innocent people pleading guilty (they won't give you a plea bargain unless you plead guilty) to avoid the risk of much worse. I'll wait until the evidence comes out in the trials of the others.
yet they can't arrest (except in rare circumstances, such as them witnessing a crime) someone without the court giving a warrant
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" ?
Recall that Usama (or Osama) bin (or ibn) Laden had been involved in a number of attacks against US interests over the years. I want you to think back to August 7, 1998. On that morning, truck bombs were detonated outside the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. 22 Americans died, and 223 Kenyans and Tanzanians died. Over the next few years, the second tier of people who had prganized the bombings were captured and extradited to New York to face trial.
They were tried as members of a terrorist organization called "Al Quaeda", which, under the direct and indirect supervision of bin Laden, planned and executed the 1998 bombings. So what? Well, they were convicted in August of 2001, and the transcripts of their trials are public documents. You can find a collection of them here.
Whether or not he was associated with 9/11, the taliban were sheltering him from justice, and they knew it.
A cite of "some british journalist" doesn't really refute the well publicized tape of Osama bragging how the people who carried out the attacks didn't even know what they were attacking. I don't know, but most people might take that as evidence of him being on the inside track of some very *operational* nitty-gritty. Unless he just some clueless religious leader (as if that isn't dangerous) who just happens to be familiar with the comparmentilization precautions for a particular mission carried out by mid level operatives. Yeah, right.
I think you've shown that you don't know what you're talking about.
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.
Or maybe, and believe me, this is a hypothetical, they didn't show the dead from September 11th because dead Iraqi children had nothing to do with Sept. 11. Or, to generalize further, Iraq had nothing to do with Sep. 11.
Or maybe it's because two wrongs don't make a right, and CNN realized that killing Iraqi civilians isn't justified by dead American civilians, even if Iraq had been responsible for Sept. 11.
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.
Anti-US stories like what? East Timor, where we basically green-lit the Indonesian invasion? What's that, you've never heard of it? I figured that the anti-US CNN would have been telling that story. Anti-US, about all those anti-globalization protestors that were illegally jailed by DC Police Chief Ramsey?
Why do I always miss those liberal, anti-US stories?
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
Quoted from the Geneva Convention
Somewhere else in the Convention text there is something about the how the Parties shall "seek to establish impartial tribunals etc". I could not find this and I'm not 100% shure on this point, but that what i reckon from reading the text a couple of years ago.We could always argue what a "Competent tribunal" is, but I'm pretty shure that any tribunal consisting only of people only from the US Military or from a US court would be outside the ramification of the Geneva Convention as such a tribunal would violate the Conventions on the impartial point.
So far USA has ignored all this and still claims that the prisoners at GB are "unlawful combatants".
Humans Right Watch wrote a nice letter to Condoleezza Rice ripping apart her arguments that she still continues to spread on various press conferences.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Um, yeah... harboring a leading world terrorist, funding him, popularizing him with your people through state-controller religion, allowing him to host large training camps... all of which contributed very greatly to his ability to launch attacks against a US naval ship, two embassies, and the world trade center twice... no, they weren't a US threat at all, they're just another world government trying to get by on this crazy planet.
11*43+456^2
Exactly how is it the same as being a terrorist if you decide you believe in and want to go fight with a group that the US decides to destroy? That decision by itself might be really stupid and even treasonous but it does not match any definition of terrorism I understand. And the guy did not even carry through with that desire. Also, last time I looked, the Taliban as such were not the terrorist we were looking for. Or do we really agree to let this word be pasted on anything and everything whenever convenient? I think we at least owe ourselves the mental discipline to use words with some real meaning.
Last time I checked, the U.S. isn't the police of the world. In fact, I seem to remember a certain presidential candidate in 2000 campaigning against having the U.S. police the world.
Sujal
politics, food, music, life: FatMixx
And people who haven't the foggiest notion of what they are talking about generalize, stygmatize, itemize and stereotype.
"Whether or not he was associated with 9/11, the taliban were sheltering him from justice, and they knew it."
And their punishment was a genocidal bombing campaign. They paid with hundreds of thousands of lives.
Funny thing though, Osama is still on the loose and will die from natural causes.
War is necrophilia.
Time to meta moderate.
did the Apollo missions. Whoo hoo, time to medicate.
You know, I find this whole 'plea bargain' system a bit strange. (I'm not American, nor a lawyer.) Isn't there something in the law that says that people don't have to assist in their own conviction? I believe it works like that where I live (Netherlands).
JP
ok, i have one thing to say for all of this, as onion once put it: "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!".
thanks for the info.
ato
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.
I think the excuse was something to do with Opium poppies.
So Mike could be forgiven for thinking the USA supported the Taliban (until the bombing started) and now he's being crucified for it.
BTW Today (7th August) is David Hicks' birthday. He was arrested under similar balony as some sort of trophy scapegoat for the USA. "Look we got some sucker, so this will prevent people from trying to fly planes into sky scrapers". Huh?
Does not compute, does not compute, does not compute, does not compute, does not c o m p u t e, d o e s n o t c o m p u t e argh.
Happy birthday David, you deserve human rights, letters from home, to be charged with something, anything before being held prisoner, a trial by your peers, and a lawyer who is allowed to represent you. But now you get to relive the life of Breaker Morant, while the USA military shows how a "kangaroo court" is done. Just proves that the action in Afghanistan and Iraq had nothing to do with JUSTICE.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Here's the main definition:The section goes on, but the subsequent passages either speak to edge cases.
Key is, a covert enemy agent meets none of the four tests for being a prisoner of war. In that case, there's no question about whether or not that agent is covered by the provisions of the Convention; he or she is not. Irregular combatants may or may not be, but generally would not be covered. The foreign combatants in Afghanistan directly associated with Al Quaeda were clearly not covered: they were not commanded by a responsible officer, they wore no distinctive signs, they concealed their weapons, and they did not conform to the standard laws and customs of warfare (including the Third Geneva Convention, which forbids the taking of hostages and direct attacks on civilians, both of which many of the GB detainees had done.)
In short, GB may be wrong, and is a PR disaster, but it is not illegal, no matter what HRW wants you to believe.
What's debatable? American soldiers are still getting killed. Iraq still isn't "liberated", and the Bush regime keeps increasing their estimates of how long that will take. (Oh, and Saddam is still around. And we still haven't found those pesky "weapons of mass destruction" that are the Bush regime's excuse for its illegal war.) How is this "over"?
Since IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11 , and since 9/11 is not news, there's no reason for anyone to be showing footage of 9/11 victims. Unless, of course, they're engaing in pure propaganda.
Priceless! You are obviously squarely in the middle of the Fox News target demographic: ignorant and uninformed.
(Free clue: ignorant. See defintion 2.)
Anyway, regarding this case: like the raisethefist.com case discussed yesterday, the plea bargain deal makes any admission questionable.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
From Portland's Newspaper The Oregonian here the full legalese:
. ss f?/base/news/1057234000272203.xml
http://www.oregonlive.com/metro/oregonian/index
I checked the Portland Tribune but didn't see anything on their main site. They are a twice weekly newspaper. I wonder if they will get this in tomorrows printing.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
I'll give you the same question I ask every liberal, NPR spouting person
I'm a right wing Republican. Thank you very mucn.
Did you actively oppose former President Clinton's "unjust" military action of firing tomahawk missiles at Afghanistan to kill Bin Laden? Did you actively, vocally oppose his unilateral bombing of Iraq?
Yes. And Yes. And I also opposed the first president Bush's war in Iraq.
Let me offer you multiple choice answers since they are all pretty much the same from every hippy I ask this of:
As I said before, I'm a right wing Republican. You're grinding the wrong axe. I have no problem with the US wanting Osama. All of the evidence we've uncovered thus far indicates that he was at the center of the plot to attack our country. My problem comes in with us bombing soverign nations and pretending that it was for our own protection.
This bullshit line of us asking them and them saying prove it is a man sized pile of horse crap spread primarily amoung the NPR crowd
Why is it bullshit? Because you don't think that a country full of brown people deserves to be dealt squarely with?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Did you forget Abu Dhabi Television to round out your credible sources? The point is he implicated himself as being familiar with the operational details of the plan. Osama did deny it at first, and it doesn't surprise me that he would do it for the sympathetic leftists at the Guardian. As for the link, it was the most famous tape aired in America, and lasts for over an hour while he meets with some fat cleric visiting from Saudi Arabia. Even Saturday Night Live parodied it. I would google under "Osama video dinner arabic translation 'helicopter wreckage'"
It is entirely reasonable and sensible to deal with different regimes in different ways. There isn't one "magic solution" that all regimes will respond to positively just because they can all be loosely described as "oppressive".
Economic sanctions had an effect against South Africa because it valued it's economy and economic relations with other countries.
The Afghanistan economy is/was already a complete basket case. It's biggest export is opium (it's the worlds largest producer) which is already not legally tradable and the Taliban showed no particular desire for economic interaction with the rest of the world.
Different situations require different actions.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Did you even read my post? Or did you just skim through it?
I'm sorry if the issues that I raised were too complicated for you to grasp.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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.
Yeah, those that trained Bin Laden should indeed be punished. Oh wait, that would be the CIA - I guess the world isn't black and white after all.
Has there ever been any dictator/terrorist the CIA didn't train?
The CIA does seem to be the undisputed master of finding the future evildoers of the world and bankrolling them.
Does anyone want to take bets on when Japan will turn over Fujimori, the US backed former dictator of Peru? Peru's now democratic government turned over 700 pages of evidence of death squads and truely magnificant levels of corruption captured on tape by his former security chief and, of course, CIA informant, Vladamir Montesinos. (Magnificent in the sense of 1 Billion dollars stolen from the state coffers of a poor country of a few million, purportedly all for bribes. Our congresscritters would eat live babies for that level of corruption. And Montesinos even paid the bribes in US greenbacks.) I guess it ain't terror if you're just killing Native Americans and forcibly sterilizing their widows.
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
in .
Yes, it makes a lot of sense to get angry about us ending some of the worst hell holes on earth. Maybe we would be happier if we just whistled dixie and kept the status quo like the eurotrash who traded on the Iraqi people's misery while they asked for "more time".
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.
Isn't it interesting how some people become clairvoyant. Were you there at the hearing?
e s/kgw_08 0603_news_hawash_plea.100dc7597.html)
Being that I live in a city close to Portland - where all of this is taking place - we get to hear some things that probably didn't make it to the national media outlets, but reporters said that the Judge in the case, Judge Robert Jones, asked Hawash if he indeed was guilty of the crimes he is entering the "guilty" plea on, and Hawash answered that he was guilty - doesn't sound like the man who sits dejected in a court hearing.
As to the "secret warrant" and "secret evidence", because they're proceeding with the indictments agains the now "Portland Six" with Hawash's assistance the rest of the proceedings should provide some insight to the Government's Case.
Yes, this was a plea-bargain, and yes, he will be providing testimony in court against the other defendants. The Evidence shown in court concerning Hawash is as follows:
"-- Meeting October Lewis and Jeffrey Leon Battle to discuss plans to travel to Kashgar, China. From there, they would cross into Pakistan and make their way to Afghanistan.
-- Taking suspects Patrice Lumumba Ford, Ahmed Ibraham Bilal and Muhammad Ibrahim Bilal to Portland International Airport on Oct. 21, 2001. Hawash provided cash to the two from an unidentified source, according to court papers.
-- Leaving the U.S. for Afghanistan on Oct. 24, 2001 and meeting Ford and Battle at the Hong Kong airport.
-- Obtaining a visa in Hong Kong for China. Hawash then traveled with Battle, Ford, Ahmed Bilal, Muhammad Bilal and Al Saoub into China. They flew to Urumqi, in western China, and took a train to Kashgar. After spending several days trying unsuccessfully to enter Pakistan, the group took a train to Beijing.
"Defendants Hawash and Al Saoub went to the Pakistani Embassy to obtain visa for Pakistan but were turned down," the plea agreement papers said. "After it became clear that the group would not be able to obtain entry into Pakistan, defendant Hawash returned to the United States."
-- Providing cash to all members of the group except Battle. After returning to the U.S., "Hawash arranged to send an additional $2,000 to Al-Saoub, who was still in China," the papers said.
(Sources: www.kgw.com KGW Newschannel 8, Portland Oregon - Associated Press)
(Link:http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stori
more from the above article:
""He is determined to cooperate and completely and truthfully with the government," said defense attorney Stephen Houze after Wednesday's proceedings. "...I'm confident he will do so."
The court papers also detail how Hawash gave money to and attempted to cross into Afghanistan via Pakistan with five members of the so-called "Portland Seven," a group of local Muslims who face similar charges from federal authorities.
A noticeably relaxed Hawash, dressed in blue prison uniform and shackled at the ankles, waived his right to appeal and trial by jury before federal judge Robert Jones.
"You understand this plea of guilty is locked in. You can't withdraw it," Jones said.
"Yes, sir," Hawash said.
(END)
A PDF of the Affidavit to support Hawash's arrest and charges being filed is available at:
http://www.freemikehawash.org/hawashaff.pdf
Oh, and Mr. Anonymous Coward - the usage fits your commentary perfectly. Whether you know it or not, we (The USA) is in a state of WAR, and some things done in times of War to protect National Security are better-off than the bleeding-heart liberal/pinko demands of "full disclosure". These are not "local" charges, the arests were not by police. They are FEDERAL Grand Jury charges, and the arrests were made by Oregon State Police Officers under the direction of the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF).
Are you proud of showing us how much of a mental midget you are?
ScottKin
I don't give a rat's behind about "karma" here or anywhere else. Don't like what I have to say here? Deal with it!
Overall it seems to me that Human Rights Watch's position is close to the Bush administration's position. I haven't seen anyone claiming that the Geneva Convention doesn't apply in a military conflict, or any suggestions that our government is torturing anyone. The prime disagreement is over the specific legal interpretation of article 4. The US government is releasing people from Guantanamo Bay that it thinks are not members of Al Qeada. You have to remember that both Taliban and Al Qeada militias fought in Afghanistan. The Taliban fighters are being relased while the Al Qeada ones are not.
The argument that our actions will result in American prisoners being treated out of accordance with the Geneva Convention is bunk. American prisoners are generally not given the legally required treatment anyway.
I did search on the text of the Convetion and could only find a signal instance of the word 'tribunal'.
Nascantur in Admiratione. (Let them be born in Wonder)
see subj
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Ummmm...let me get this straight...do you actually harbor some doubts at this point that al-qaeda was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks?
I mean, really?
Are you one of those fruitcakes who believes that "The Jews" staged it to look like al-qaeda to lure the US into blowing up "Islam"?
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Because the Taliban are in that boat, so is anyone who wants to help the Taliban?
Of course! Are not the friends of our enemies also our enemies?
I don't see that argument making much sense.
We disagree. Fortunately, the current and probably next administration happens to agree with me. Whew.
I have seen no facts on the ground that Mike was any threat to civilians here at home.
If you were a Jew in Poland, in 1942, and you knew a guy who was providing intelligence, food, or even moral support to the Germans -- would you have just assumed that, though he admittedly supports the Nazis (both idealogically and physcally, or even either one), since the guy wasn't actively killing Jews in Poland (yet), you should neither report him nor take steps to impeds him, or that the gummint should go easy on him if he is repored? Should he be somehow differentiated from the Nazis on the front lines or the ones pumping gas in to the ovens?
Until I do, I am going to presume that even if he really is guilty of what he has plead to (and no reason to de facto assume otherwise, suspicions aside), he was not what I'd consider a terrorist. A traitor perhaps, but that is indeed a different kettle of fish
IMHO, as I explained in my first post, there is no need to draw the distinction between traitor in terrorist, especially when it comes to Islamic fundamentalists, and extra-especially while a war is going on.
everything in moderation
if we would even have noticed if he worked at John's Diner rather than Intel.
War against taliban not justified - guess nobody you knew was in those tower, you fuck farmboy.
The Taliban DID NOT ATTACK US. All evidence points to Osama Bin Laden as the leader of the group that attacked us. Osama was not a member of the Taliban. Or is one Arab as good as any other to you?
No proof for 9/11 - oh, it was the jews huh?
No you idiot, that's not what I said at all. I said that it was completely reasonable for Afghanistan to request that we show them the proof that we had before they turned anyone over to us.
Taliban is just like the jews - Yes, jews are well known for living in squalor, beating women, hanging people at the local soccer stadium and blowing up ancient religious imagery.
Do Orthodox or Hasidic Jews make a practice of eating pork? Do Hasidic Jewish women cover their heads when in the view of anyone other than their husbands? In case you don't know, the answers are "No" to the first question and "Yes" to the second question. Those are both practices that fundamentalists Muslims follow as well. Do you dispute the similarities between fundamentalist Muslims and Orthodox and Hasidic Jews?
Let me explain something to you. Using the word Jew or Muslim does not make one an anti-semite. But then, it's easier for you to throw labels at me than to deal with the issues that I raised, isn't it?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Police: Welcome to your new home! Confess.
Hawash: I'm under arrest? Aren't you supposed to Mirandize me?
Police: You're not uder arrest. Confess.
Hawash: If I'm not under arrest, let me out of this room.
Police: You are a material witness. Confess.
Hawash: Can I see my family? Or a lawyer?
Police: You can't see a lawyer because you aren't under arrest. Confess.
Hawash: Can I please go? My family might be worried. I have bills to pay.
Police: You aren't leaving, terrorist. Confess.
Having said that, if he can give evidence against his co-conspiriters, there's a good chance he really is guilty.
I must use every sig. For great justice.
There are no gods but ourselves.
