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Police Capture Second Marathon Bombing Suspect in Watertown, Mass.
Police have captured believed Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was "pinned down" in a boat stored behind a house in Watertown, Massachusetts. You can listen to the live police feed here.
Awesome! So glad that someone posted the live Boston police scanner stream. The scanner was VERY much ahead of any live news.
CBS reported that few years back Russians warned FBI about older brother being radicalized. So FBI asked him, he said "nope", they said "ok" and let him go. And they totally forgot about it - he wasn't on the list of suspects...
That's "cooperation" alright...
He'd called his uncle after the bombings and asked for his forgiveness. It's said he idolized his older brother, who family members called the bad one. Yes, now we will be able to know all of the true motives they had for commiting this carnage. We won't like or agree with the answers he gives, but they will be answers, better than guessing at the 'why' of this horrid act.
Iraq never wanted you in the first place, yet you went anyways. But it's still not your problem, right?
This kind of morality is all too typical of Americans....
Not here in Massachusetts. He will be taken to a world-class hospital and his wounds treated. Once he is well, he will await trial in a comfortable jail, with access to his lawyer so he can prepare his defense. If he can't afford a lawyer we'll hire one for him. In such a high profile case, he may even get a top drawer lawyer working pro-bono to ensure his defense doesn't get steamrollered by public opinion. If he chooses to plead not guilty he will have the fairest trial we can possibly contrive, and the burden of proof will be on the prosecutor. If the prosecutor proves he is guilty, and he escapes the Federal death penalty (we don't have a state death penalty), he will be housed for the rest of his life in a correctional facility that is humanely operated to the maximum extent consistent with ensuring public safety.
And I'm proud that's we do things. It's civilized. Some people may kill, maim or hurt people because they're feeling angry, but we as a people don't do things like that. That's what makes us better than they are.
We got the job done, there's no reason to spike the ball. In fact there's plenty reason *not* to. We give the state power to kill people, to inflict pain, to deprive them of their freedom, but those powers ought to be limited to their proper application by strict rules. They should not be used at the whim of an individual government official or group of officials.
Had Tsarnaev continued resisting arrest and got himself shot, I'd shake the hand of the officer who shot him. But now that he's given up, I'd call for the prosecution of any official who uses excessive force on him.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
And our government and government agencies never manufacture, mislead, or cover-up. Nope. No reason to worry about that, either.
If this guy is guilty, then to hell with him. I'm just not willing to be ignorant of the vileness of our government nor give up the fundamental principals for which we're supposedly fighting so hard to maintain, just for some sort of masturbatory post-crises catharsis.
I got the feeling the Kurds actually liked us.
Good intentions being the pavement to the road to hell, ever heard that one? Guess it would be adapted as the US foreign policy motto.
Come on, that's harsh.
Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing
...after they have exhausted all other possibilities.
-- Winston Churchill
CJ
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
What happen if this "bomber" were found not guilty?
New Economic Perspectives
1. Vietnam might disagree. But I admit, comparing this would be very unfair after all you fled the country. It's a given that you can't clean up as you would in an orderly retreat. I cannot really comment much on Korea, lacking data, but it seems you did fairly well there considering their economy and population are doing quite well (I'm talking about that part of Korea you actually had your hands in), and most likely without your intervention the whole peninsula would now suffer the fate of the northern half. I have to give you that, this was one good move, and I'll have to review my position on this portion of the statement. What remains, though, is that what comes after simply isn't even close to par with it. But then again, I still think Eisenhower was the best prez the country had since WW2. He handled the occupation organization of Germany in a splendid way and most likely was one of the few that could end the Korean war in a favorable way for the US, with him at the helm Vietnam sure would have ended differently... or not started at all, since he initially refused to go there in the first place... but I digress.
2. Saddam was no saint, not by a longshot. He most certainly was a nightmare for his country, but, and that's after all what US foreign politics are usually about, a boon for the US. He was a fairly stable point in a very unruly area, one which also holds a lot of strategically very important resources. Oil, for example. At first, the Iran (yes, THAT Iran) was "our man in the middle east", and the US supported the Shah. Also not really a saint, if you remember (if you don't, look him up). Not really far away from Saddam, was he? And the US pumped an insane amount of top notch, state-of-the-art military hardware into the country. Quite literally, they were armed to the teeth with, IIRC, the fourth largest army on the planet, equipped with the most advanced military equipment money could buy at that time. They got the SAME tech level military equipment the US had themselves (a mistake the US would not repeat).
