Slashdot Mirror
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.
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I worked with him and thought, up to now, that he was innocent.
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.
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
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
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)
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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
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
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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
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...
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
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.
"I have just been wondering, those guys don't care about the US, the just want to make sure they don't alow their kids to eat pork or their wives to be seen in public, (that does not make them terrorists. Wacky, yes, terrorists, no)."
As I recall, the Taliban stoned women to death for adultery, flogged both sexes for (what they considered to be) immodest dress, and toppled walls then bulldozed over homosexuals.
I don't think "wacky" appropriately describes them.
He's a bad guy because, even though he is a citizen of the United States, he admitted in court that he and his friends are and were willing to take up arms against the U.S. and its civilians.
But damn the U.S. for trying to protect its citizens from those willing and able to murder them! Damn the U.S. for protecting its national interests.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
I 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
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!
> 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
After 9/11/01 the US asked the government of Afghanistan if they had him, they replied that he was under their control and that they would turn him over, if the US was willing to provide proof that he had done something wrong.
Get your dick out of your ass. The Taliban were just bullshitting us. There was plenty of proof for extradition, and everyone knew it.
bin Laden was known by everyone to be the head of the terrorist organization that was dedicated to killing as many Americans as possible. They took responsibility for bombing the USS Cole, the two African embassies, and many other terrorist acts.
On Sept 11, I and quite a few other people around the world, when we thought about who to blame, thought first of Osama bin Laden.
Why? Because everyone in the fucking world knew he was the head of an evil international well-funded terrorist organization dedicated to killing Americans! (and based out of Afghanistan)
ps. mod parent down as flamebait. I can't believe I got sucked in.
no thanks
The problem now is that we'll never know whether he's actually guilty, or whether he was forced into the plea. You can hope that he was, indeed, guilty, and that the FBI was quite right in bending the Constitution to keep him around until he finally admitted it. Or you can say that it's never right to break a person's rights in order to get them to admit their guilt, regardless of whether you *know* they're guilty (even if you couldn't prove it in court) or not.
The problem with the former approach (hoping that he's guilty and accepting the methods involved in attaining the admission of guilt) is that the constitution wasn't just some fancy of some guy. It was the result of millenia of people being raped, tortured, and murdered. In many cases, that rape, torture, and murder was designed to elicit confessions (from those who weren't the ones being killed, obviously :). Relatively speaking, this particular stab at Rights (note the capitalisation there) has thus far been very short-lived. A few centuries, barely that. If it slides into the same environment that was prelevant for thousands of years previously, it wouldn't be surprising (statistically speaking).
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
"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.
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.)
If he really didn't commit the crime(s) then how can he offer up information via his buddies?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Bah... I'm putting on my tinfoil hat again... and I don't even live in the US ;-)
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
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.
"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.
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.
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?
The Taliban were just bullshitting us. There was plenty of proof for extradition, and everyone knew it.
And you know this because of what? Woman's intuition? Our government didn't even take the time to find out if the Afghans would keep their word. They just bombed them.
bin Laden was known by everyone to be the head of the terrorist organization that was dedicated to killing as many Americans as possible. They took responsibility for bombing the USS Cole, the two African embassies, and many other terrorist acts.
Every time a bomb goes off, many groups claim responsibility. That doesn't constitute proof.
On Sept 11, I and quite a few other people around the world, when we thought about who to blame, thought first of Osama bin Laden.
Your thoughts are not proof.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Given sufficient motivation innocent people DO plead guilty - it wasn't too long ago in soviet russia (no, I'm not making that tired joke) that Stalin killed millions - many of which were upstanding members of the community who confessed to crimes that never occurred. Look at just about any dictatorship and you'll find evidence of innocent people pleading guilty to criminal acts in order to avoid or end terrible punishments.
I'm not saying that America is a tyrannical dictatorship - I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader - but the statements you made about a government unquestionably having MY best interests in mind fly in the face of dozens of years of history: sometimes they do not. Vigilance and over our governments is what keeps them from degenerating to the depths of those decrepit examples of our past.
Aren't there some billy goats at the ol' bridge you should be bothering?
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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
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
"...held him as a material witness until charges were filed five weeks later."