Or do you think they were afraid the U.S. wouldn't give bin Laden a fair trial? Yeah, that sounds about right.
How many fair trials have been given to the men detained in Cuba?
Remember this question? Want to answer it?
Sure. We figured out that some of the hijackers had Al Qaeda connections, and that it was probably an Al Qaeda operation. bin Laden fashioned himself the leader of Al Qaeda. Reasonable to assume he knew something about what his Evil Terrorist Organization was up to.
Then why was it such a problem to show this information to the Afghan govornment?
We could have extradited him easy on that stuff alone (in fact we tried to a few times)
Not true. When we demanded Osama, and the Afghans said they would turn him over only after we showed them evidence of his involvement, this country mobilized its military.
No negotiations, no attempt at extradition. Check your facts.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Oh sure. The ends justify the means. Hell, get a grip will you? Do YOU want to be arrested and held without communications or being charged while being interrogated for weeks on end? I'm not sure what else to call 5 weeks of that...
Asinine bullshit like that happens, and nobody believes it until it happens to you. Hell, I've gotten arrested for theft of fucking library books. Handcuffed, patted down, and put in a squad car, I would've gotten held in a county jail for a three day weekend if I didn't have the $350 in my wallet to pay the ticket then and there. No checks allowed, no credit cards allowed. Cash only. Over two books, a $15 max value (only ones *I* recall even getting) that I apparently lost when my fiancee and I split up. My bad, I'll admit they may have gotten misplaced. I still don't know what books they were or have any "proof" that I didn't return the books, a year and a half after it happened, and I LOOKED. Talked with the county sherriff about this too. As far as he knows, and he'd thought he'd remember such a "fucking wacky thing", is that I was the only one ever brought in on such a charge ever! It's in the books, I looked, just never enforced in that way.
Of course, in order to contest the charges or even find out which books or which library it was, I'd have had to go to court, which means that I would've been booked, mug shots taken, prints taken, lost a $2k weekend consulting job, and my security clearance pretty much revoked. Oh yeah, and I'd always have an arrest for "theft" on my record for the remainder of my life. Do you know how many agencies don't even ask for convictions anymore, and just ask for arrests? And check?!
In other words, I just had to lump it and shell out the cash if I didn't want to lose my weekend consulting job, my security clearence, and to keep my "criminal record" clean. Yeah, I'm dangerous. All of this is what I was told by the police, and later confirmed by multiple lawyers that are very good at their jobs. (I got a bit irked at my lack of choices at the time.)
All over two library books that I may or may not have returned. It doesn't bother me that they "caught" me, I'd have paid 10x the book's cost happily if I'd have known that they wanted them back!!! Getting arrested was the first I heard about it, and I'm religious about updating ID and crap like that.
Don't even get me started about getting frisked and thrown in a squad car for walking three blocks home from the bar after two beers. (I don't like to drive if I've had any alcohol) Why? Because I'm white, was decently dressed and the cop wasn't white and is known for harassing "smart ass cracker kids" (I was 22 - and live in the midwest) that are out after midnight. All in small town suburbia. Pleasant huh? Locked in a squad car just for walking down the sidewalk with some dickhead cop screaming at me cause I was so nervous because of his behavior that it took me a whole three seconds to find my license. Why he needed a driver's license when I wasn't operating a motor vehicle in the first place... not that I brought that up. I'm not totally stupid.
The whole point is, there are WAY too many laws around that get selectively enforced. And when that happens, there's potential for abuse, period. If the potential is there, it WILL happen eventually. Oversight is a wonderful thing... getting rid of some of the insane details, exceptions, and attempts to placate special interest groups would work wonders imho.
I guess the gist of this whole rant is that when you think about civil liberty laws and groups, don't just blow them off as political bleeding heart garbage, but actually think about what could happen or how you'd feel if it happened to you.
It's a long way from what this case is about, but I just hate the mentality of ends justifying 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.
The Taliban, as others mention, had no money. They were poor. Destitute.
"Everyone knew" has been the battle cry for both Afghanistan and Iraq. And it turns out "everyone" was wrong.
The Taliban was not al Qaeda, and did not share the same goals. It hosted the group, but a lot of countries hosted the group. Including Saudi Arabia, which is mysteriously uninvaded at present.
And Iraq was not "in bed" with al Qaeda. There is no intelligence to that effect. As a matter of fact, all intelligence said they were not before we invaded. Bush never listened to anything that contradicted what "everyone knew", so we have two occupied countries on our hands that were not any threat to us -- and if the people in those countries once admired us, they now bitterly hate our guts. We have manufactured the enemies that we had fantasized about, but had not until now actually existed. We made enemies out of the whole world, because "everyone" knew they were wrong, and possibly French as well.
The path to wisdom begins not with a single step, but with the thought: "Everyone" is usually wrong. Herds don't think. The real "everyone" was the peoples of the world, who, not having CNN/Fox/MS-NBC/etc., actually saw real information on their TV's. They told us we were out of our minds, and just plain misinformed. They were right, and our "everyone" was wrong.
The U.S. basically saddled up the horses, rode out to some poverty-wracked deserts, and lynched two countries.
We've lynched the wrong countries. We've insulted, belittled, and punished our friends, who tried to tell us to slow down and think.
"Everyone" was murderously wrong.
And the bad guys got clean away. Yeehaw.
Osama is the leader of a political and religious cult. He is not part of some superconspiracy of Moslems who "hate our freedom". We've determined that this is so, however, so it must be true.
As an Irish citizen living in the US - I have decided that it is time to leave this country - it is starting to look, smell, and act as Germany did during the 1930s. I wish you Americans luck in regaining civilized justice in your broken country, if not, I hope that the EU will be accepting of political refugees from this brave but failed experiment.
Or check into the Verone Cables yourself. How this shit escapes the media is amazing. McCarthy had a real reason to be paranoid.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
established country, with universally recognised borders and a government (no matter how oppressive) cannot be a "terrorist" state.
Not to ignore the rest of your post, but you kinda defeat your own argument here. The Taliban govt in Afghanistan was NOT a universally recognized govt. It did NOT have well defined borders. In fact most other govts around the world specifically did not recognize it as a legitimate govt. IIRC, only two or three countries recognized the Taliban govt--Qatar, Pakistan...I think that's it. (not 100% sure that those are the only too).
I can't wait to meta-moderate this train wreck. Parent is flamebait but grandparent is Insightful?! Not for long if I can help it. Sometimes it saddens me to see such generaly-intelligent people struggling so hard to hide from painful reality. Sometimes. Not now though. Now you're just making me sick.
Then A. Coward below spews this nonsense in defense of grandparent:
Secret warrant -- he doesn't get told what he's just been arrested for.
Secret evidence -- it won't be made public, so no one will ever be able to contradict it.
How the hell do you know he wasn't told what he was arrested for? In any case, he is admittedly guilty, and so I'm pretty sure he had an idea of what he was being arrested for even if they didn't tell him.
And, had he not confessed to the charges, he could have forced the evidence to be made public at trial. But he didn't, because he's guilty (who the hell cops for 7 years instead of risking 20-ish? That's not a bargain -- that's just mercy on the part of the prosecutor/judge). What, he confesses, but they should go to all the trouble to put the case together and put on a mock trial to prove the likes of you that his confession is valid?
Bah, to hell with all you who can't admit you were wrong on this one. It's over. Get over it.
everything in moderation
An incomplete analogy.
The Taliban were not refusing to give him up. They were refusing to give him up without some proof he was guilty.
Bush could have given them the proof, but instead gave them a deadline.
Here's a thing: the culture in that area respects hospitality towards guests as one of the highest duties a man has. They could not just hand the accused over to a lynch mob, not without some sort of fig leaf, anything at all, to establish his guilt.
Had they been given proof, they might have handed the al Qaeda over without a qualm. Instead, Bush showboated to a scared U.S. and declared that the Taliban hand over the group, or die.
Another part of the area's culture: they don't take threats of invasion well. They're kind of known for it. Ask the Russians.
And we are not the police. There is international law in place to handle situation such as bin Laden and his murderers. We blew it off. We stepped outside all law, and cannot claim the protection of the law now.
And as police, we pretty much suck. A wide open country, AND HE GOT AWAY.
And I still don't understand what all this has to do with Taliban supporters in the U.S. Bush and company did business with the Taliban not two months before 9-11. They gave them 60 million US dollars.
I don't see Bush locked up in a hole for six years. Isn't he a collaborator on a massive scale?
Not to mention that laws that are only selectively enforced just plain need to be taken off the books. Granted, situation matters and some discretion is required, but that's what I thought judges were for.
Being arrested and held when there aren't specific records of the crime or there isn't personal knowledge of the illegal activity specified shouldn't happen. But it does.
Happened to me in fact. A minor, piddling thing comparatively, but being forced to shell out $350 right then, in cash (as in paper money) or sitting in jail for three days and losing thousands of dollars in business and having an arrest record no matter the trial outcome sucks. I'm just glad I went to an ATM prior to getting arrested. *shrugs*
Whether or not he was associated with 9/11, the taliban were sheltering him from justice, and they knew it.
Requiring that some manner of proof be provided before you extradite a suspected criminal is not shielding him.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Um, the U.S. recognized Al Qaeda de facto in July of 2001, when Bush's people tried to negotiate a gas pipeline across Afghanistan.
And Saudi Arabia was the home of the financial backers of Al Qaeda. Most of the attackers were Saudi Arabian.
Why didn't we invade Saudi Arabia, then?
And some people can speculate all they like, but it isn't information.
I'm all for defying the government, unlawfully if necessary -- but always peacefully. Granted, a certain amount of killing might be necessary to overthrow the government, were that one's goal. But it is obvious that Mr. Hawash's goal was not to overthrow the government. Taliban freedom fighters are not going to harm the United States from without.
Man, "life" is a very large interpretation of "more than 20 years". I would think that would be more like 20-40 at most, but what do I know. I only read the article:
What do you do given a choice like that?
Yeah, that's a tough one, since it clearly sucks to be him now (and then) any way you slice it. But, I know one thing I definitely don't do, and that's confess to a crime I didn't do and take 7 the hard way for it. No way. 1-2 years, maybe. 3 is pushing hard. 5+ might as well be 20, I'm fighting.
everything in moderation
The British helped create Al Qaida in Libya and the Us gave them so much money while they were in Afghanistan that they became a real force. The only reason the Talibam could not hand anyone over is because Afghanistan and the US do not have an extradition treaty and it was therefore illegal to do so. The Taliban were prepared to negotiate a treaty but the US were more keen on dropping lots of bombs and killing lots of people. A treaty would have resulted in the arrest of bin Laden but killing innocent people was the chosen option.
The Taliban were not given any legal option as the US did not provide any evidence whatsoever to give a reason to extradite bin Laden.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
I could say the same about Howard Dean...it'd be about as useful, and would arguably be more truthful. Argumentum ad hominem is poor style. It's a logical fallacy; didn't they teach you that in college? Besides, if Rush (right) and the Guardian (left) are basically saying the same thing, what are the odds that what they're saying is inaccurate?
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Afghanistan under the Taliban was a state sponsor of terrorism. One can, therefore, argue that by supporting the Taliban, you support al Qaeda. However, regardless of al Qaeda, supporting the Taliban when their at war against the US sounds like treason to me.
My parents' tax dollars went to support the Mujahidin, which later became the Taliban. Boy, I'm glad that they have both passed away, otherwise some idiot out there would be claiming that they should be brought up on charges for supporting a group that would later go on to support Al Qaeda.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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.
The American government should arrest itself, it has been helping the Taliban for years before the 9-11 attacks... or is that all forgotten now?
That's almost certainly not true, as a matter of fact. The Justic department has lately taken the tack that if they run into any problems in prosecutions like this, they can simply declare the defendant an 'enemy combatant' and hustle him off to a secret military court where he can be sentenced to death, in secret, without any constitutional safeguards.
If you were facing that kind of threat, you'd find a 7 year plea bargain unnaturally attractive too. Even if innocent.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Actually once the soviet union came down we gained access to the old KGB records... and found out that in McCarthy's day the country, and particularly the government was indeed crawling with KGB agents. The ironic thing, however, is that even though McCarthy was right about that, he never actually caught any of them. He just railroaded innocents. He would have been expected to catch a few just by random chance, but somehow he didn't. Odd, eh?
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Was he collaborating before or after 9-11?
Was it illegal to talk or help the Taliban before 9-11?
Yes it was. Bush and his crew gave them sixty million smackers. And two months before the invasion, tried to negociate rights for a gas pipeline across Afghanistan.
So, before 9-11, Bush gave them US$60M, and tried for a pipeline for UNOCAL.
Why isn't he in jail?
" You can be a freedom fighter without targeting non-combatant civilians."
In nuking the Sons of Saddam last week, US forces apparently blew eight civilians apart, including one, as I recall, who arrived alive in the ER with his brains on the outside of his skull.
You have to understand that people who are being blown apart don't care whether or not they are "deliberately targeted". The US killed tens of thousands in the last two years, a large number of those civilians.
Those civilians don't see much difference between the two planes bin Laden's people used, and the missles that blew out that man's brains. We are the terrorists now, as far as most of the world is concerned.
This is insane. We had EVERYONE on our side two years ago. Now we're blowing up civilians, and everyone hates our guts.
My irony meter just exploded, here we have a right wing republican (me) trying to explain to the left wing peacenicks here on /. why we shouldn't have been in a war.
There is hope, after all.
I completely concur. Mod this guy up. Except that he didn't place a strong enough emphasis on: .
Including Saudi Arabia, which is mysteriously uninvaded at present.
Saudi Arabia is the number one supplier of economic and moral support to terrorists world-wide, as well as having been deeply entrenched in the September 11th attacks.
Why aren't we invading Saudi Arabia? I didn't support Afghanistan, and I certainly didn't support Iraq, but taking a look at Saudi Arabia might have an easier time making it onto my list of sane options (that is, if we should be invading anyone at all.)
Oh, except for the fact that the two holiest Moslem sites (Mecca and Medina) are in Saudi Arabia, and since Israel is already "occupying" (hah!) their 7th or something holiest site (i.e. the Temple Mount), we might as well leave those two alone.
------
"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" --George W. Bush, in Jan. 2000
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.
I'm sure the argument went something like this:
CIA analyst 1: Hey, I have an idea, how about we train these Taliban guys to fight the Russians!
CIA analyst 2: These Taliban guys... they're maniacal religious fanatics bent on eliminating all foreign influences on their people. They see the Russians as invaders trying to take their religion and antiquated pre-industrial ways away from them. They also seem to have a chip on their shoulder for Coca Cola and Universal Studios for the same reasons.
CIA analyst 1: They're religious fanatics with guns? The Reagan Administration will love them then.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
When US put sanctions against Iraq pharma factories, it caused death of alomst 5,00,000 iraqi children. Medeline Albright acknowledged this fact and said "this was worth it"
On what account you are going to put this deaths? They were as civilians as you are.
I agree 100% that this world as black and white.
The US government did not provide the Taliban with any evidence to support the request for bin Laden to be handed over. The Taliban were happy to consider the request and were keen to find a reaonable way out of the situation but the US did not allow them a way out.
I do not support the Taliban, they were an evil regime that treated its people despicably, but they could not legally hand over citizens to another country without a reason. They did not even have an extradition treaty, yet they wanted to discuss it. If the US had been reasonable bin Laden may have been handed over, instead lots of innocent people died, loads of innocent people are still held in Guantamalo bay and we still do not have bin Laden.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
The US, IMHO, is flushing it's way of life down the drains by turning itself into a police state. Don't you see? Americans have allways (and still are) been so proud of their constitution. Now, what's left of it? It gets violated daily and no one cares. No one fights because the only way to avoid the death-penalty is to throw the towel in the ring. (Aren't those punishments like the death penalty and very-severe sentencing just meant to scare a suspect from fighting in trial??)
A constitution is -again IMO- meant for 2 things:
1. To ensure that a just government can perform it's tasks
2. To ensure that a unjust government cannot perform -or is severely hampered in performing- it's task.
Now, you are loosing #2!! This means that any unjust government can take all the power that is trusted in her and convert your country in a dictatorship within a term. How is that with your way-of-life?
Siggy
This unique sig is intended to make this user more recognisable.
But one doesn't grow a beard like that for the hell of it,
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 are well-spoken. You are also clearly intelligent. But you are a blatant racist. Can there not be a patriotic immigrant? You, sir, may be smart... but you are also an idiot.
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.
I know plea bargaining can be abused, but to do away with the practice would be a gross violation of the rights of defendants -- they have a right to plea guilty for whatever reason.
That's not to say the process couldn't use some safeguards though.
Insightful? Is California running Slashdot now?
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
Terrorist Inside! Dum dum dum dum.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
I'm sorry if this sounds like flamebait to anyone (possibly because it might be). But according to this guy I would be characterized in Group 3. I came here when I was seven years old. Just cuz my mother (it's always the mother) wants me to remember my culture and remember it well doesn't mean that she expects me to go against the U.S. Infact most people here like me are probably the same.
We do infact have cultural differences and I personally don't like some of what you characterize as western culture but that doesn't mean I'm against you acting your way. Also our cultures are becoming very similar anyway... Just look how India and China are changing as we speak. Both are becoming more western then ever before Mr. Racist.
Hmmm... Pie...
If you're going to come down on the taleban, come down on them for the right reason: they were allowing him safe harbour _before_ 11/9/2001. No one has yet offered believable evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind the 11/9/2001 tragedy. The talebans' refusal to turn him over after the missile attacks (given the flimsiness of the evidence) was almost reasonable.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
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) --
After enduring this, how much trust would you still have in the 'justice' system? So now someone comes up and says 7 years if you say this and that, or we'll land you a terrorist conviction which will add at least 20 years to whatever the judge sees fit. Now, what would you do?