After the coup of 79 the US were kinda shaken. Now there was a country, ready, able (and probably willing) to take over the whole middle east that was decidedly NOT an ally anymore! War against them, aside of not really being very popular just 4 years after the Vietnam debacle, would have been a nightmare. If you fight a technologically equal enemy, expect similar losses on your side that you inflict.
So Saddam became an ally of the US. He was by no means any better back then, but he was willing and able to wage a war against the Iran and stall them enough to make not only their military hardware a bit more dated but also decimate their stockpile of weapons.
So, please, not the argument that Saddam was a monster. Yes, he was. No doubt about that. But being a monster and a scourge for the people who are subject to its rule has never ruled out an oppressor as an ally of the US. Pinochet, Noriega, Branco, they were not really the epitome of democracy and liberty either, but all of them were installed or supported by the US as part of its foreign politics. Understandable from an US point of view, who of course do care more about its position in the world rather than the people who have to suffer from it, but please don't tell me overthrowing Saddam was just a "humanitarian act" or similar bullshit.
He broke the rules, that's all. Same as Noriega, btw.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually I share your concern with Supermax prisons. I think for some prisoners they're necessary for the protection of the public and the people who guard them, but I get the nagging feeling that some places use detention in Supermax as a kind of unconstitutionally enhanced punishment.
If Tsarnaev's sent to the kind of facility you're talking about, it'll be the federal facility in Florence Colorado -- which is an antiseptic hell-hole.
I didn't think Massachusetts had its own facility that meets Supermax security standards, but it turns out I was wrong. There's Souza-Baranowski in Shirley Mass, which some have called the most technologically advanced prison in the world. I kid you not, it runs entirely on renewable energy sources. Go ahead and laugh at liberal Massachusetts, because it *is* funny that our version of Devil's Island is solar powered.
According to the Mass DOC, Souza-Baranowski "offers a full range of educational, vocational and substance abuse programming," which sets it apart from the kind of Supermax prisons you're talking about, where prisoners rot away in solitary confinement.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
One of my grandfathers died in a Nazi concentration camp. The other one was shot when helping people escape from the Communist prison countries. My dad took over that "family business". I personally was only there to aid people during the 1989 escapes, but that doesn't really count, they didn't really shoot anymore by then.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I know you will probably not give a damn what I think, but I think you see things too black and white. I think the US hates all these SOBs, but we can't be against every single asshole on the planet or we'd have no friends and would definitely lose the fight for the soul of the planet. We have to be 'friends' with some of them, which means, we are friends with them so long as they help us against people we judge to be worse, and that worse could be something the Berkley brigade would call greedy like financial help, but without a strong financial position the US and thus freedom parishes. So we have to make shitty calls all the time, I think (or hope) it's for a ultimately greater good, and one day the world will be democratized and all these stupid fucking dictator will be waiting tables and not bothering anyone (or even better, hung at war tribunals), but who knows. Without omniscience we can only make the best shit call we can out of nothing but shit calls. Just my opinion, take it for what it's worth. Oh btw, we didn't flee Vietnam, not the US anyway, after stabilizing the situation, and setting up South Vietnam to defend itself, the democrats in the US congress (which had a super majority that was too much for even a presidential veto) decided to abruptly cancel funding for South Vietnam, causing their military to collapse against the North's war machine. Now you may consider the democrats to be the US, but I assure you I think quite the opposite.
"...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
In cases of mass murder like this, I think the we just have to consider them as defects of humankind. Kill them and not think anymore about it. Sure, they are an interesting case study for psychologists and police, but for the rest of us, we are better off with the notion that they become as notorious as a discarded product on a factory floor.
...More recently, it took the US to put an end to the active fighting in Bosnia in the 90's...
Quite true, to our (European) eternal shame and dishonour. This and other incidents, both prior and subsequently, have shown the myth that 'European integration' on difficult foreign policy matters really is.
-- as I recall, the Dutch troops there just stood around while the Bosnian Muslims got massacred in Srebrenica before the US got involved.
To be fair to them, it widely was reported at the time that they, and other forces, repeated warned about the upcoming slaughter and were fully ready to intervene, (despite being heavily outnumbered, and thus probably being slaughtered in their turn). The politicos said no.
It's wrong to brand EU armed forces as 'useless' or 'cowardly'; they have fought well, and bravely, in many places since WW2, including alongside US-forces in Iraq, AfPak...