Is anyone else disturbed by this?
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
Probably the same time they stop looking like middle eastern gentlemen at a time when the country gets attacked by them. Right or wrong, looks (and appearence) play a great role in identifying suspects. If the attack were carried out by middle aged, caucasion males with pension plans linked to a Mexico bank account, I would EXPECT to be at least questioned.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
He went to aid the taliban after we started the fight with them, after 9/11, fuckhead. This guy, supposedly, went to go fight solders on the battlefield not murder civilians. There's a pretty big difference.
Someone please mod this asshole down.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It's called the consitution. It's there to make sure that under no circumstances can the Government take away my rights as a citizen.
There's a fine line between cracking down on terrorism, and terrorising the citizens to crack down on terrorism.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
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.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
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 problem with the Hawash case was never his guilt or innosence, but the whole issue of how he was arrested in the first place.
Hawash was secretly arrested. With a secret warrent. Based on secret evidence. The feds wouldn't even admit that they had arrested him until eleven days had passed. He was not charged with a crime until he had been held for more than two months.
The Constitution specifically states that people get speedy trials. The police are not allowed to arrest people and hold them without pressing charges. That is one of the main things that's wrong with communist nations like China and Cuba. The whole idea of "find charges, then arrest" is central to real justice. "Arrest, then make up charges" is a sure sign of Stalin and his ilk.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
When we all thought that the FBI was overstepping their bounds?
They were.
When we all thought that they were wrong; that an Intel engineer couldn't possibly be guilty?
With the kind of sentence the terrorism charge carries, I'd plead guilty too in exchange for its drop.
This case and all the other similar cases were botched completely. He deserves to go free in spite of any confession or verdict or whatever because of the sheer unethical nature of the proceedings.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
apparently so does the Associated Press, since they wrote the story...
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
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.
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
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.
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?
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!
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--
Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban. Prosecutors agreed to drop charges of conspiring to levy war against the United States and conspiring to provide material support for terrorism.
Plea bargains are a travesty of justice. Telling someone "we can prosecute you for a crime on which there is the death penalty, or you can plead guilty to a lesser charge" creates a grave risk of making the innocent plead guilty. This is really not all that different from the interrogation and torture techniques used by the inquisition or totalitarian governments. Furthermore, it allows the guilty to get away with lesser charges.
I think the utilitarian argument for these kinds of arrangements doesn't work: no matter how many criminals we catch through plea bargains or how many crimes we prevent, the cost of such arrangements--sacrificing a fair trial and a thorough, public examination of the charges and evidence--is just too high. Plea bargains are killing the patient in order to save him.
"You and the others in the group were prepared to take up arms, and die as martyrs if necessary, to defend the Taliban. Is this true?" U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked Hawash during the hearing.
This, too, is rather chilling. It's not that conspiracy might not be a prosecutable crime under some circumstances, and maybe this is one of them. But in this phrasing, he didn't actually admit to doing anything, he was just "prepared to do" something.
I don't care if they thought Stalin was Jesus. Until they made any movement (like killing people, or stealing) they have a right to walk the streets like anyone else.
Wake up. There is such a thing as the outside world, and whether you like it or not it isn't part of any society, it just is regardless of what influence one person has on another.
I don't want a paradise on Earth. I want a place where I can live and learn things you'll never get trained or taught to do or understand. I want a place where I can test the world to see what's true and what isn't for myself. I exist dammit. I'm not just taking up space. I am. Therefore I will think. Therefore I will not be molded without prior agreement. As if Lieberman will get elected in 2004. HA!
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
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.
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" ?
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.
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.
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
Neocon legend. There are no such papers. McCarthy was a demogogue who insinuated crimes and ruined people. He was a bully and fool, and if he is a demon, he was a demon of his own making.
There is also a neocon legend that the FBI was on Martin Luther King's side all the time. But they were trying to find out why all that violence kept dogging him around the country. Really.
If you doubt that these stories are legends, then try Googling for the stories which you think exist.
While the Taliban was in power, the US gave quite a bit of aid and assistance to them. After all, they were our buddies- they were going to crack down on drugs! It's easy to turn a blind eye to everything and anything else that the US supposedly stands for, provided they tell us they'll crack down on opium production.