You'd ask for a butt plug with a lock on it, and take the 7 years, that's what!
There was a story on slashdot yesterday about a guy who ran a website that contained anti-government hate speak and linked to sites that explained how to make bombs. He cut a plea for a 1 year sentence for operating the site, fearing they'd slap the terrorism charge on him aswell.
I'm genuinely amazed Americans are still able to sing the "land of the free" part in their national anthem. America may be a lot of things, but when it comes to freedom you've still got a long way to go.
Did the CIA help him out after he admitted terrorist actions? No. But the Taliban did.
Apples and oranges.
make world, not war
you're an idiot. read this and get your facts straight before you start to spout off. this is the plea agreement. http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf ?/base/news/1057234000272203.xml
So lets attack them.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
How did Howard Dean lie?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Just some stuff to let you think about.
funding him
The US and its Citizens have funded many an Illegitimate or illegal fighting force which makes threats against other nations ruling bodies (Iran, Panama, Lybia, Cuba need i go on?). The US only agreed to outlaw funding to the IRA from US citizens after 9/11. Did they really need that wakeup call?
popularizing him with your people through state-controller religion
The US beams "The Voice Of America" into several nations, which populizes the minority or fringe groups, where the US wants regime change (Again, Lybia, Cuba, Iran.....). And then it has the gall to complain when the signals are blocked.
allowing him to host large training camps
Again, the US leads training camps in US controlled territories, and on foreign soil. The US has also supplied training teams of CIA agents or special forces to rebel groups fighting against those regimes it doesnt agree with.
all of which contributed very greatly to his ability to launch attacks against a US naval ship, two embassies, and the world trade center twice
All of this has lead to the US invasions of Panama, Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq, and where next? The US seems to think that not only is it the worlds police force, but the worlds mafia enforcers as well.
He did seem to flat-out admit guilt there. Without a tape of the trial, though, it's hard to know how he admitted it; vocal inflections can be very telling. It's also interesting that five of the six others the government has charged have pleaded innocent. But again, Fox News hasn't really given us enough information to decide whether Hawash is innocent but is turning in his companions to save his hide or whether he really is guilty.
It's impossible to make blanket statements like "the federal government is always wrong in terrorism cases" or, on the other end, "the federal justice system is always fair" (cough, Kevin Mitnick, cough). Nevertheless, there is the frightening and very realistic possibility that this guy is actually guilty. And what do we do then?
We can carp about his civil rights being infringed upon all we want, but the fact of the matter is that if he's guilty, governmental intervention provided a real benefit to our safety. Given the choice between nabbing the Al Qaeda webmaster and giving him a chance to escape, I think I know which option I'd pick.
I recognize that Fox News is derided as being rather right-wing happy-go-lucky pro-war-yay. Nevertheless, the parent poster is right -- this seems to be pretty damning testimony. I miss freedom and I miss privacy but looking back, it seems like this guy really was pegged properly. I don't like the precedent it'll set and it's hard to say whom I'd rather trust between "the government" and a suspected terrorist, but sometimes there really seems to be no choice in the matter.
The big issue this situation raises for me is simple. What happens when the prosecutors, the police, whoever have the right intelligence? I don't know whether I can condone the kind of kung-fu they must've pulled in that parking lot to get this guy, and I don't think I like the incarceration-without-charges, but at the same time if Hawash is guilty, I'm glad they got him. Living in the US is starting to feel more and more like starring in the stage version of Faust these days...
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
AIDS is finally funny.
I'm not racist, don't get me wrong.. I love everyone, I'd rather feel safe in an airplane if they didn't frisk all the wrong people to keep the 'Middle Eastern Human Rights Groups' pleased.
I don't know about YOU, but does this seem at all like the commie witchhunts happening all over again?
I know if _I_ were offered seven years in jail in exchange for pleading guilty to some terrorist crime vs. _twenty_ years in jail if I didn't, I guess I'd plead guilty too.
Also, under international law, such a confession is generally considered invalid since it wasn't given voluntarily. A little piece of trivia for those of you *Cough*Americans*Cough* not well versed in international law.
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?
It used to be thought that maybe they were killed or something of that sort, but these days you never know if the government is holding your loved one. So, here's a lesson learned:
If someone disappears, immediately file a writ of habeas corpus with state, and then federal authorities. If the person you're looking for fails to appear quickly and it later turns out that he was being held, bring a big bucks civil rights suit against the government.
Surely Kissenger is one of the major reasons the US refused to join the International Criminal Court?
Because if we went against extreme Islam we would have to go after extreme Christianity, extreeme Buddism, extreeme Hinduism, extreme Taoism, extreme Shintoism, extreme Satanism, extreme ... well, you get the point...
There are too many 'normal' white people to do THAT to.
They wait for one that is a smaller group, like those of us that were wearing trench coats, that were all of the sudden going to kill everyone. I had worn a black trench, and listened to Marilyn for years before that, then it happens, and everyone starts looking at me funnier then before. Alot of us who fit the 'profile' regardless of where we were got pulled into the principles offices, and forced to change, ordered to see school shrinks.
We have always done this. Regardless of the group. If you havent seen Bowling for Columbine, do so.
Im glad
Now I don't know whether this is true or not, and I wish I could remember what the source was, but it is at least consistent with US history; using states as pawns to antagonaize/disrupt cold-war enemies. Iran would be another example.
He will serve at least seven years in federal prison under the deal.
What a great deal!
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
813 posts and still no comments about Fox News! Incredible!
umm.....
What exactly did the European Union loose??
I notice the use of the term "speculated" here coupled with the term "Some people". Some people have even speculated that UFOs, the CIA, Mossad, G. W. Bush, the Saudis, English royalty (well the Lizards masquerading as English royalty), and Bill Gates did September 11. Hey, that really does sound authoritative!
Or else we could have used all the evidence the FBI and such was collecting about him regarding pre 9/11 stuff. I mean, the guy had a bit of a file down at the Bureau, ya know? We could have extradited him easy on that stuff alone
We very well could have, but instead we decided to just go ahead with the bombing as scheduled. C'mon people, you thinnk GW is GOOD at paperwork???
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.
Once coercion comes into play -- nothing except an independent material evidence. What in this case is impossible to get, all that can be proven is that he hiked in China (not a crime) and tried to cross the border to Afghanistan (minor offense). Murderers (and mass-murderers) were declared innocent just because morons in police (and FBI, and other countries' equivalents) messed with evidence, suspects and witnesses.
At this point the mess that was created makes it impossible to convict him with any credibility, regardless of what he really did, or intended to do, any conviction, right or wrong, will be nevertheless fabricated.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
You are guilty and are not given a chance to prove yourself innocent or even attempt to defend yourself even if guilty.
Try Canada for your next technical career move if you do not want to spend time in prison.
http://nwbagpipes.com/
To which he says, I've got a better deal, how about I give you the finger, and you give me my phone call.
Tell that to those guys in camp x-ray.
Those POWS have no us legal rights.
POW's rights are supported by Geneva convention, and the laws of the territory where they are located. Any government's claims of otherwise "because we say so" don't matter.
Guess what happened to 97% of all the nazi solders captured by the russians. They were in POW labor camps till they died. Kinda sad but they were still nazi right? or should we have cared? you decide the russians decided to kill them.
Yeah right. And the other 3% were eaten alive by the bears that still walk across the Red Square.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I always look at people with buzz cuts and camo suspiciously. I don't *do* anything though. That would be dumb. They're the army...
So many people that are completely unable to understand that a conviction in these conditions is only comparable to convictions in China, Saudi Arabia or Cuba, a situation that has rightly been denounced for years, but now that the US does the same there are many that are willing to have an hypocratical double standard regarding this matter.
I'll never get tired of saying this: the truly democratic and fair nature of a society is only measured by how this society treats people that by most accounts such society finds distasteful or dangerous.
The US standards have lowered to the level of many repressive regimes, if that is the way you want to fight terrorism, good for you, just pray that nobody ever has a grudge against you and goes and denounces you to the authorites (as used to happen in former Soviet block countries).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"The world" never asks US to do any of that -- in fact, most of the neighbors of attacked countries are usually begging US to leave those countries alone. Of course, this is not what Fox News proclaims.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
That smell is the Constitution burning.
If indeed they want to claim that people captured and placed in Guantanamo camp are not member of militia or resistance, it all falls back to US performing mass kidnapping and intending to murder some foreign individuals. Sounds any better?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
It is a well-debunked myth that the US gave money to the Taliban before 9/11. See, for example:
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20011008.html
The US gave money to NGOs (humanitarian organizations) working in Afghanistan, not to the Taliban. Before 9/11, only 3 countries even recognized the Taliban, and the US was not one of them.
As for the UNOCAL pipeline myth, while it is true that there were such negotiations, they did not involve the US government, and occurred in 1999 - you know, before Bush was in power:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1984459.stm
Jesus, people, try to check facts a little before you post, or mod.
The funny thing is, people were claiming that the war in Afghanistan was about oil, yet their only argument for that claim was that the US wanted this pipeline. Two years later, where's the pipeline?
Now people are claiming that the US invaded Iraq to get its oil. Yet oil production remains below pre-war levels, and the first shipment of oil did not go just to US firms, but was split with European firms as well (include France's TotalFinaElf).
In Soviet Russia tired joke makes YOU!
-- thinkyhead software and media
Good idea. After all, look how well this attitude and approach worked out for the Imperialist British Empire, after all.
-- thinkyhead software and media
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.
And besides, maybe our intelligence saying it was Osama was wrong. Our intelligence about the WMD in Iraq was wrong, and we said that enough times that "everyone knew it" also.
When you're innocent, but pleady guilty in court as part of a plea agreement, it really means you know you've been screwed, but you're taking the lessor of two evils.
Now that this case is effectively closed, and justice left unserved, the effects are:
The sad fact is now we'll never really know the facts in this case.
--Mike--
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.
The man said those that trained Bin Laden should indeed be punished. Oh wait, that would be the CIA .
The word was 'trained' not 'funded', and I don't know anyone who is denying that the CIA trained him.
So please address the point that was made, not the one you'd like to answer.
Just because something doesn't match your ideas of moral relativism, doesn't mean it's flaimbait.
Everything the poster said was true and it's perfectly acceptable to form an opinion about those facts.
"To save the planet, I had to go to the worst spot on Earth, and that was Philadelphia." -- Sun Ra
Is there a difference between reasonable doubt and "the[sic] shadow of a doubt"? Because our legal system requires one of the two, and I think that the other one, the term you used, is a much stronger term.
Lasers Controlled Games!
So what do you suggest the US do or should have done? Should we, as a country, enter isolation again?
It is so easy to be critical of past actions. Especially when you don't know all the facts or motives that led to those actions. Since you do know all, I curious as to what the US should be doing to protect itself?
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.
Read what I said above that: I'm not decided either way. I merely pointed out that bin Laden calling Saddam an infidel is hardly conclusive proof that they aren't allies.
"Because the Talaban sheltered Al Quaeda, provided them land to build training camps, and refused to give up their leadership even after the attacks of 9/11?"
Guess who gave them $384 million a couple of years before?
Looks like McCarthyism is back
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
"Repeat after me: The CIA never funded Osama bin Laden."
No, they didn't give him used non-sequential bills, but you may have heard about a travelling group of troubadours called the 'Hezbollah' who were quite active during Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during a period in history called 'the cold war'...something that all sides lost because of the number of interested parties that were left holding guns without income. The Hezbollah were supplied and funded from 'the west'.
Which raises an interesting point, who sold arms to Afghanistan?
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
It was money provided through a United Nations aid program for food. Let's not misrepresent facts, alright?
Can you avoid using GB as Guantanamo Bay, it's confusing for some of us.
Mind you it's an easy mistake to make at the moment with this heat (35C in some places).
Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
It's not a popularity contest. That 'everyone hates our guts' is irrelevant.
Ditch the link to Foxnews and read this story on the case from The Oregonian, the local paper in Portland.
The guy sounds guilty as hell. But his defendants here do not seem deterred by this.
Half would be pretty good for Fox, of course.
Impressive etymological lessons aside, maybe we shouldn't stop asking "Why?" just yet.
... meltdown of Afghan society" after the Afghan war?
Why was there "warlordism and
When the US (or another super-power) goes in and covertly fuels a war for ideological purposes, it generally sets about destabilizing the country so that it's easier to leverage its grand plans into reality. Often it will intentionally work to create a situation in which society is polarized and the moderates are marginalized or wiped out.
A conquering imperial power like the Soviets would do this too. So both sides probably worked to undermine functioning democratic civilian institutions that would get in their way. Both sides upped the ante and made it worse by not backing off.
The US helped to destroy the functioning civil society, then walked away from the "victory" mess ( like the Soviets, who HAD to walk away). Then, somehow (imagine!) chaos ensued, and after years of that, the Taliban came into power. Somehow I don't think the US is off-the-hook. We may not be able to trace the pedigree, but there's a causal connection, at least to a differentdegree, between the US involvement in Afghanistan and the rise of the Taliban.
True, it may be that the Taliban would have come along even if the US had never been involved in the Afghan war. Pointless to argue too much about that, but let's at least do a reality check...
Massive covert operations, arming & training of religious extremists for guerrilla warfare, funding & construction of training camps, where they were taught all about CIA-developed, time-proven methods for asymmetric warfare MAY have been a FACTOR in what happened in the region, even years later, don't you think?
More to the point, it certainly dwarfs what Mr. Ex-Intel Employee has pleaded guilty to. And that, after all, is the whole point: underscoring the basic hypocrisy of the situation.
W = (-president)^1/2
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.
Not really. The country was pretty unstable well before the Soviet intervention. Many coups and revolutions after the British imperialist were thrown out after the World War I. It's very arguable who were the rightful rulers at the time of Soviet intervention but the Afgan communists had as good a claim as any.
Afghanistan timeline of key events in the last century: here.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
From http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWgoring.htm :
Gustave Gilbert, an intelligence officer, interviewed Hermann Goering at Nuremberg on 18th April, 1946.
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Thank you. It amazes me how many people here fail to see that.
If he were a black drug dealer that admitted he had plans to murder his competition to gain a greater area to sell his product, everybody here would be telling the authorities to lock him up and throw away the key.
But this is Slashdot, murder based upon religious, political or racial ideals (as long as it's not a white person) is supported while murder for profit or criminal violence is not.
Guess what people, murder is murder and murderous intent is murderous intent.
Excuse me, but did I miss the reports of Hassidim executing women in public squares? Or denying them education and medical care? Or eliminating music and cinema from public performance? Or generally killing anyone for not being like them?
Do you have any basis for this offensive generalization and idiotic comparison, or are you just a silly prejudiced prick?
When we start ramming airplanes into buildings and blowing up hospitals and taking hostages in theatres, thats when.
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
Why would anyone plead innocent in a case like this? This is a federal charge that involves jail time...I don't think anyone would want to get themselves involved in this if they really weren't. I just don't understand people sometimes (why would you want to help anybody that hurts others?).
"I only watched about 10 minutes of FOX war coverage. All of which consisted of an analyst (the guy with the opinions) trying to reign in the over-enthusastic anchor (the supposedly objective guy) from putting predictions in his mouth about how the Iraqis would welcome the liberation with flowers and other straight-from-the-whitehouse crap. Cable channel of the absurd."
I only read two paragraphs of yours, but it was enough for me to assume that you are an idiot.
Wow, it really is easy to make unsubstantiated statements using minimal evidence as proof! Thanks for the demonstration. So, we have it on equal authority that a) Fox is the cable channel of the absurd because you watched 10 minutes of it (as if you won't find 10 minutes of absurdity on MSNBC, CNN, etc), and b) you are an idiot.
I love it how "liberals" claim to be objective and deal in facts when mostly, they are anything but, and deal in nothing close to "facts"...just their unsubstantiated oppinion, and because they think it, it must be true. It's like a herd of cows all milling around going "moo". Just place cows with liberals and "moo" with "Fox is stupid" or "Republicans are stupid". They are all about on the same level of intellectual discourse and factual accuracy.
I have a friend who is an attorney for the DOJ. He's VERY smart, and could make 10X as much money in the private sector as he does working for the government. He has the highest integrity of anyone I know, and I cannot imagine that he would do anything that would compromise the rights of American citizens. In fact, if he was aware of abuses, I'm sure that he would do all that he could to make it public and fix the problem with a rogue DOJ lawyer intent on compromising civil rights.
It's easy and tempting to attack the vague "government workers" as being evil and incompetent, but it's not rational. Not everyone who works for the government is corrupt and sqaunders resources. Some do, and I'm sure that there are rogues within the government but they are the exception rather than the norm.
"possible execution" or "possible life imprisonment" are valid punishments for guilty people, and it makese sense to threaten that in the process of prosecuting the accused.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
The AC who did such a lousy job of defending my original post was the one who defined "secret warrent" that way. It is possible that Hawash was told, at the time of arrest, what he was being arrested for. That isn't the issue. The issue is that the police did not tell us what he was arrested for. For that matter, it wasn't until eleven days after the arrest that they even told his family that he was arrested. It wasn't until two months after the arrest that the police told us (the American people) what the charges were.
That's a secret arrest, and secret charges. That isn't the way the USA is supposed to work. When the police arrest a person they tell us who they arrested, why they arrested him, and so forth. They have to, or else we wouldn't know what our government is doing. Since we're a democracy (Representative Federal Republic) we have to know what the government is doing, otherwise we can't know if we want to vote against those who currently hold office. Kinda the very basis of our government here.