I mean, it's a well known fact that the US can never do any wrong- so, why is this guy going to jail?
Perhaps we should put this retarded administration on trial, along with the schmucks in previous administrations who thought it was a good idea to put a bunch of folks through Terrorism for Dummies, CIA Edition. Hell, perhaps we could even go so far as to look at our current actions- the CIA sponsors guerilla training like that given to our buddie Osama in a number of countries. You see, when the US wants something from some un-developed nationn we train a bunch of locals to despose the current dictator and put one in that is more to our liking... It's usually about getting some resource that the other guy didn't feel like sharing. Oil? COULDN'T BE!
USA! USA! USA!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Pretty lucky guess, if he's pleading guilty and that's all they had to go on when they picked him up.
Don't be so sure. I don't know if he is in fact guilty in this case, but people have been known to plead guilty when they are in fact innocent.
Here's a possible scenario. They pick him up on secret evidence and secret warrant, then hold him secretly with no access to a lawyer or his family. That's pretty scary right there.
Next, they tell you, "listen buddy, you look just like one of Osama's boys, so when we put you before a jury of your *peers*, they'll have no problem locking you away for the rest of your life being gang raped by muslim-hating white supremicists"... OR, if you plead guilty, we'll take it easy on you, put you in a nice prison, and you'll see your family in 7 years."
What does his lawyer tell him? Oh wait, he didn't have access to one for quite a while... in fact, nobody did.
What do you do given a choice like that?
Prosecutors have a lot of power in our system, particularly when they can frighten you into pleading guilty out of fear for what a guilty verdict means.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
The Taliban was a horrible regime, but they were not a threat in any way to the immediate security of the US.
Are you insane or just plain dumb?!
The Taleban provided both moral, financial and military support to a terrorist group (Al-Queda) that attacked US military (Pentagon) and civilian targets (WTC) without provocation or warning, killing thousands. Following the attack the Taleban refused to hand over the remaining terrorists hiding in their country, futher supporting the terrorists and thus proving that they form an alliance with the group that attacked the US, which makes them part in the war the Taleban started/declared by attacking the US.
Remember that an attack on the military of another nation is a declaration of war in itself, and the Taliban clearly supported the actions of Al-Queda both before and after the attack, thus they declared war on the US. I hardly find it surprising that the US responded by taking the war they were forced into back to Afghanistan.
Any regime/country actively waging war on the US is clearly a threat to the security of the US! - I think we're actually around the definition of 'threat to the security' here.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Did the CIA help him out after he admitted terrorist actions? No. But the Taliban did.
Apples and oranges.
make world, not war
Quoting from the [oft referenced here but should be re-read. If you can read it without fear, why?] article on Why the Lackawanna 6 pled guilty:
Yup, thats the system I learned about in civics class:The government can choose to give you access to the Bill of Rights unless it really need you to be guilty. In that case the Posse'll just come on by to take you away. Oh, and when the BoR says that "persons" get these rights they really meant "upstanding uncriminal citizens-by-birth and taxpayers" so it doesn't apply to YOU.
Can some biologist please, PLEASE gene-mod a frog so that it'll actually hang out in ever-warming water so that I can use that cliched, false but I still want to use it proverbial frog in a pot analogy now?
you're an idiot. read this and get your facts straight before you start to spout off. this is the plea agreement.
I won't argue with you about being an idiot - it may very well be the case.
All I was saying is that just because someone pleads guilty, that does not mean they were in fact guilty. There have been cases where people plead guilty becuse a prosecutor has scared them enough that they are not willing to risk going to court and being found guilty.
I believe that in this case, the chances are pretty good that Hawash is indeed guilty. But, I also question the way he was held for so long with no access to family and lawyers. That should not happen in America.
I always look at people with buzz cuts and camo suspiciously. I don't *do* anything though. That would be dumb. They're the army...
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).
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.
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.
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.
"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?
Ditch the link to Foxnews and read this story on the case from The Oregonian, the local paper in Portland.
Cultural, like being American? After all, America was found guilty of committing terrorist acts in Nicaragua.
So YOU stop being a dope, dumbass. Extremism can happen in any culture, just ask the folks in Oklahoma if you don't believe me.
I'm not the guy you were replying to, but you seem to have some facts wrong. The USA is not in a state of war; no war has been declared by Congress since WWII, so we haven't been in a state of war for nearly 60 years.
Moreover your basic argument is completely wrong. In times of war, in times of danger, that is when we MOST need our civil liberties defended. These are the times when a free and open government is most essential to our very survival. Freedom is not a luxury that we cast aside when times get tough, it is the very thing that allows our country to live at all. Freedom is not an impediment to our society, our survival, or our government, it is the very basis of all three.
If soviet style government works so well, why is the Soviet Union now vanished, while we stand strong? The truth is that secret police, hidden trials, and so forth simply don't work. If they did we'd have been the government that fell, not the Soviet Union. Do not fool yourself. The "pinkos" aren't those demanding that the US government obey the law, but those in the government trying to destroy our civil liberties.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Are you trying to make some kind of enlightening post on the state of our country and how bad it is. If you do not like it then maybe the country is not the problem you are. Or maybe your right and the United states is full of about 300 million lemmings and one free thinker, you. Wake the f up and realize although you have been taught to question what goes on around you and your not able to understand everything every one is doing it doesn't mean if you didn't set it in motion it is bad or evil.
I cannot believe so many slashdoters feel like our government is somehow inferior because of its faults. Then they turn around and gloss over the faults of other countries. Is there some unwritten law that technophiles must be either anti-socials or anti-America.
I guess once you have your education, it's OK to support a religion that stops all other women from getting theirs?
I guess anything to make big, mean, nasty America pay for the atrocites against Allah.... like tall buildings and shaved faces.
Even as a critic of Israel, I have to voice my dissent with THAT.
Difference 1: the Israelis aren't blowing up the holy sites of other religions (in fact, it has only been under Israeli stewardship that all three religions which claim that land as a holy place have had access to their own holy sites)
Difference 2: the Israelis aren't forcibly converting the masses to Judaism, and in fact teach evolution in schools, unlike the Taliban or, heck, Kansas.
Difference 3: the Israelis aren't stoning adulterers or crunching gays under walls (though clearly they have human rights problems of their own, including collapsing houses on people, but they are in fact still fighting a war with the Palestinians, and not meting out death as punishment through the legal system*)
Difference 4: Israeli women can work, wear whatever they like, learn to read, get an M.D., be Prime Minister (and leave the fscking house, for crying out loud), even though this is not in accordance with right-wing Orthodox Judaic beliefs.
Difference 5: Israel is not ruled by the iron grip of religious fundamentalism. It is a parliamentary democracy, like Britain and Canada. Israeli Arabs do, indeed, vote. The "Jewish" in "Jewish State" comes from its judicial system, which does base its decisions on Jewish law, but just as in the United States and other Western nations, there is a separation of power between legislation and the courts.
Difference 6: Israelis protest against their army's actions, and aren't hanged, stoned, shot, or maimed for doing so.
Should I go on?
* There is only one death penalty in Israel, which is reserved for Nazis.
Sounds pretty logical to me. Is there some underlying method to your madness or are you simply pointing out the obvious.
How do you know US bullets did that? You were aware, right, that we bullhorned them to surrender. You do realize that they started firing RPGs and lots of bullets at our troops first, right? You do realize that any "civilian" would have gotten their butt out of there as fast as they could have once the soldiers started showing up, right?
You do realize there is a moral difference between deliberately targeting civilians and accidentally hitting civilians while engaging military targets, right?
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
The Taliban is not a country. In fact, the Taliban has never been a country. They were not generally, in fact, Afghani - many (I believe most) were foreigners who simply took over, as 1) Afghanistan wasn't able to resist, and 2) they wanted a country in which to practice the most extreme version of Islam. So it would be a mistake to assume there was hardly anyone in Afghanistan who voluntarily supported the Taliban.
Second, this guy was Palestinian as pointed out. So he's not defending a country - he's committing acts of aggression against a country he does not like by aiding an extremely violent terrorist regime with a history of targeted violence against civillians.
That's terrorism in pretty much any book.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
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".