Do not let your love of your country blind you to the fact that the current government is undermining the whole reason why this country is worth loving. I am a patriot, for that reason I am opposed to the way Hawash was arrested. The fact that he was guilty in no way removes the fact that he was not arrested properly. As a patriot I am both frightened and angered by the way the current government is working to kill my country.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
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.
Its a prison camp full of people who were trying to massacre Americans. Did you somehow miss this or feel like it was an unimportant tid bit. I know! How about we take the people trying to murder your family and set them up at a resort in Cancun. Would you feel like your country was protecting you then?
I think questioning things is ok but when you do dont leave out the most important parts. These were not people whose crime is being Arab or Muslim and don't try and mislead yourself into thinking that's why they are there. They are there because they are "card carrying" members of a group that killed 3000+ Americans in a day of infamy.
Now the real question is are there innocent people in these camps. For most people we simply trust that our military did what it could to minimize the capturing of innocent people. For the anti-government socialist faction this is not adequate cause it doesn't cast enough doubt on the US or its administration.
Exactly. Case and point? The West Memphis Three. Free the WM3!
Yes, and to give further arguments:
u re /mar00/earlsb1.htmlw board/messages/43.htm lp ect rum-ews.htm9 0/j90/j90vonh ippel.htmlo rt/news/may2 0/nuclear520.html
- there are no reasons for a military force, acting as a police force (or wanting to be seen as such) to develop nuclear weapons further. The US military is doing this.
- nuclear weapons are "problematic" if it comes to false alarms:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeat
http://politicaltexan.com/ww
http://www.armscontrol.ru/start/publications/s
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/19
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/rep
Scary. Shouldn't be nuclear weapons considered a relict from the cold war and be abolished?
Maybe the Taliban should have put a little more weight on what they know the US culture to be....
Get em riled up and you are likely to get your ASS KICKED.
So thoses Cultural-centric Taliban got what they deserved, they should have been more open to other societies worldview and understood that from the beginning.
Then you really haven't been paying much attention to France, Russia, or China lately, have you?
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.
That story gone so don't know your reference. Fact is stereotypes in the media have been present for years and I don't think the human race is collectively intelligent enough to get over that hurdle. Regardless of his guilt though, doesn't it frighten any of you that all you get for conspiring to levy war against the U.S. is 7 years?!
France would have to use aircraft and not even China currently has a delivery system to get a nuclear missile to the East coast (although they can hit the west coast just fine, thank you Mr. Clinton).
Only the former USSR (and maybe Britain) maintains an ICBM delivery system capable of hitting the east coast of the United States. And frankly from what I've read of Russia's ICBM system (i.e. they have a massive radar hole in their southeast perimeter because of dead satellites and no money to operate their equipment), I wouldn't give good odds on their stuff actually working.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
And is the US (or any other country, for that matter) supposed to take the same attitude towards each government for eternity, no matter what takes place? 9/11 and related events are quite enough to make one reconsider their perspective on things...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
No, the United States is a nation charged with protecting the lives and property of its citizens. Those citizens were attacked and killed. A country that harbored the group responsible, supported and abetted and aided them, refused to release them to us. That country therefore declared themselves allies of the group that attacked and killed US citizens, and therefore became valid and legitimate targets of our counterattack.
This is not rocket science, and it is not a difficult moral or philosophical dilemna. People don't get it because they don't want to get it.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Nice to see useful idiots are still with us. Everyone in the whole d@mn world knew he was guilty, including the Taliban. Why do you think Palestinians were dancing in the streets chanting his name as a hero?
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Isn't that Dr. Katz???
- "That's just the kind of fuzzy-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten."
Rush Limbaugh is actually quite a reliable source. Just because you don't like his politics doesn't make his factual presentations false. If you ever bothered to listen to his show, you'd find that he cites all his source material. Usually from such radical publications as the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Chicago-Sun Tribune, Matt Drudge, CNN...
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
ok, i'm a little late on this thread, but those of you who feel a need to announce how non-racist you are, and proceed to display your bias by pointing out someone's appearance and how they look this way or that... U R A RACIST! now stop lying to yourself and the rest of us.
if ya have a problem with that, i'll eat your liver, and i don't care what you look like on the outside, because i don't eat skin, it has too many calories.
Its "Guerilla Warfare" you are thinking of, not "Terrorist Tactics". Guerilla warfare is training the populace and providing a few weapons here and there to cause an invading army or government pain, avoiding directo confrontations, etc.
What defines a terrorist is the targets they choose to go attack. Kill soldiers and you are a freedom fighter, kill civilians and you are a terrorist.
The tactics that are used to kill make less of a difference.
So... Yes, it is OK for the US to use Guerilla Warfare against the Taliban. What is not OK is to attack civilians on purpose.
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.
While I'm perfectly willing to be convinced, I would like to see evidence of any actual use of military tribunals to sentence people to death as a result of the so-called "War on Terrorism".
I'm libertarian and dislike the gov't as much as the next guy, but I prefer to keep my facts straight.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
Hear, hear!
But also hear: all humans have rights in America, including the right of habeus corpus, under the Constitution.
Maybe Ashcroft and W. ought to read it some time.
wouldn't it have been a lot simpler to attack Americans in America if that was really their goal
:) Hawash wanted to fight in another country for what he believed is right.
You make a good point, TPFH. I think the explanation is that (even if he is guilty) he is not really a terrorist and none of his friends are. They are just people ready to travel to another country and fight for the cause they think is righteous. If this is terrorism, then the Marquis de Lafayette was a terrorist when he travelled to the US to help George Washington. Hawash never wanted to kill American civilians, if he wanted, he had more than enough opporunities in Intel.
The actual crime is commited by the US government that wants to prevent him from doing it. They had every right to capture or even kill him in Afganistan, if he actually fought there, but what they did is really wrong.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
And this is where we fundamentally part ways. You can be a traitor and all the despicable things that implies, without wanting to kill civilians, which is what is required to be a terrorist.
As far as "Islamic fundamentalists", given that Mike shaved his beard during his normal life, I would say you've got a hard sell if you want to make anyone (but those already biased against him) believe that he was anything of the sort. Again, one can be a traitor and an enemy without being the lowest of the low, killing anyone indiscriminately, a terrorist.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I think perhaps people are missing the biggest problem with this whole case. The problem is not whether or not Mike Hawash is guilty or innocent. He made the decision to plead guilty. That was his choice, right or wrong.
What I think we need to look at is how the government was able to arrest and hold him for months without access to his family or lawyer while no charges had been filed. We have a right to due process in this country. The government is not supposed to be able to lock you up indefinitely without a trial. Yet they were able to use a loophole to hold somebody that they clearly were intent on prosecuting without the rights even the most vicious serial killer would be granted. "Hostile Witness" my ass.
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.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
DO the math.
The US admitted to killing around three thousand completely innocent civilians.
If you presume that their error rate is around 1% then they must have killed 100 conscripts for every civillian.
War is necrophilia.
If (Talibal == Terrorists) // they supported Al Queda // they supported Taliban
USA = Terrorists;
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Man, you're sooo right. We better round up those fuckin' Quakers too. Damn terrorists and their horses and buggies, cloggin' the roads and not giving us enough room to pass in our Hummvee's...
Seriously though, if anyone bothered to read the article they'd see that he tried to enter Afghanistan through western China to fight US troops. I can admire his conviction, and his choice on some level (we should all be so lucky to believe in something that strongly), but unless he renounced his US citizenship and declared why before joining the fight... he's a traitor to the US. He conspired with and gave aid to the enemy. Like Jane.
I was supporting the Taliban before it was cool!
-makoffee
I suspect we're being misled. It's alot easier for the media to villify someone who looks so "evil" (or at least, different). Looking around, it looks like "scruffy looking Mike" is not necessarily typical Mike. Check out the courtroom sketch, he's just a clean shaven, balding geek. Well, maybe he just cleaned up for the court case, but he apparently also cleaned up for his wedding. And he has a nicely trimmed beard for this photograph.
I don't expect any better from Fox News, given such brilliant lines as claiming that Mike conspired "...to join the fight in Afghanistan against U.S. troops." Um, yeah. I suppose we sent our troops over to Europe during World War II because we wanted to join the fight against German troops? Certainly not because we wanted to stop German aggression, no we were specifically against the German troops. Of course, if you're honest and say that Mike might have been conspiring to defending Afghanistan from external invasion, it doesn't sound quite as evil.
Okay, maybe Mike really did try to help the Taliban, and I oppose that. However, this really doesn't point to Mike being an imminant danger to the United States. The man has an American wife and children! Mike's being made an example of because we're discovering that finding real terrorists is hard.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
I'm sorry, but the man took an oath of citizenship when he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. At that point "his country" became the United States of America. Attempting to assist the enemies of one's country in a time of war is NOT considered honorable in most instances and particularly not in this case. I will agree with you that those actions are not those of a terrorist. Rather, his actions would be more appropriately characterized as "treason".
Do you think he didn't ask for the phone call? Did that do him much good?
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Okay, I don't believe the "Iraq invaded for oil" claims, but the absolutely terrible counter arugments aren't helping my belief.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Erm, the Taliban sucked enough all by themselves, you don't need to make up lies about them to convince me that they were evil.
True, the Taliban was not the internationlally recognized government. But the warlords to the north weren't internationally recognized. We chose to support the warlords because we believed that they were more representative of Afgahnistan than the Taliban, but claiming that the warlords had any sort of recognition as legitimate government is silly. The warlord were running the areas under their control under martial law, just like the Taliban. Heck, the Taliban originally rose to power because they represented law and order replacing the previous lawlessness of the warlords. While the Taliban did terrible things (executions (sometimes secret) for a variety of offenses, treating women as sub-human), they did eliminate some problems (rape, widespread poppy production (for heroin)).
Hell, if the northern forces represented some sort of recognized government, why didn't we just hand the country over to them? Instead we did a great deal of work to build up support for a new government headed by Karzi. (We then abandoned them, but that's an entirely different issue.)
Search 2010 Gen Con events
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
XML Tools for Mac OS X
Some people have speculated that Bin Laden requested your (cheezedawg's) approval before any terrorist act.
Okay, that's silly, since "some people" in this case is "me". How about...
Some people have speculated that the US government and or Jews staged the 9-11 attacks to build up anti-Arab sentiment.
Sure, it's still silly, but in this case "some people" includes "many arabs" and even "some Americans."
Speculation is not evidence. The rest of your arguments against the Taliban were reasonable, I suggest sticking to them.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Because the government freely admits that they denied him these rights due to national security. How's that for faith in the system.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
The U.S. government is indeed doing what you say and excusing it by calling it a "war" on terror. The truth is this is just PR to get the U.S. public to accept whatever the government feels like doing. As I see it, the U.S. is asserting that they have the right to do whatever they want to the citizens and governments of other countries; and that the only laws that apply in international disputes are the laws of the jungle -- let the most powerful country prevail!
I would hope that we someday get to the point where there is a body of law that dictates how countries must treat the citizens of other countries (like the Geneva conventions); but with the present U.S. administration, if an international law retricts the U.S. in any way, it is going to be ignored.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
No it frightens me that our government passes the Patriot act, and nobody realizes that they now have very few rights. And it frightens me how now we have little recourse for governmental reform without being considered a "terrorist".
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
The "angry left" don't have to justify why they hate George Bush or a republican government, they just do, so it's simply not possible that he (or they) could do anything right.
These are the same people who blame the terrorist attacks on ourselves. The Taliban were "aiding and abetting" a criminal organization. In the U.S., that makes you a criminal as well. We are not the policemen of the world, but we are damn sure going to do what it takes to protect ourselves from violent lunatic fundamentalists, and since the attack took place on our soil, I have no problem applying our laws to the criminal murderers.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
After having been held in custody for several months, denied accses to friends, family, or a lawyer, and told every day that they were going to send me off to Camp X-Ray to rot until a military tribunal decided to execute me, well, when offered the chance to plead guilty and make up evidence against other people, it might look kinda tempting.
This is exactly why holding someone without charges or access to lawyer is so terribly wrong. It creates the sort of environment that dictators like, a great place to use psychological torture on someone. I don't believe that our goverment did use torture, but I shouldn't have to believe! Government is supposed to be transparent so I can know that it's behaving correctly.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Well.. the big difference is that pratically all male Sikhs where a turban and are named Singh. Its not a mark of extremist belief, simply of faith and culture. I've never met anybody who described himself as a devout Sihk who did not wear a turban. However, I've met many devout muslims who do not wear a beard at all or wear a neat trimmed beard. Not all muslims wear this style of beard. Only a certain sub-set do. Again it does not mean they are guilty of anything. It just helps express what they believe and not all beliefs are equal nor are all beliefs innoculous and peaceful.
I think the Arab descent is the problem here, really. I guess that wasn't obvious enough for you.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Hey! What do you think you're doing here?
Injecting facts into a Slashdot Hate-America fest? Are you new here? Don't you know that's against the rules?
Sigh. Newbies.
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
You've confused the Society of Friends (Quakers) with the Amish. And I don't see how anyone could confuse either with terrorists. Both denominations are devout Christians and pacifistic. About all the average Quaker could be accused of is improper use of archaic pronouns.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Where exactly do you find "take up arms against...civilians" in "Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban," or "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?" (The former from the judge, Mike responded in the affirmative.)
Stop making up fictional charges against him. At worst, he admitted to trying to take up arms in a war against US soldiers. Still pretty bad, but there is no evidence at all that he was willing or desired to harm ordinary civilians, or even US soldiers not invading Afgahnistan.
Of course, all of this assumes that Mike pled guilty because of actual guilt, not because he was convinced that he was facing being shipped off to Camp X-Ray without a trial.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
So? The US military trained Timoth McVeigh too..Should they let him go?
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.
I'm not going to comment on the guys down at Guantanamo Bay, because I probably agree with your position. Besides that's not relevent to the lead up to the 2001 war.
I think that it's important to note that the war wasn't based on the non-extradition of bin Laden. There was a fairly compelling argument for it, bin Laden notwithstanding.
no thanks
The Iraq invasion is not about oil, it is about who runs the world. Yes, Saddam was a dangerous man, but the evidence shows he was not that much of a danger, so the war wasn't about making America safe or about the war on Terrorism. What it is about is punishing any countries that do not bow to the will of the United States. The sanctions imposed on Iraq did appear to be containing the threat Saddam posed, but Saddam was doing what little he could to thumb his nose at Americans. Unfortunately Saddam couldn't admit the U.S. beat him, so the U.S. had to invade his country to prove who really won. No country other than the U.S. has had any say in how the U.S. prosecutes its "war" on terror, and if present trends continue, the U.S. will never consider the opinions of other countries on any subject.
The U.S. has made it clear that they don't recognize any international authority that might prevent Americans from doing whatever they want. The U.N. Security council was ignored, the U.S. gives more rights to U.S. terrorists than to foreign ones, and the U.S. refuses to recognize the international criminal court. The best lesson to draw from the current actions of the U.S. is that in a dispute with the U.S., you'd be dumb to depend on international laws, even ones that the U.S. has signed. Disputes are going to be won by the stronger party in the dispute, and the only way to make a deal with the U.S. is to suck up to Bush and hope his re-election chances don't prevent him from making a deal.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
It confuses us too!
Fellowship 9/11
How many people did the USA kill in 1 month of the recent Iraq "liberation"? I am sure you have some way to right off these killings, but not the 911 killings.
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."
Actually, he probably isn't a Newbie; he either inserted a strawman argument into the mix (the original poster wrote "trained" not "funded") or he didn't carefully read the original post. Either alternative is the action of a Slashdot veteran!
-- Pot is safer than Beer
"More bullshit. The Taliban, an illegitimate government to everyone but Pakistan, was joined at the hip to Al Qaida, much like the IRA is joined at the hip to Sinn Fein. The Taliban was the ruling force at home. Al Qaida was the activist force abroad. Same people, same goals, different focus."
True. Remind me, what was the USA's general reaction to the IRA? None, that's what, including turning a blind eye to open fund raising within the USA.
And let's not forget that the USA were the ones who encouraged and financed Al Qaida and other terrorist/freedom fighter (insert your preferred synonym here) groups for decades. Let's be honest, it isn;t terrorism that really updsets the US government: it's the fact that someone has finally turned on the technique on them.
I have no problem with that: it's perfectly natural, no one likes being the target of such despicable tactics. What annoys me is the USA's attempts to paint itself as whiter than white, as a nation totally innocent (let's be clear in distinguishing between the nation/government and the individuals who were actually killed in events like 9/11 who were innocents) and blameless, seemingly without any irony whatsoever asking "Why could anyone hate us so much?"
Take a look at your recent history. The USA is far from blameless, supporting the cause of 'Freedom, Justice, etc., etc.' (which incidentally for the rest of the planet does not automatically include 'The American Way') by backing some of the most violent, repressive and tyranical regimes the planet has ever seen (as to be fair did the Soviets in the Cold War, but then they weren't pretending to be democrats). It is hardly surprising that some people out there are not happy with the USA.
The basic problem, from an outside perspective, is that the US people have been so isolated from the world, and what their representatives have been doing in it in their name, that the events of the last two or three years have come out of the blue for them.
NickA
You really buy that crap that all of politics boils down to liberal/conservative? Yup, everything is black or white. Sheesh. Must be simple in that head of yours.
If you wish to understand why Maher Hawash did what he did despite having a comfortable life in the United States of America, I suggest that you read "Immigrants: Traitors Among Us".
Oil production remains low thanks to unpreparedness, mismanagement, and the work of dedicated saboteurs. Believe me, the Administration is desparate to get that oil out, so they can start to pay for the war. Oh, yes, and distribute the wealth to the Iraqi people. Of course.
In addition, there are many pre-existing contracts dealing with said oil; certain French and Russian firms spring foremost to my mind. If the US did not cut some sort of deal with the other nations, then France, Russia, et al can sue in the International Courts, and have Iraqi oil "tainted." Think how SCO is attempting to taint the legality of the Linux kernel, and you are getting the idea here. No sane oil merchant would dare buy oil that might have been illegally distributed.
So please, go re-check the facts you advise others to check. Try googling for Lukoil and Iraq and see what happens....
-----------
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
He will serve at least seven years in a federal pound me in the ass prison under the deal.
Actually, the CIA can be blamed for not thinking about what would happen after they secretly supplied hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and training to the radically Islamic groups in Afghanistan.
It was the greatest CIA covert success in history, but the CIA then forgot about all those weapons and training and the ideologies controlling them. They can most certainly be blamed for that.Are you saying that the Taliban was illegitimate because very few countries recognized it? Does this rule also apply to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was not approved by the U.N. Security Council?
Legitimacy is in the eyes of the beholder, and I would prefer it if the U.S. weren't the ultimate judge of what is legitimate and what isn't.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
No one that we know of has been sentenced to death, yet. However it's definately been threatened.
In addition to the people already declared 'enemy combatants' the Moussaui (sp?) case has shown what I'm talking about, with the prosecution refusing to produce witnesses and saying openly that if they don't like how it's going they'll just declare him an enemy combatant and take his case away from the legal system. And the same threat was used to extract plea bargains recently from the so-called 'Lackawanna Six.' See this article for some coverage on that.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
He confuses everybody. ;-)
Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
Nah, just they are more likely to blow people in the US up. Ask any brit about northen ireland and IRA (who where for a long time allowed to raise funds in the US!). The world isn't as simple as you might think...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Or that they're doing what they can to reduce headcount?
Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
The Patriot Act only legalizes decades of government abuse on our civil rights - it's really nothing new. Big Brother will continue to grow as it always has. However there is no wording in the Patriot Act that criminalizes efforts at government reform (you can read it all here: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism_ militias/hr3162.php)...unless you think it takes an act of terrorism, which it doesn't...it will probably take a civil war if history truly is cyclical.
But back on topic, there is wording in the Patriot Act that clearly condemns prosecution against Arab and Muslim Americans based solely on appearance. See Sec. 102 of the Patriot Act. Though because I'm so bitter and cynical about our gov't these days my opinion is words are cheap :-P
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.
Well... yes and no. Officially, you are correct. The last *official* war in which the US was involved was WWII. Technically speaking, the US has been at war on and off since WWII (Korean WAR, Vietnam WAR, Gulf WAR I, Golf WAR II). Congress only OFFICIALLY tells us that we are at war. Then they can mandate that factory X will start making bombs (for example) instead of squirt guns (like they did in WWII).
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.
I agree with you, but we need to clearly define what these liberties are. For example, during WWII coastal cities like Miami (for example) did not like the idea of a black out. And at the beginning of the war, they did not turn off their lights. However, the city lights perfectly silhouetted the merchant ships for the U-Boats. Easy pickings. I believe that congress had to mandate that the coastal cities go to a total blackout. My point behind this? Some people may declare that being FORCED to turn off their lights was a violation of their civil liberties!
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Even more interesting is this question: How long before Paypal's records are reviewed by the Feds to determine just who donated money for the defense of this (now) confessed terrorist?
At the least, an investigation of those donors is appropriate. Hopefully it will help uncover others who have questionable loyalty to America!
I would think the people of Israel would disagree as to whether they (Muslim extremists) "are more likely to blow people in the US up." And I don't recall hearing about many suicide bombings by the IRA. Bombings, yes - suicide bombings, no.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The CIA did to the "Afghan freedom fighters": see this post. They did a great job at turning those radical Islamic groups into well-organized, sophisticated terrorists.
Supposedly, the book "Charlie Wilson's War" is quite an eye-opener.Let me put this another way. Should the Chileans who had family members die at the hands of Pinochet be able to demand extradition of the CIA agents that helped put Pinochet in power (and supported him after)?
Do a search for Pinochet and Chile on Google. Read the declassified documents that are now available as well as the research papers others have written. The CIA (or its operatives) are accused of terrorist acts in Chile to prompt the coup there. Innocent people died there, too.
My point isn't about the "righteousness of the war" but about the fact that your (and other posts) perspectives are strictly American and hypocritical. It also indicates your own biases. You, like many of my fellow Americans, are willing to put a lot of faith in statements by the CIA and White House. Others around the world, especially those like the Taliban, that have dealt with the CIA start with a different opinion of their credibility.
To deny that reality is ignorant. To make no effort to understand that underscores why so many people around the world think we are arrogant. More importantly, our "righteousness" isn't an absolute no matter how much you want it to be.
Sujal
politics, food, music, life: FatMixx
I don't feel that the government itself is "inferior because of its faults". The faults are of those who make up the government at any point in time. Democratic republics are fine as a concept.
I also like the understated manner in which you demonstrated that outcome-based education is strangling our civic discussion. Your lack of proper punctuation and sentence structure is a poignant reminder that in order to have well-educated leaders, we must first have a well-educated populace.
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
Treason , then?
treason ( P ) Pronunciation Key (trzn)
n.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Yes, as I desribed aleady above: The judge signed the order to allow him held as material witness. He didn't jsut go into a hole for 5 weeks.
{ - Generic Guy - }
I never make "MOD THIS UP" posts, but I'll make an exception here.
The grandparent poster was accusing EVERYONE in the entire United States of being racist and bigoted, and the parent poster was kind enough to bring it to our attention. Can we get a few "Insightful" mods added?
Or are our moderators blind?
It reminds me of the incident just a while ago about a bunch of blacks who wouldn't let a white guy teach a class on African American history. The reason? "How can he teach about the evils of slavery when he's one of the kind of people who did it?"
Bah.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
And exacly what i the difference for the dead people between a plain bombing and a suicide bombing? A terorit is not less a terrorist jut because (s)he's living aftterr the dead...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Oh for heaven's sake, the Spinsanity "debunking" is just argumentative claptrap with a right-wing agenda.
The 9/11 terrorists did their best effort to kill as many people as they could. The US military in Iraq did their best effort to kill as few people as they could.
Yes, but Saddam is also known to have played host to leaders of various terrorist groups and their training camps, including those with ties to Bin Laden. Neither seemed to care much about the other's religious convictions or lack thereof.
Bin Laden's schitck was to play to his fanatical followers, and he'd say whatever was necessary to do so. Saddam's was more pragmatic but just as calculated. What Bin Laden and Hussein said about one another in public statements means little, really.
France would have to use aircraft and not even China currently has a delivery system to get a nuclear missile to the East coast (although they can hit the west coast just fine, thank you Mr. Clinton).
Missiles are trivial to build, submarines can launch medium-range missiles, and each of those countries have long-range bombers. ICBMs may make starting a nuclear war more convenient, but hardly are crucial to that, and US itself planned all kinds of nuclear war scenarios long before ICBMs existed.
Only the former USSR (and maybe Britain) maintains an ICBM delivery system capable of hitting the east coast of the United States. And frankly from what I've read of Russia's ICBM system (i.e. they have a massive radar hole in their southeast perimeter because of dead satellites and no money to operate their equipment), I wouldn't give good odds on their stuff actually working.
I am not sure where did you read that (Tom Clancy comes to mind as a likely "source"), or how do you think, radars are related to satellites and especially to ICBMs.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Most of the Sikhs I have met were clean and well groomed. Most terrorists have been less clean, less well groomed and tended to dine on scorpions in caves. The also seemed to mutter antiamericanisms under their breath and refered to us as silver-tounged white devils.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
I was referring to the 'ideology and extremist' sense of the Taliban, not the political group. This generally includes generals like Hekmatyar who received the most aid from USA during those years. Supporters of such extremists have switched sides frequently but were given an initial boost by the Americans who just supported the wrong kind of people at the cost of the future of Afghanistan just to ensure the defeat of the Russians.
Hopefully the Taliban ARE dead.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
And I don't see how anyone could confuse either with terrorists. parent post to yours is making an ironic statement about people who consider a full beard to be evidence of terrorism.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Several countries have questioned the case, so there is doubt on the point wheter the prisoners are POWs or not.
The International Committee of the Red Cross the most authoritative body on the provisions of the Geneva Conventions revealed that there were diverging wiews betwween the United States and the ICRC on wheter the prisoners are entitled to POW status. Again there is doubt on wheter the the prisoners are POWs or not.
a) Some of the captured persons where commanded by a responsible officer for example fighters under the Taliban 55th brigade.
b) Some of the fighters weared uniforms with distinct insignia, not necessarily all, both some.
c) Some of them carried their arms openly, (doesn't say much this is Afghanistan after all)
d) Some of the fought in bathles according to standard laws and customs of warfare. As you point out some of them also violated the Third Geneva Convention, but that does not take awway the right of those that did not participate in these actions. (Just because a person, troop, regiment violates the GC, that does not strip away the rights of the other people in the army)
In any conflict under the GC, its not up to one of the Parties to decide wheter the people captured are POWs or not. In cases where the captured persons don't have a state reresenting them(either because their states have collapsed, don't exist or are unwilling to interfere) the ICRC can take over the responsibility on behalf on the persons if this is in the captured persons interest. I this case this is clearly in the interest of the captured persons.
All this *clearly* leads to *doubt* of wheter the captured persons are POWs or not.
It might be that the "competent tribunal" finds that the prisoners are not entitled to POW status, but until that happens USA isvilating the GC by not designating a "competent tribunal"
Anyway, USA is in good company when it commes to ignoring the question on wheter captured persons are POWs or not:
I disagree with you wheter GB is illegal, and thats my opinion, HRW did not get me to belive anything.-North Korea ignored some of the claims of the ICRC during the Korean War.
-North Vietnam ignored some of the claims of the USA.
-Idi Amin, dictator of Uganda from 1971 to 1979 ignored everything under the GC.
-Israel's policy in Palestina violates the Fourth Geneva Convention.
-Fidel Castro on Cuba is a notorious violator of the GC.
-In Rwanda/Kongo all Parties ignored the GC
-Iraq violated the GC in some cases during Gulf War I.
-Serbia violated the GC during the wars on Balkan.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
freedom fighter == terrorist
And besides, maybe our intelligence saying it was Osama was wrong. Our intelligence about the WMD in Iraq was wrong
I don't want to go supertechnical on your logic argument here, but what evidence do you have that our intelligence about WMD in Iraq was wrong? Just because it has not been proven to your satisfaction does not mean that it was wrong.
We know that a scientist was ordered to bury parts of a gas centrifuge in his flowerbed.
We know that Iraq buried entire squadrons of fighter jets to prevent their discovery/destruction.
And yes, there appears that there may have been a misstatement about Iraq+Niger+Uranium, but British Intelligence stands behind the connection. But even if this was a mistake, and there was no attempt to buy uranium from Niger, it does not mean that Iraq had no WMD.
Assertion: Some Cats are Black
Your Refutation: This cat is not black, and you have shown me no black cats, so therefore there are no black cats.
Now your assertion may turn out to be true, that the intelligence was wrong, and there were no WMD, but you are making it in absence of any evidence that it was actually wrong, and that there are definitively no WMD.
We do know, definitively, that Iraq at one time had WMD, and that the inspectors who were trying to eradicate it were withdrawn after repeated interference by the Iraqi government, but they could have secretly destroyed it all without telling us or proving it to us.
Just as, last night, all the black cats on the planet may have suddenly expired.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
You are reversing the logic to launch a "strawman" attack. I did not say he is a terrorist because he looked like one, but I did say he looked like one because he is a terrorist and chose to outwardly express it.
Secondly, anytime someone bears arms against his country, he becomes a traitor, regardless of the strength of his convictions. That is a crime, punishable by death. So no wonder this guy copped a plea agreement and cooperated with the authorities, because otherwise he would have gotten much harsher punishment.
They are not members of a qualifying militia. You're allowed to hunt down and punish arms-carrying thugs you encounter in the process of a war, obviously.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
The cases aren't parallel. Enforced blackouts are something akin to drunk driving laws. In both cases the actions of one individual harm other individuals. The only difference between drunk driving laws, and WWII's enforced blackouts is that in one case the harm was transitory, and thus so were the rules.
A better parallel to Hawash's case is the secret trials for the Nazi sabatuers. They were caught by the FBI after blowing up a factory, and the government insisted that in the interests of national security the general population couldn't be allowed to know what happened at the trials. When the expiration date on the secrecy came up some people investigated and discovered (surprise!) that national security wasn't the reason for secrecy. Covering up the FBI's criminal neglagance was. It seems that one of the sabatuers had decided to defect to the US, called the FBI to blow himself and his fellows in, and was dismissed as a crank. It wasn't until they successfully blew up a building that the FBI believed him.
Which makes me wonder: what blunders, and criminal negligance are the current round of secret trials intended to cover up?
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
You're not anything if you seriously believe the Taliban needed a scrap more evidence bin Laden had done `something wrong' even before 9/11.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
Basically:
Assertation: You have 900 black cats
My refutation: There might be a cat or two hidden, but since you came into my house you haven't seen 900 cats, nor litter boxes for 900 cats.
The clearest proof that Iraq's state of readiness with regards to it's WMD programs doesn't match what Colin Powell presented to the UN, not what GWB and other White House and Pentagon officals said in press releases/confrences is that WMD were not used against US troops.
That does not preclude there being a program. But it certainly wasn't at the level that we thought it was. (Or that the administration said it was. Benefit of the doubt, again).
And the US has paid several terrorists, ermm, "freedom fighters". Including Bin Laden.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Well, of course. Iraqis can't vote, they don't pay taxes, and most importantly, it's illegal for them to contribute to election campaigns
No, I do not agree. The US did NOT fund al-Qaeda during the 80's or 90's or ever. al-Qaeda wasn't even around then. Nor did the US fund the Taleban movement (see my other posts on this topic). The organizations that the US DID fund during the 80's were mujahideen freedom fighters.
There IS a difference. For instance, Hezbollah, commonly called a terrorist organization in the West does not suicide bomb against civilian targets. I'm not entirely sure I would call them a terrorist organization.
If the US has come CLOSE to supporting terrorist organizations, the only argument you could even begin to make would be wrt South america, though I honestly don't know enough to about South American history to say anything definitive. From what I do know, even that comparison would be ludicrous.
I had really hoped that the US Gov was wrong
Why? I generally hope that law enforcement does not make mistakes; i.e., they arrest only guilty people, and they allow only innocent people to remain at large. Your hoping for the opposite outcome seems quite perverse!
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Missiles are trivial to build, submarines can launch medium-range missiles, and each of those countries have long-range bombers. ICBMs may make starting a nuclear war more convenient, but hardly are crucial to that, and US itself planned all kinds of nuclear war scenarios long before ICBMs existed.
b licfeature /mar00/earl.html#f2
Missles in general may be trivial to build, but I assure you, ICBMs are not. Hence the fact that only the US and the USSR have built ones that are truly capable of hitting anywhere on the planet. The ones China has are barely capable of hitting the US West coast, and they are only capable of doing that thanks to our technological help.
I am not sure where did you read that (Tom Clancy comes to mind as a likely "source"), or how do you think, radars are related to satellites and especially to ICBMs.
I read that Russia has a massive radar/satellite hole in a recent IEEE Spectrum magazine (the magazine of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers), where they were discussing the various times during the cold war where the US almost nuked the USSR out of existence due to various systems errors and vice-versa.
It is generally considered to be a good source. " Currently, Russia is totally blind to a Trident attack from the Atlantic and Pacific, and, for all practical purposes, it is equally blind to a Minuteman or MX attack from the continental United States."
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/pu
You are right that warning system != ICBM, but my point was that there is only one other country other than the US with ICBMs that really work, and that country could be annihilated by a first strike launched from the Indian Ocean without even seeing the attack in time to do anything about it.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Hey man, we've decoded the genome. Time to move on to the next generation of really kewl stuff. Nukes are your grandpa's weapon of mass destruction.
"did you dress her like this?"
"no. no. uh, yes, a bit."
"she has got a wart, though!"
"You want a toe? I can get you a toe by three o'clock... with nail polish."
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.
If the authorities think that I look like the specific person who committed a specific crime, I would certainly expect them to question me.
If I happen to share some similarities to the suspect and to a few million other people of the same ethnic group, that's a very different thing.
If Mike Hawash was arrested because there were valid reasons to suspect that he was involved in a specific illegal act, that's not necessarily a bad thing in itself (aside from any problems in the way the case was handled). If he was arrested because he looks middle eastern, that's simply racism. I'm not saying that's what happened; I'm responding to what the previous poster wrote, not necessarily to the facts of the case.
You didn't even come close to a biting response. You should have mention that the US government and the CIA actually directly funded the Taliban and Al'Queda, and helped to educate their trainers for the training camps in effective terrorism methods. This took place when the US government considered militant afghani muslim terrorists a good weapon to point at the former USSR. We also backed (funds, weapons, training, again) Saddam's regime in Iraq, when we desired to use them against Iran. Now both countries have since become prime enemies.
In this larger view, we have only reaped what we have sown when it comes to the recent al'queda terrorism. However, my response was in the short view, to a question of short view. He said the Taliban government presented no immediate threat to the US at the time, when in fact they did.
11*43+456^2
I think you're referring to the $60 million in food aid sent there by a UN related NGO. This was addressed in a previous thread, and the conclusion reached in that thread was that whoever continues to spread this FUD is a mindless troll incapable of rational thought.