My basic opinion is that warlordism has always been in Afghanistan, and it's not going away any time soon.
i stan, khazakhstan...and if you want some more etymology, in Farsi (Persian) the "blank of blank" construction is called an Idafa and goes "Blank-i Blank". 'Uzbek-i Stan' is Land of the Uzbeks. "Afghan-i Stan" is land of the Afghans.
;)). The US sees this as perhaps a restart of Soviet aggression. Who comes next? Iran?
If you're asking my opinion of the US involvement me in the 1980's it is this. We shouldn't have done anything. The Afghans would have kicked the Russians out anyway. Look at the British in the 19th century--one of the best armies ever created, organized, and completely willing to kill. They got their butts kicked out of Kabul with TERRIBLE losses, civilian and otherwise. The poem I think it's "Go to your God like a solider" by Kipling shows a little bit about what Afghanistan was like.
Anyway though, I also think that it was a mistake to not attempt to rebuild Afghanistan after our involvement. But look at the situation now. It's an uphill battle. It would have been no better then (if not impossible due to Russian control of Central Asia), and let's face it, it's not terribly in the US interest to rebuild a country that's probably never going to be worth shit. (miserable climate, landlocked, few resources, tribalism and warlordism, etc).
Also, I do agree that Afghanistan was never important--this was just a proxy battle between the US and Russia. Well actually, Afghanistan WAS important to Russia. Oh good, I'm glad I remembered to talk about this. What's the reason Russia invaded Afghanistan? No one seems to ask this (thinking it obvious?) myself included, and the reasons that I have found are that Afghanistan even then was such an unstable country and radical that it was creating problems for Russia in the relatively docile Central Asia states (those would be the "Stans"--turkmenistan,uzbekistan,kyrgyzstan,tajik
Back to the Russians, the Russians felt it was in their best interest to invade Afghanistan (like I mentioned earlier, a country with basically NOTHING worth invading for--other than the bountiful poppy fields
tough questions, and of course now we have hindsight..
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
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
And then, after that, we hear "he looks like a terrorist(as laughable as that idea is)! He must support terrorism! Kill him!"
Let's turn the tables for a second: What if I had gone to live in China after marrying someone there, and had become a citizen. Let's also assume that I am originally a citizen of Canada (to establish the Pakistan-Afghanistan type of relationship). Then, out of anger at sanctions, China declares war on the U.S. The Chinese start doing all sorts of stuff to Americans in that country that are outside global human rights' agreements, and grossly immoral from almost any view. All over the world, similar views are being adopted, and it seems as if the Asians of the world are out to eradicate everyone who is, say, white and North American. I might be kinda pissed off -- maybe I'd even go to America and try to join the army, to protect my own and my family's right to freedom and non-discrimination. Doesn't sound so crazy, I think.
And finally, here is a great point: He obviously didn't care THAT much. After being turned away from Afghanistan, it's not like he went nuts and started shooting the border patrol. He didn't even DO anything. If he'd been that upset, he would have not come home to the U.S., but instead waited for an opportunity to get into Afghanistan.
In fact, I find it deplorable that we can even convict him of anything. He was going to go to a combat area to fight -- it's not terrorism. If he wanted to fight for what he believed is right in a way that doesn't involve non-combatants, I don't think that is terrorism in any way, shape or form. Instead, it's the most American way of voting possible, the same way the Revolutionaries voted. Though faced with impossible odds and nothing but his own ideals, "Mike" was willing to lay down his life for what he believed in sanctioned military conflict. Though he didn't get a chance to act upon those ideals, I would find it hard to believe that anyone could label such action criminal.
-----[0_o]-----
We are not amused.
He's not JUST pleading guilty. He's pleading guilty and providing information/evidence against the other six. Which tells me he was probably involved somehow.
That said, I still think the way he was treated is bullcrap. Guilty or not, some of his rights that we have (supposedly) guaranteed to us in this country were taken away. Sure a lot of people will say "He was guilty, who cares." Yeah, a lot of people don't care until one day maybe they get falsely accused, get snatched up, and aren't given the rights of the accused that is expected. I can't find the part in the constitution that talks about "If it's a matter of national security, then we rewrite the rules."
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.The "shadow of a doubt" standard could almost never be met. A shadow of doubt is very easy to cast.
Lasers Controlled Games!
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.