For the dead people? well depends on whether or not you believe in an afterlife. I'll leave that (even more) off-topic dicussion for another time.
As for the rest of us, a VERY big difference. just ask most anti-terrorism forces. It is far harder to stop someone who isn't afraid to die carrying out a bombing. If the bomber wants to live, enforcement agencies have more options on stopping them.
Actually, Osama started hating the US because the Saudi govt let the US put bases and troops in their country when Iraq invaded Kuwait. He felt that Saudis were perfectly capable of defending their own country.
In retrospect, it would have been interesting to see how an Iraqi invasion of SA would have gone.
Its a prison camp full of people who were trying to massacre Americans.
No, actually it is not. It's predominately full of Taliban soldiers who were defending their country from an US invasion. In other words, POW's.
Some of the rest are indeed, "card carrying" members of Al Qaeda, and some are merely suspected of being terrorists.
Did you somehow miss this or feel like it was an unimportant tid bit?
We're treating POW's every bit as badly as the Viet Cong did. But that's OK, because their really "terrorists".
We're holding criminal suspects without so much as giving them access to council. But that's OK, because we already know there guilty, after all the government told us they are, and their never wrong.
Chechnya, Tibet, Kashmir. If the French had the ability to project power, they'd be pulling crap too.
When your own government can spy on you, detain you without access to anyone for as long as they want, and then try and sentence you in secret, you have, in effect, no judicial system...
Should his guilty plea be thrown out in this case? Yes, since due process was violated. Do I think he's utterly innocent of any crime? I don't know enough about the case, but I DO know that Hawash should be re-arrested, given normal, CONSTITUTIONAL legal proceedings, and THEN decide what he's going to plead.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Ashcroft and the PATRIOT Act are making a god damn mockery of our legal system.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Missles in general may be trivial to build, but I assure you, ICBMs are not. Hence the fact that only the US and the USSR have built ones that are truly capable of hitting anywhere on the planet. The ones China has are barely capable of hitting the US West coast,
Anything that can launch a satellite into space is based on the same technology as ICBM, plus some, therefore any country that launched its satellites on their missiles can use the same technology for ICBMs.
and they are only capable of doing that thanks to our technological help.
Huh? What help, buying plastic toys from there?
I read that Russia has a massive radar/satellite hole in a recent IEEE Spectrum magazine (the magazine of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers),
Last time I have checked, IEEE has a lot of things, however it certainly does not have its own intelligence service.
where they were discussing the various times during the cold war where the US almost nuked the USSR out of existence due to various systems errors and vice-versa.
Radars and satelites are neither required, nor useful for anything related to launching ICBMs. ICBMs are self-contained devices, flying without any communications to the outside world from the moment of launch. Radars and satellites are useful for _detecting_ incoming ICBMs, however due to large size, huge amount of infrared radiation and high speed they are extremely hard not to notice. And since after those missiles are detected it's pretty much pointless to try to intercept them, the only imaginable response is to launch your own ones.
Therefore MAD, that kept things in balance as long as people on both sides of a potential war were more or less sane (I apologize for the pun). At this point same can be said about all possible sides of a large-scale nuclear conflict, not just two initial participants. There is however a woeful lack of sanity, especially recently on the part of US, where religiously driven nuts and war-profiteering ideologues pretty much filled the top of the Bush administration. USSR, Israel, China, India and Pakistan (another nuclear-capable country, BTW) had their shares of nuts, yet even those understood that some limits apply to every country.
Currently, Russia is totally blind to a Trident attack from the Atlantic and Pacific, and, for all practical purposes, it is equally blind to a Minuteman or MX attack from the continental United States." http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature /mar00/earl.html#f2
This is a pretty wild speculation, based on the premise that radars can be "blinded" by nuclear explosions far away from it, and on the idea that information about precise targets is of any value at the moment when missiles are in flight. First is at least dubious, second is false -- once it's known that the missiles are incoming, details don't matter, it's already pointless to chase them or their sources, and response options do not change.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Does it matter? The Taliban basically said "Ok, you say he did it. Why? How do you know?". Why couldn't the US tell them? God, at least make something up, we know the Bush administration is not beyond "sexing up" the facts.
I don't believe they would have handed them over, but if you're making the war on terror as a moral war (not just a war of survival), like Bush is, then take the moral high-road. And as Americans, you should be demanding that your goverment behave more responsibly. The fact that Americans get off on the heavy-handed tactics (not everyone, of course, but enough to give Bush a huuuuuge approval rating during an economic meltdown), and the "fuck everyone else" attitude of the administration, is what has the world so pissed-off and scared.
he is turning evidence against other people.
by your scenerio, thay have no reason to get him to bargain.
sure, he should have been allowed an attornt immediatly, you'll get no argument from me on that point. But that doesn't mean he didn't do anything.
Wasn't much of a secret, sinve there was a protest and all.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
no, but they did investigate people in militia groups, and other peoiple who were within the profile.
If you think they only went on looks, you are sadly mistaken.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
quakers don't (typically) wear beards
Amish do
no big sig
I'm not going to comment on the guys down at Guantanamo Bay, because I probably agree with your position. Besides that's not relevent to the lead up to the 2001 war.
So then it's not so ridiculous that they may have thought that someone wouldn't get a fair trial from the US Government after all.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The funny thing is, people were claiming that the war in Afghanistan was about oil, yet their only argument for that claim was that the US wanted this pipeline. Two years later, where's the pipeline?
They're working on it. Multibillion dollar deals don't happen overnight, especially when they have to get three countries to agree on them and deal with an ongoing war in one of the countries.
At the end of 2002, Afghan President (and UNOCOL consultant) Khamid Karzai signed an agreement with the leaders of Turkmenistan and Pakistan to begin building a 1500km trans-Afghan gas pipeline to Multan where it will join to an existing pipeline that will take it to a port in Pakistan. Here is a link to the story at the BBC. The preliminary cost of the project is $2-3.2 billion. I suspect that the lack of US control outside of the cities of Afghanistan is the reason that large scale construction hasn't begun.
Why is the pipeline important? Well, it's estimated that 16% of the world's petroleum reserves are in the Caspian Sea region. Today, only a small amount of that oil and gas is extracted for use by nearby countries because there are no major pipelines to take it to the global markets. The best routes for a pipeline go through Russia, which the West doesn't want, Iran, which the West also dislikes, or Afghanistan and Pakistan. As the previous poster mentioned, UNOCOL gave up on the pipeline project in 1998. They couldn't get the Taliban to give them what they want. Afghanistan's government is quite different after the US invasion and wants to go ahead with the pipeline.
There's another factor why the US is worried about control of Middle Eastern oil resources. Currency. Saddam made quite a profit when he started trading his oil in euros instead of dollars in 2000. Other OPEC countries like Iran are thinking about using euros instead of dollars. This may not seem important on the face of it, but the use of American currency as a standard medium of exchange is a great source of American power, one of the cornerstones of American dominance of international finance, as it was for the British before the World Wars. Other countries using dollars allows the US to export its inflation by printing more money and issuing treasury bonds at low interest rates and also helps the US to avoid facing the consequences of its large trade deficit.
They are not citizens and as such are not afforded the right of citizens. Do you realize how it totally discounts anything you say when you go off the deap end and say that they are being treated worse then the viet cong treated our soldiers. From what I've seen it isn't a vaction getaway but it isn't hell either. And your yet another in a string of lifeless retards who always think the government is in the wrong and they aren't this time it is you with the agenda and the secrets. So tell us are you arab or a part of the islamic fundamentalists?
...Yes, but i was responding to the (apparent) disbelief that someone could confuse either for a terrorist, which showed that the irony had gone over their head; not to that correction.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Cause they were shooting our soldiers you self-righteous dolt. I can't believe the number of numb nutz here that think they have the answer to why America is such a bad country. Lets also look at how many people they save from being killed. Remember, Sadam is not a good guy. How many mass graves did we find, how many reports of the republican guard shooting Iraqi troops to get them to fight the Americans, what is this now a report of 30 fighter jets buried in the sand that 250,000 ground troops literally stepped over. Hrm, now were are those WMDs. I know if you were in charge everything would go perfectly for you no one would make a mistake and no one would die except Americans. Take a step back and look at the whole picture not just what makes you feel warm and fuzzy about your hatred for the country or its current administration.
there's no reason not to go in and regulate.
Who are you, Warren G?
There is no reason to avoid a justified conflict, but only a fool walks around daring someone to knock the chip off of his shoulder.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I understand how people can be outraged by the actions of the United States and its government, but what some non-U.S. (and U.S.) residents have to understand is that governments across the world would exactly the same thing, except it would not show up on the web sites and newspapers due to the limits on the freedom of speech. Would states try to find and prosecute memebers and assistants of groups who have carried out terrorist acts on the territory of these states? Absolutely! Will countries change their political views and alliances? Yes; as a matter of fact, many of them have been doing it for quite some time: read some history books. If my memory is correct, European states have been jumping from one union into the other for the past two centuries.
I believe that if any country lost three thousand people in a terrorist attack, it would try and investigate every possible link. This is just another form of the question: would you sacrifice the freedoms of one in order to benefit the majority? Sure, it was incorrect to keep the guy for five weeks without a charge, but what if he had disappeared during the process and then turned out to be a mastermind behind some high-tech attack aimed at the citizens of your country? How much is your life worth?
This is just my opinion. Unfortunatley nobody will ever know what really happened behind the walls of this investigation. Just remember: "grass is always greener on the other side of the fence."
No, I am not one of those fruitcakes. Al-Qaeda is the obvious guilty party. However, I'd like to see some evidence to that effect.
After all, not bothering with evidence is what got the world stuck on Aristotelian Physics for two millenniums because they were so "obvious".
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Yes, I understand this is now fairly off topic and troll-ish; however I've had fairly good Karma for a few years. Allow me this small rant :)
---
Please.
As for "liberal news." Personally, I think whether or not a media organization is conservative or liberal is irrelevant. Good information should have sound hypothesis' that are tested with the scientific method to the best of the researchers ability. Facts are neither conservative or liberal. They offer dates, motivations, actions, and outcomes.
I find it hard to believe that it is possible for this research process to take place when the organization that is conducting the the research is a) limiting itself to channels of data (ie you just can't get all of your military info from military PR guys, or hippies with picket signs) b) not allowed to show affiliates / sponsors within a bad light when they me be a possible variable and c) and told to focus on certain information when it is of befit to the media organizations profits.
But, shess, what would I know. I'm only someone with a political sociology degree, and extensive experience of research methods.
But as for Iraq, if you seriously think that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 then you need to look into some different media channels (perhaps some academic journals from infotrac or ebsco's web sites). Read up on why Bin Laden was exiled from Saudi Arabia; the US presence in Saudi Arabia, and our post WWII energy relationship the Saudi Monarchy.
Why this info isn't talked about on the 24 news channels...i don't know. But it there, it's interesting, you can hopefully avoid a lot of bias, and you're free to draw possible conclusions about our relationship with the middle east.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
If someone invaded the USA, wouldn't you try to stop them?
I'm posting without my karma bonus, so hopefully this won't bother
too many people
Ok, looking up your history your not the rabid fanatic I thought you were already. You seem to understand that fanaticism can come in multiple favours.
Firstly, the US did not have normal relations with the Taliban, but they were prepared to deal with then on other issues.
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/05/17/us.afghani
There is a lot of different opinions about this on the web, but most centre around drug production.
http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/01_colu
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/
http://opioids.com/afghanistan/pr
I have issue with the invasion of Afghanistan. This is my POV, and you may have seen different reports. I also do not trust the US government, I'm not a fanatical conspiracy theorist, but the current search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq does prove that at least some of the scare stories we were told were not true. I don't want to get sidetracked with Iraq here, time will tell who was right.
What I saw happen was the US suffered a tragedy. Lots (approx 3000) of people died. The US then said "Osama did it", and to the Taliban "give him to us, or else". The Taliban said "you haven't proved he did it" and then the US hit them over the head with a very big stick. Lots of people died, but they were not American so that's OK. (Calm down, see below where I justify this comment).
Why should the Taliban have arrested Osama and hand him over to the US? If a friendly government like the UK had said "person X committed this crime in our country" what would have happened? The US government would arrest Mr. X, and there would be a court hearing, where the UK government would present evidence that person X had committed a crime. This is the step that was missing.
I'm not saying the Taliban would have extradited him if evidence was presented, but you should at least exhaust other options before you start killing people. I mean, why even ask first? Why not attack on general principal? If you present evidence and they ignore it, then you can go ahead and use force.
Also bare in mind that I accept that I am in the minority on this issue. See my Sig, I am thankful that I still live in a democracy (and that it is not the US). I also have my personal opinions on right and wrong, and pretty much everything that has happened in Afghanistan in the last 40 years falls into the "wrong" category, US (and allies) actions included.
(comment justification)
This was a deliberately provocative comment, but I don't consider it a troll. I'm not trying to annoy you, just make you think. Do you know the answer to any of the following questions? Do you have any idea how many people died in Afghanistan? I know the US and other allies suffered very few casualties, but how many Afghani's died? Did you hear about the wedding party that was attacked by US aircraft? In what state is Afghanistan now? Do you know much about US foreign policy? Do you know who the Northern Alliance are?
You might know the answers to these questions, but many people don't, because the media shows people what interests them. A US soldier dying is worth about ac much time on the evening news as a hundred people dying in an earthquake. Its work a lot more time that a dozen villagers being killed in Algeria. I'm not saying that there is some huge conspiracy in the media, only that this is what people are interested in. Why should you care more that Israeli soldiers have killed a US citizen then you would when they kill a Palestinian child? What does that say about the average person?
Democracy isn't about no one telling you what to do. It's about everyone telling you what to do.
Actually it is. It's not just ridiculous, it's downright absurd.
Mullah Mohammed Omar (i think that was his name) was all about supporting al Qaida. Would lead me to suspect he's not too interested in fair and proper justice for anyone.
no thanks
he's not just a racist. He's a nazi, and, no, I don't mean that is the euphamistic way that people use it today, I mean it in the true Nazi party ramblings way.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Anything that can launch a satellite into space is based on the same technology as ICBM, plus some, therefore any country that launched its satellites on their missiles can use the same technology for ICBMs.
Damn you are optomistic. The Third Riech had the V2 rocket that went into space, but they sure didn't have ICBMs. It's a LOT harder to hit something on the face of the earth with a terminal velocity nuclear warhead than it is to put a payload in orbit. The fact that you don't think it is doesn't make it so. If you need further proof, the fact that NO ONE other than the US and Russia have world spanning ICBMs should be at least circumstantial evidence. Do you have any clue?
Huh? What help, buying plastic toys from there?
Apparently you are woefully ignorant of current events as well. US defense contractors during the Clinton adminstration provided technical assistance to the Chinese on their satellite program. There is some argument about exactly what was provided, but there is a pretty universal consensus that where China was not previously capable of striking the US with an ICBM, they are now.
Last time I have checked, IEEE has a lot of things, however it certainly does not have its own intelligence service.
With the state of the former USSR, one hardly needs it. Hell the Russians admit that they have gaps in their radar coverage! That doesn't guarantee that they do, but it is better than your riposte which you just pulled out of your ass.
Radars and satelites are neither required, nor useful for anything related to launching ICBMs. ICBMs are self-contained devices, flying without any communications to the outside world from the moment of launch. Radars and satellites are useful for _detecting_ incoming ICBMs, however due to large size, huge amount of infrared radiation and high speed they are extremely hard not to notice. And since after those missiles are detected it's pretty much pointless to try to intercept them, the only imaginable response is to launch your own ones.
You don't have a clue do you? ICBMs are actually DAMN hard to detect without both a satellite warning system (to track via infrared during boost phase) AND radar (to track during terminal decent). Go ahead, try to see these "easy to detect" warheads without radar in terminal phase.
This is a pretty wild speculation, based on the premise that radars can be "blinded" by nuclear explosions far away from it, and on the idea that information about precise targets is of any value at the moment when missiles are in flight. First is at least dubious, second is false -- once it's known that the missiles are incoming, details don't matter, it's already pointless to chase them or their sources, and response options do not change.
This shows you didn't even read the article. The gaps have nothing to do with any hypothesized EMP strike and everything to do with Russia not having enough money to operate and maintain their radar stations to detect a first strike. Bloody hell.
FWIW, I agree with you about Bushie. I think he's a Nazi in disguise. More and more people I know in the US are starting to agree with me and I doubt he'll win reelection. Heck, I normally vote conservative and I'd rather vote for Hilary Clinton than him. Ashcroft is starting to sound very much like Heinrich Himmler these days (minus the anti-semitism).
But for Christ's sake, don't debate shit you haven't a clue about. I've worked with the people who were developing SDI..... ICBMs are NOT just easy shit to build. If they were, Saddam would have had a stable of them, Pakistan would and so would India. What do they have? They have some short to medium range SSMs... they do not have ICBMs... not even close.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
" 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."
United states is the only country in the history of the world to use atomic weapons. It used them twice and in both cases against civillian targets.
"Perhaps you should consider what something/someone/some nation that really was Savage and Evil (tm) would do with that much power. "
you mean like continually bomb a country for 20 years and then invade and take over their oil wells?
War is necrophilia.
"(although they can hit the west coast just fine, thank you Mr. Clinton)"
If Bill Clinton had not personally handed the chinese the know how they would have never figured out how make missiles fly farther. This is because no other nation on earth has sophisticated computers like the US has. Certainly no european country or japan or taiwan has ever produced technology to rival US dominance in manufacturing or designing computer chips or writing software.
It is a well known fact that all chinese are actually retarded mentally. Go to any university and you will see that the chinese students are the laziest and the dumbest ones in the bunch.
Only if Bill Clinton had not called the chairman of the communist party in China and personally revealed all of our secret computer chip mojo the west coast would be safe from chinese missiles.
Of course we could not really expect better from a person who would lie about where stuck his cock and on whose face he came on.
War is necrophilia.
This is beating a dead horse
Since you are totally wrong. Someone should help you out so you can be right. Maher (Mike) Hawash was born in Jordan and was a citizen of Jordan before becoming a naturalized citizen of the US. He was not returning home to defend his country as you assert. He was traveling to Afganistan to support the Taliban as he admits in his guilty plea.
The reason for his guilty plea. He actually traveled to China to try to enter Pakistan from there and from Pakistan to Afghanistan to fight to help support the Taliban . Failing to gain entry or Pakistan Hawash returned to the US and continued to pass money to others indited along with him who remained in China trying to get to Afghanistan so they could fight to help support teh Taliban. He also admits had "practiced" with firearms prior to leaving.
The big issue seems to be the amount of time he was held as a material witness before his name was added to the inditements against his coconspirators. I have no love for John Ashcroft or the USA patriot act. I am to the right of Ashcroft on lots of stuff and far to the left on others which is why I am an political indpendent. In this case however Hawash could have and would have been held and indited even if Janet Reno was USAG and no USA patriot act existed.. The law would have allowed for that. The law has been and is used that way.
I don't know how to comport my rebuttal to your accusation to "the first person who actually believes that this country does not do things just as evil, stand up... We rape, we pillage, we oppress". Well I am standing up. You state that as a fact. Please give me a unbiased source who can verify your statement. The US does not intentionaly target civilians I know that for a fact. Bleeding heart leftist action organizations., State owned news organs and islamists apoligists are not unbiased sources. They have well know political agendas so please do not try and pass their BS as fact. I no more believe them than I do John Ashcroft, National Enquirer or Star. A US soldier who did any of that shit would be court martialed very publicly and very quickly. Right now there are US soldiers under arrest and investigation for abusing Iraqi soldiers, that is a fact. So plese tell the world how you "know this"
Finally if I was inocent I would plead inocence even if I might get the death penalty. It's called selling out to admit you did something you didn't. I Maher "Mike" Hawash just admitted to this shit because he was afraid of the death penalty he is a sell out. I have been in court and been in jail so don't come up with some BS telling me I don't know what it's like. If you have never had a gun shoved up against your head you don't know what the fuck you are talking about in this instance. If you have never been interogated by hostile and vile persons you don't know what the hell you are talking about. The Justice system is unfair and stacked in the proceutor but it's unfair to everyone. Maher "Mike" Hawash is and has been treated just like any other US citizen. The word is don't do the crime if you can't do the time. It's a really good idea to not get intangled with the "law" if you like a pleasent and hassel free life.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
He really means in Socialist (communist ) countries dominated by people who think like him all would be perfect. If you aren't perfect they just shoot you. Just like Stalin and Pol Pot. They always say but we are not that kind of socialist which as we know is bull shit. He and his fellow travelers would be more than happy to send their thugs about in the middle of the night and take you and your family away and dispose of the bodies out in the woods you are now forbiden to enter even though they are owned by the (goverment) people. Your crime not blindly following but questioning them, not submitting to there superior political ideas. If you disagree with them they make fun of you, point out your spelling and gramitical errors pat themselves on the back for being politically superior and smirk without refuting your argument with any valid or logical thought or statement. If you disagree with them you become a stupid non person. One good reason to keep guns about even if you don't like them. They may come in handy some day for dealing with a good goverment gone bad by comming under their control. And you are correct we The US of A are a Federal Republic not a democracy than god. democracy = mob rule
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
Why is it I seem to notice a crisis of responsibility here? Why is the Fed's reluctance to let one of these cases actually go to trial, where the gubment's evidence would be publicly released, echoing so strongly in my mind with SCO's no-we-won't-show-you-the-offending-code strategy?
I grew up here. I don't think I'll be staying.
--------
If I can own an idea, does that mean I can legally claim some portion of your soul once I tell you that idea? Or even if you just come up with it on your own? Heck, who needs contracts written in blood...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Why do you guys keep feeding islamic trolls and their supporters. You might start checking it out besides the usual left leaning majority here at /. there are a large number of islamic persons here. I mean no disrespect for their religon but when it starts to be a threat to my life I will not be quite.
They of course don't support the US never did and never will. Some of them would rather your sinfull ass was dead since you have no beard and do not worship the same "god" they do. You don't observe their diet and don't force your women to cover up completely, you allow them to drive and be out unaccompanied by a male relative. You "force" your sinful western media on them.(Yea right the US causes muslims to sin!) Oh yea lastly you will not allow them to attack Isreal and kill every man women and child/"push them into the sea". (Not that Isreal is such a nice place or led by a good government.) You are a Crusader a "westener" a Jew lover.
The lefties that support them just hate the US first and formost. Worse is then now some of the left are becoming anti semites because it's OK to be a Jew hater now since everyone knows all Jews are rich Republicans and control the US government.(Most muslims believe this too) That most Jews are actually liberal or moderate democrats anyway doesn't matter. It's now OK to be an anti-semite if you are a leftist. It's the "cool" thing to do. Isreal is an oppressor and "terrorst" government. They conviently ignore these ass holes who have been blowing themselves up untill this latest cease fire. They also ignore the fact that the fall of Saddam in Iraq forced the PA and Isreal to get their shit together. Since the PA lost the guy who had been most up front about funding the homicide bombers and Hamas. It will be nice when Palistine is a state. Most Arab goverments though they say they support this don't actually. Two Democracies in the middle east would be to big a threat to them. Their own people may demand the same kind of government. Their interst is to keep things stired up.
If you are going to feed the trolls at least know what is up a little. No I am no Jew I am even worse I am a fallen away christian who drinks and has pr0n on his computer surley Alah will strike me dead . Right I am waiting for the thunderbolt.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
And a very nice beard it is in a ZZ Top kind of way.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
Nice quasi-intellectual dissection, have you ever read "Mein Kampf", you Nazi piece of shit?
One of the things that few Americans understand is that we have a unique view of our identity as Americans. With few exceptions, such an identity does not exist outside the USA. Most people there see their loyalty more towards their religion, family and possibly local community or town. Understanding these Arabic guys by our view is an error. There is a religious link in these guys and they think it is above any national loyalty. This is why it is so awful how citizenship has recently been doled out to so many persons regardless of any education into citizenship and any check of their real loyalties
The concept that we are all Americans is one we in the USA developed after the US Civil War when it became painfully obvious that if we accepted any other identity, we would all die in an awful war worse than our Civil War.
The claim by President Bush that Islam is Peaceful is ignorant of history. What is more all it does is convince the Islamists that we are liars and makes our people blind to the danger. We have to profile and recognize that people carry "Flags" that tell us who they are. These murdering Islamists do stuff like having their women cover their faces etc. One of their "Flags" is a particular facial hair style.
It is awful but true that every effort we make to try to accomidate what we believe might be "legitimate" palestinian issues, only engenders disrespect of us and danger to us. The failure to recognize this is suicidal and the Palestinians openly taunt us with this fact but in our arrogance we refuse to listen to what they are saying and to react accordingly. We also refuse to understand that the only process likely to achieve our safety is to bring down absolute defeat on them such that like the "Old South" their dreams are "Gone with the wind" giving them the freedom to get on with life without such dangerous behavior.
The politically correct ideas of accepting other identities within the USA threatens to restore the situation that precipitated the US Civil War. It is a condition that bedevils southern Europe. We have a word for it, Balkinization. Don't mistake me for saying something similar to the German "Pure Race" stuff. On the contrary it just means that people who live in the USA as citizens should recognize that they are Americans
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
"And is the US (or any other country, for that matter) supposed to take the same attitude towards each government for eternity, no matter what takes place?"
You mean like Israel? There is a certain amount of concern over using helicopter gunships in police actions, but I'm sure that someone will have a quiet word _any day now_.
I'm by no means naive enough to consider the global political situation as either transparent or fixed, but there are huge numbers of people that do. The minority with a grudge will say to themselves that 'block x' of the world population is evil and should be destroyed by whatever means necessary.
The cute thing is that George Bush firmly aligned himself with the mentality of the west banks settlers and the Jakarta suicide bombers by falling into the naive judgement of 'good' and 'evil' according to his moral structure and belief system. So the wheel keeps turning until someone says, 'Hey, maybe if we stopped supplying the guns to developing nations and controlled the global trade in arms, perhaps, just perhaps, people might stop killing each other on a grand scale.' Just to give you some perspective, US defence spending is around 40% of the _global_ amount spent on 'defence'.
"9/11 and related events are quite enough to make one reconsider their perspective on things..."
Only if you live in a nation that had the luxury of ignoring terrorism or relabelling them 'freedom fighters'. The rest of the world has had to deal with numerous organisations planting bombs on a daily basis since the 1900s, so don't think that the US is anything special simply because you erect a couple of massive targets.
While someone might brand this post 'Anti-American', it's actually from someone who actually likes Americans. They have a proactive attitude that's only blighted by a certain degree of arrogance and a certain uneasyness that they think the rest of the world should be just like America with a different accent.
The major problem is not that Mike Hawash shouldn't be charged with intent, but the means with which he was charged and the relative dichotomy between the sentencing of a man that 'intended' to cause the US harm and the complete ignoring of Kenneth Lay's damage to the US. If you're going to bring up 9/11, consider the number of victims produced by Enron.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
'The CIA did to the "Afghan freedom fighters"'
It's something I note with a certain sinking feeling that if you follow global hotspots back a bit, you find a CIA section chief saying, 'That's a wrap boys, good work'...
Can we add the CIA to the axis of evil?
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
Wow, how insightful. Just remember that statement if your family is ever the unfortunate victims of a terrorist attack and you're wondering why the FBI is not questioning certain suspects because they don't want to be labeled as 'racists'.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
Yeah, those 9/11 Hijackers sure were scruffy towel-heads, weren't they? It's not as if anyone could possibly mistake this guy for an ordinary college student.
Also, I'm impressed they found scorpions to eat in the suburban apartments, shopping malls, and occasional titty bars that they spent their time. I've looked for such foods and none of the usual suspects (Lotte, GNC, etc) carry arachnids. Oh, those crafty terrorists!
The parent post definitely needs to be modded down.
/. for a while.
I have not seen such a self-serving and hideous post in
People in the third category enter this country based on merit. Capitalism is based on meritocracy. It does not give a shit about whether you follow western culture or other culture.
All it cares is follow a culture that best suits your upbringing and inclinations.
America will be a diverse and multi-cultural society. If you don't like diversity, then you got problems to deal with.
You have problems with group 3 because they are here to compete with you and the group2 is not yet at your level because they are uneducated and illegal immigrants working for minimum wages.
While that is a nice story, it is not the most plausible explanation. The parsimonious explanation is Mike Awash supported the Taliban. I work at Intel and I have been detained by the federalies. When they are fishing for something, they don't have much power. Remember, they have to get an arraignment. If there is no case then they can't charge you. They got an arraignment without a confession, which means a grand jury felt there was enough evidence to charge Mike. No need to multiply the scenario. It doesn't stretch my credibility to think that Mike was supporting terrorist.
Today is an ephemeron, doomed to the crypt of yesterday.
You need to move to Arizona and that area for scorpions.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
More so, I'm mocking the notion that he confuses Islam with terrorism, probably because he watches too much TV and keeps hearing "Islamic terrorists". Imagine how pissed off Christians in America would be if we started calling most (if not all) US extremist factions "Christian Terrorists". Would then, any white guy with a military hair cut have the appearance of a terrorist?
Also note that I think the guy that stars in this topic is guilty of treason for trying to go to Afghanistan for the reasons he did. If he renounced his citizenship to the US before he left (or even after), I don't know anyone that would have a problem with it...
Good job, start out by shocking the audience with your 'nuking' comment and graphic description. Let me guess.. You want to be a lawyer when you grow up, right? Do you really think people don't know what rifles, grenades, and other weapons do to their victims? I don't see you making any graphical descriptions about what Saddam and his sons' victims looked like after being shot up, ground up, cut up, half eaten up.. Hey, at least we let the victims go to a hospital.. Our medics in the field can and do provide as much medical attention to their people as they do for our people.
No kidding, they don't care about anything after they're dead. What's your point? It's a tragedy that civilians are getting killed, but there's a reason we use laser and gps guided missiles. There's a reason we give deadlines and warnings to clear out civilians. Our soldiers do not want to kill civilians. For the most part, they don't want to kill anyone if they don't have to. Talk to a soldier that's been in combat, talk to a cop who's had to kill someone aiming a gun at them.. We take every precaution possible to protect the civilians. What I'd like to know is what these 'civilians' were doing there in the first place. It's easy to randomly say wrong place, wrong time, we just kill. I'm not saying *anyone* deserves to die, but you do have to wonder why the 'civilians' didn't get the fudge out of the way. Even Saddam's sons could have surrendered if they wanted.
That might possibly be because they are uninformed? Did you ever hear Osama going get out of the twin towers in 15 minutes because I'm blowing them up? Did he ever offer any medical attention to the victims? What was in the towers that might possibly cause him harm in even the distant future? Absolutely nothing. The pentagon was at least somewhat a military target, even though heavily staffed by civilians, but other than that he didn't even try to attack anything with any military value. When have we intentionally gone in and destroyed anything in Iraq or Afghanistan that we didn't think could cause us or the civilians harm? We haven't. We only attack people that we believe to be involved in military/paramilitary operations. Our soldiers have taken extra risk, possibly way too much risk, to attempt and capture political and military leaders rather than kill them. It may not be much of a choice, surrender or die, but at least the coalition forces give the Iraqis a chance. The actual soldiers following orders, the underground forces, and whoever else can surrender their arms and more or less go back to a normal life eventually.
We shouldve finished the job in Iraq back in '92. The fact that everyone hates our guts is the insane part of it all. Personally, I don't believe that.. I have friends all over the world, and while they may not agree on what our president does, they certainly don't hate all of our guts. I guess the thing is, the idiots are always the ones that yell the loudest/most. People like you certainly aren't helping our image. We aren't running around blowi
I get most of those, but please explain the dangers of exterme buddism, extreme Taoism, or exterme Shintoism?
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
They are not citizens and as such are not afforded the right of citizens.
They are, however, human beings, and should be afforded the rights of human beings.
Do you realize how it totally discounts anything you say when you go off the deap end and say that they are being treated worse then the viet cong treated our soldiers.
I'll conceed that I may have exagerrated there, as there really is no way of knowing exactly how they ARE being treated.
From what I've seen it isn't a vaction getaway but it isn't hell either.
But you really haven't seen all that much, have you?
And your yet another in a string of lifeless retards who always think the government is in the wrong...
Oh, so now I'm a 'lifeless retard' simply because I honestly don't trust my government? So tell me, would I be less retarded if I were to ignore the last thirty years or so of US history?
So tell us are you arab or a part of the islamic fundamentalists?
Interesting choice of words. If you had only asked, "are you part of the islamic fundamenalists?" , you wouldn't have shown your're racism so clearly. I am neither arab nor islamic, in fact, and if it matters so much to you, I'm probably whiter than you.
Certainly they would eventually figure it, but even Somalia will eventually figure out how to build a nuclear bomb. That doesn't mean we should give them the knowledge for fun...
Fool.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
" Certainly they would eventually figure it, but even Somalia will eventually figure out how to build a nuclear bomb. That doesn't mean we should give them the knowledge for fun..."
I have news for you. They would have bought it from somebody or would have figured it out by now. Every chinese person I know is of above average intelligence and works harder then anybody I know. Plus there is no shortage of European and asian countries perfectly willing to sell the chinese whatever they want and of course Israel has a long history of selling the chinese all kinds of weapons technology.
Of course in your simple minded world it's all Bill Clintons fault. Bill Clinton is also responsible for the hot days in summer, darkness in the night and of course the bitter cold winters too. There is no need to think about anything just listen to Rush Limbaugh or Bill Oreilly and they'll give you the straight dope. Bill and Hillary clinton are responsible for every bad thing in the world including zits.
War is necrophilia.
Interesting point, but if several of the people have alibis, *poof* no more plea bargain.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
It was more of a statement that any form of extreme religious fanaticism is dangerous, not a comment on any specific religions.
Re-read your history books, there were many, many, MANY deaths there.
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No I'm simply trying to figure out why distrust them so much there are two possible reasons that would be justifiable.
#1 your a part of a particular race/group who fears discrimination based off your nationality/locality so you must downplay the situation drifting the focus from the real problem to one that is less threatening.
#2 you a part of the group who thinks the US is the devil and all Americans must die.
Of course, you go straight for the race card. Why? Do you view anyone and everyone outside your visual perspective as threats to your personal being? I know because I stand up for what I believe as right I am a racist. Because I think criminal elements should not be treated like royalty, I'm a racist. Maybe you sir have an element of racism in you for not being able to come to terms with the fact that the social stereotypes are changing and things now aren't what they once were and while history is a window in to the past it does not dictate the future. A white conservative president now is not what a white conservative president used to be. As such don't rush to judge based of hear say and conjecture. It is not prudent to make bold accusations of misconduct based off zero evidence. I hope that you will see that my agenda in asking you the question had nothing to do with racism and more to do with discovering your agenda and how you could so easily blindfold yourself to fact in favor of something totally biased, unfair, and untrue.
I guess I forgot to add that you might simply be a socialist/leftist/liberal who can't see the forest for the trees cause he/she still thinks bush "stole the election". This stereotype is also a possibility. Nevertheless, you tell me why do you ignore the facts, defend the guilty, and defame the righteous.
Right, the usual argument is funded. But they didn't train him either. There are lots of people arguing that if you would step outside of ANSWER pamphlets as your source of info. They only trained the people they funded. Didja ever work in government? If they're not spending the money, they won't give you a second's worth of time.
I have news for you. They would have bought it from somebody or would have figured it out by now. Every chinese person I know is of above average intelligence and works harder then anybody I know. Plus there is no shortage of European and asian countries perfectly willing to sell the chinese whatever they want and of course Israel has a long history of selling the chinese all kinds of weapons technology.
You DO realize don't you that the only Chinese people you see are the top 1%+ chinese people from China? The only people smart enough to get out. Immigrants are always above average intelligence to those who stay at home (at least when you consider the whole population). Sure the Chinese people here are bright, but don't make the mistake of judging the whole Chinese population by them.
That's not to say of course that China wouldn't have figured it out, but there are secrets and tricks to making successful ICBMs, and it cost the US several hundred BILLION dollars to find them. To give these away for nothing is absolute lunacy.
Despite what you think, I am not a diehard republican, nor do I blame Bill C for all the world's ills. Frankly, I'd vote for him in a heartbeat right now over our fascist bastard George W and his nazi crony Ashcroft. However, Bill's administration did indeed give those secrets away, whether on purpose or accidentally, so they should be the ones held accountable. Even you should agree to that, yes? In an earlier time, giving a potential enemy top secret information would be considered TREASON.... too bad Bill is above the law, just like every US president since Lyndon Banes Johnson, who was so damn crooked they had to screw him into bed at night....
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
"However, Bill's administration did indeed give those secrets away, whether on purpose or accidentally, so they should be the ones held accountable. Even you should agree to that, yes?"
No I don't agree at all.
Mainly because it's patently false. It wasn't the administration it was some corporation. You want to hold Bill Clinton responsible for the actions of some corporation just like you think he is responsible for zits and cancer and everything else bad in the world.
War is necrophilia.
No I don't agree at all.
Mainly because it's patently false. It wasn't the administration it was some corporation. You want to hold Bill Clinton responsible for the actions of some corporation just like you think he is responsible for zits and cancer and everything else bad in the world.
Wrong. It WAS a corporation, but they had to get permission from the Clinton administration to release the information, which they got. That makes it Slick Willie's responsibility.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Damn you are optomistic. The Third Riech had the V2 rocket that went into space, but they sure didn't have ICBMs.
Third Reich certainly did not have rockets, capable of launching satellites, merely reaching high altitude. Big difference. Also they did not have anything being worth delivered by ICBMs -- their nuclear program never was completed. Nazi tried to use small missiles with conventional explosives, however they didn't even bother to provide a matching military strategy for those, dooming them to failure.
It's a LOT harder to hit something on the face of the earth with a terminal velocity nuclear warhead than it is to put a payload in orbit. The fact that you don't think it is doesn't make it so.
It's not a matter of what I think, it's the basic nature of the tasks involved. No one makes a goal of throwing rocks into space to fly at some random orbit, and the level of precision necessary for a decent communications satellite is at least the same as for an ICBM.
If you need further proof, the fact that NO ONE other than the US and Russia have world spanning ICBMs should be at least circumstantial evidence. Do you have any clue?
And the clue is -- only US and USSR were not in the close proximity with all possible enemies for decades. No one else needed ICBMs, all imaginable targets were right across the border from them, so why bother?
US defense contractors during the Clinton adminstration provided technical assistance to the Chinese on their satellite program. There is some argument about exactly what was provided, but there is a pretty universal consensus that where China was not previously capable of striking the US with an ICBM, they are now.
There is a pretty universal consensus (what means -- among US Republicans) that Clinton and his administration is the source of every problem in the world that appeared since the Middle Ages, and will be for at least next two years. The fact is, all "technology" that is really necessary to build "a missile" (some missile capable of launching satellites) is in the textbooks, published and used in universities all over the globe. The information about particular materials necessary to build a missile with acceptable size, may not be as open, but certainly is easily obtainable. Everything else is merely details, that are pointless to copy, and usually not transferrable between different programs.
With the state of the former USSR, one hardly needs it. Hell the Russians admit that they have gaps in their radar coverage! That doesn't guarantee that they do, but it is better than your riposte which you just pulled out of your ass.
All "information" based on the idea what is "the state of former USSR", is at least unreliable. Americans overestimate the scale of disasters in former USSR economy, and Russians often were way more eager to admit how much they have screwed up than what the situation warranted. In any case, this is hardly relevant to the ability to launch missiles, and any reduction in capabilities of radars makes a war more likely to be started, not less.
You don't have a clue do you? ICBMs are actually DAMN hard to detect without both a satellite warning system (to track via infrared during boost phase) AND radar (to track during terminal decent). Go ahead, try to see these "easy to detect" warheads without radar in terminal phase.
There is a difference between things needing a large system with full and precise coverage of all potential launch points and all parts of trajectories, and things needing merely to see small parts of those with any precision. For things like SDI first is mandatory (and still guarantees nothing). For merely following an MAD scenario (neither side is capable of destroying the other's offensive capabilities before they are used to the extent that makes the attack pointless) the second is more than sufficient. This is a pretty big difference. Worse yet, if one side's millile detection capabilities are impaired
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Yeah. I AM A BAD CHINESE, I WANT TO NUKE.... Tibet! I will spend a lot of effort, will end up filling the Chinese territory with fallout, Tibet mountains will slightly change shape, and there will be less people there.
This would be the greatest thing ever, especially compared to giving Tibet independence, so it will, with no industry or agriculture, and with their "great" theocratic leadership, become a shithole, with a bit less people, and mountains will remain the same. Yers, that's the ticket -- with nuclear weapons mountains will be different.
Same model of thinking probably should apply to Russians nuking Chechnya, and Indians nuking Kashmir.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
"Wrong. It WAS a corporation, but they had to get permission from the Clinton administration to release the information, which they got. That makes it Slick Willie's responsibility."
Really? On what planet? If the forest service gives permission to burn some forest and that fire gets out of hand is it the responsibility of George Bush?
If the FDA approves a drug and that drug kills people should George Bush be tried for murder?
What kind of an idiot would claim that the president should be tried for treason because some beurocrat dropped the ball.
War is necrophilia.
You are allowed to kill people that fight with you, however once you have captured them instead of killing, they are either POW (and protected by Geneva convention), or local peaceful population, and must be either released immediately, or charged with a crime according to the local law, in whatever court that has jurisdiction there -- their or yours if you have annexed the territory. Certainly a military kangaroo court in Guantanamo Bay has no jurisdiction over alleged crimes in Afghanistan, and neither Afghanistan, nor US (and not even Cuba) allow torture to be used on criminal suspects.
Therefore the whole thing is illegal, no matter what verbal structures are used to describe it.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Third Reich certainly did not have rockets, capable of launching satellites, merely reaching high altitude. Big difference. Also they did not have anything being worth delivered by ICBMs -- their nuclear program never was completed. Nazi tried to use small missiles with conventional explosives, however they didn't even bother to provide a matching military strategy for those, dooming them to failure.
The V2 was effectively an intermediate range ballistic missile. It is still a better technology than at least 50% of the world has (i.e. the 3rd world), although with enough money you can buy SCUDs which are slightly better.
Radars and satellites are cheap, and ICBMs are even cheaper -- they are mass-produced devices, with technology developed mostly in 50's, and in part over 60's-90's.
Priced any ICBMs lately? You couldn't be more wrong. You cannot buy ICBMs off of the shelf. If that were the case, N. Korea would have them. Hell, Iraq would have had them. You are using technological logic to debate something that you have no relevant facts about. ICBMs are not transistors. They are not mass produced ICs. You cannot just go by some off the shelf of your local arms dealer.
They are giant heavy pieces of machinery that are DAMNED difficult to make correctly. Hell, even the US, which has the best space industry in the world still loses between 10-30% of their unmanned payload launches due to the complexity of making a rocket that works perfectly.
There is nothing too complex about it, and sooner or later everyone who can't be easily raided by his local version of police, will have one in a backyard -- unless, of course, the amount of paranoia will stop rising before reaching a level necessary for that.
Later rather than sooner. Like most people who have no experience in this area you underrate the difficulty of the task. But also like most people, you don't let that stop you. No, you still have an uninformed opinion just like everyone else.
Saddam never had any nuclear weapons, or a target farther than Iran and Israel.
Really? You don't think he considered the United States a target? Or Great Britain? He certainly hated them enough to try to assasinate George Bush. If he'd have had access to highly accurate ICBMs, or the technology to create them, why use highly INACCURATE SCUD and Frog missiles instead of these accurate SRMs which you continue to mistakenly state that everyone has access to, huh?
I have to admit, the fact that you are completely ignorant of the world arms market but still attempt to debate says something about you...
And the resources available to him in 80's-90's are comparable with what some LA or NY gang leader has.
This is absolutely assinine. Saddam Hussein had access to hundreds of billions of dollars as the leader of Iraq, no NY or LA gangster has that kind of money, not even in the Hollywood movie fantasies.
I have no respect for people who were developing SDI. Neither as engineer, nor as a person that expects at least some honesty in politics. It could not be done, and they never admitted it, replacing thoughts with ideologically-powered bluffing.
So, it can't be done huh? Of course it can be done! All it takes are enough money and enough time (remember your lame ass argument about how everyone could have ICBMs that way?)
Are you even an engineer? I AM one, and I've worked in this field. It CAN be done, and the technology to do it has already been proven. Not only that, every year it gets EASIER to do.
COIL lasers have been used to destroy missiles in terminal phase. THAAD has been tested successfully. Do a web search.. you'll find it.
SDI is certainly not impossible. To say so marks incredible stupidity. Is it possible without spending god-awful amounts of money? Probably not... at least right now, but it will be soon.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Ok, maybe he should be tried for treason for accepting campaign money from the PRC that he later gave missile secrets to? Or Gore should if you feel you must insulate your revered Slick Willie from the actions of his subordinates.
Make no mistake. Slick Willie was a corrupt bastard. Money for stays in the Lincoln bedroom ring a bell?
Of course, Bushie is even more corrupt and even more blatant. Halliburton now OWNS Iraq for all effects and purposes.
All politicians are corrupt and evil.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
The V2 was effectively an intermediate range ballistic missile. It is still a better technology than at least 50% of the world has (i.e. the 3rd world), although with enough money you can buy SCUDs which are slightly better.
SCUD missiles, and anything else medium range, are not ICBMs, a bomber can deliver the nuclear charge at the same distance, and wherever they actually were used, no one could use nuclear weapons anyway. Same applies to V2.
Priced any ICBMs lately? You couldn't be more wrong. You cannot buy ICBMs off of the shelf. If that were the case, N. Korea would have them. Hell, Iraq would have had them. You are using technological logic to debate something that you have no relevant facts about. ICBMs are not transistors. They are not mass produced ICs. You cannot just go by some off the shelf of your local arms dealer.
ICBMs are not being sold, they are only built by whoever needs them. And building them is cheap. It's not a question of price, merely practicality of building them, especially considering that once they are built they can't be sold if useless for its owner, so resources spent on building it can't be easily recovered. Same applies to, say, bridges.
They are giant heavy pieces of machinery that are DAMNED difficult to make correctly. Hell, even the US, which has the best space industry in the world still loses between 10-30% of their unmanned payload launches due to the complexity of making a rocket that works perfectly.
More like due to $deity-awful quality of work, monopolistic suppliers, price gouging and simultaneous attempts to reduce cost beyond the reasonable level.
Later rather than sooner. Like most people who have no experience in this area you underrate the difficulty of the task. But also like most people, you don't let that stop you. No, you still have an uninformed opinion just like everyone else.
Actually I have an informed opinion about this. Missiles are "expensive" for the same reason why diamonds or drugs are expensive -- because of successful attempts of preventing trade of them. However whenever there is no trade involved, people can cheaply produce diamonds (if they are located in the proximity of a diamond mine, or have artificial diamonds production equipment) or drugs (using simple equipment). Certainly, any government that has a foot to stand on, can produce missiles as long as they are commited to make all components with their resources and under their own control -- and in that case they are cheap.
Really? You don't think he considered the United States a target? Or Great Britain?
Absolutely not. There is nothing that indicates that he ever intended to attack any of those countries, with or without nuclear weapons.
He certainly hated them enough
Billions of people happen to hate US and UK for various reasons or without ones. None of them did anything at all to start a nuclear war with those countries, and only few actually attacked anything because of that hatred.
to try to assasinate George Bush.
This is absolutely unrelated to the intention to attack the country. Whoever assassinated Kennedy did not start a war with US, and it's not even clear if Hussein was behind any assassination attempt.
If he'd have had access to highly accurate ICBMs, or the technology to create them, why use highly INACCURATE SCUD and Frog missiles instead of these accurate SRMs which you continue to mistakenly state that everyone has access to, huh?
Iraq was in no condition to build anything at all -- even basic pieces of infrastructure in its economy. This is why the border conflict with Kuwait over a small amount of oil had such an importance for Iraq in the first place, and lead to the poorly planned and politically stupid invasion of Kuwait. And without nuclear weapons to deliver the accuracy of ICBM is wasted anyway.
I have to admit, the fact that you are completely ignorant of the world arms
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
" Ok, maybe he should be tried for treason for accepting campaign money from the PRC that he later gave missile secrets to?"
Is that a treasonable offense? Are you going to try every politician who takes bribes for treason? If so then every single politician from your city councilman to the president is guilty of treason.
BTW You are lying when you said he accepted money from the PRC. He did no such thing. He accepted money from an american citizen. Some people allege that that person got some money from china (but not the PRC). Once again you are sorely misinformed.
"Make no mistake. Slick Willie was a corrupt bastard. Money for stays in the Lincoln bedroom ring a bell?"
If accepting campaign contributions is corruption then yes. Every politician accepts contributions. Sometimes the politicians do things in return. SO what if people slept in the lincoln bedroom? What possible consequence is that to you? Some people get to have dinner with the president, some people get to have their pictures taken, some people get to sleep in the lincon bedroom. What the fuck is it to you?
"Of course, Bushie is even more corrupt and even more blatant. Halliburton now OWNS Iraq for all effects and purposes."
Let's not forget that he killed hundreds of thousands of people, and set up concentration camps all over the world.
War is necrophilia.
hi
Maybe I'm not understanding what the parent to my comment was saying when he says "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". Since I'm pretty sure that the US nuking someone recently would be in the papers, I assumed that he was talking about attacking with conventional weapons.
Having nukes means you can roll the tanks into any country that doesn't have nukes (like Chechnya, Tibet, or Afghanistan) and there isn't diddley squat they, or anyone else, can really do about it.
Try to pay attention next time.
Chechnya never was a real country, and is a part of Russia for over a century. Tibet is a part of China, and before becoming that, it was, contrary to a popular belief, a quite shitty place. And Afghanistan was constantly messed with by UK and US for longer than any modern weapons existed. One may find the actions of China, Russia and India questionable, however their opponents are on at least a very shaky ground ethically -- there are shitloads of "national liberation movements" around the world, and most of them are basically large gangs that want to become official rulers of their historical stomping grounds, and use nationalistic slogans to back up their ambitions.
However my point is, in none of those cases the use of nuclear weapons is an option, no country wants to nuke something that it recognizes as its own territory, so nuclear weapons are irrelevant in "national liberation"/secession conflicts. Compare that to, say, US threatening to use nuclear weapons in its Middle East "adventures".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
How can a racist rant like this be modded "insightful"? First off, the only difference between groups 2 and 3 in this system (since both keep their own culture and language) is that those in group 2 come from countries that are either irrelevant or friendly to the US, and those in gourp 3 from those that are rivals or hostile.
And as for "group 1", they've assimilated so well because they've been here for generations. GO back a hundred years and you'll find Jewish immigrants and their kids speaking yiddish, Italians speaking Italian (ever see the Godfather?), Irish speaking Gaelic and none mixing with the other.
As for all those Japanese Americans who volunteered to fight for the USA in WWII... All US citizens of Japanese descent -- however well assimilated -- were IMPRISONED during WWII. Without trial, in clear breach of the constitution. Why? Because the authorities reckoned them to be "group 3" undesirables whose loyalty could not be trusted. Funny that now the US and Japan are allies, you consider them to be perfect examples of immigrants.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
No. You are allowed to execute those engaged in espionage. We are being strictly more gracious than the Geneva Convention requires.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
The Portland Tribune did have an article the next day. Two actually. They had other articles and probably will have future ones too so here is a search for all articles on Hawash.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
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.
Ukraine, other nations were part of the USSR for almost a century. Why do they get to be independant and Chechnya doesn't? It doesn't matter if Tibet was a lousy place; losing their language, religion and cultural identity isn't right. And how exactly did the US mess around with Afghanistan before modern weapons existed?
And when push comes to shove, the only way the US will use nukes in the Middle East is if they use them against the US first. Anyone in the DoD who says otherwise is just the 21st century equivalent of Curtis LeMay, just a wild dog kept tight on a leash used to scare people.
Ukraine, other nations were part of the USSR for almost a century. Why do they get to be independant and Chechnya doesn't?
Ukraine was a part of Russian Empire for >300 years, with Russian Czar as its ruler, and became a separate "republic" (just like states in US are separate entities in various ways, though under federal power) when USSR was formed. Chechnya was a part of _Russia_ for >100 years, and remained so when USSR was formed. To be honest, even "independence" of Ukraine didn't do it much good, and Ukraine at least has a theoretical possibility of developing some economy that is not completely tied to Russia. The only economy Chechnya can develop on its own is armed robbery of neighbors.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.