A plea deal might be a good solution to get answers quickly. If the kid talks freely perhaps offer 40 years in a Federal Prison? If he’s really got some important information sweeten the deal by offering a regular Fed Prison. Not a Supermax. Going to trial he’d be facing the death sentence under Federal charges.
There’s no parole in the Fed system. So he’d definitely serve every day of those 40 years. Unless he died in prison first.
I have a lot of contempt for this guy. But, they need to find out his radical contacts in Boston. Any contacts or training they got in Russia etc.
Um, I dont think thats going to be politically possible. It is well within the realm of options that they have, but I think more people are going to be swinging with the “this is how we do it the right way” mindset.
No. Unless you can show examples from other western liberal democracies where injured suspects in serious cases were denied medical care.
Actually, in pretty much any other western liberal democracy, the accused would already have the right to medial care under universal health care plans.
Do you think he’s going to be paying for his care? I think he’s going to be living the rest of his life on the taxpayer’s dime. Not that I’m opposed to it. It would be fine with me if he spent the next 99 years in prison.
Northern Piper’s point was that if this had happened just about anywhere else the suspect would also be provided with medical care.
When opossum says this shows “the world we are different” he is mistaken.
Frankly I’m tired of some US citizens thinking they have a hold on freedoms or democracy. Travel a bit. You’ll be surprised to learn that freedom also exists elsewhere.
[QUOTE=Leaffan] Northern Piper’s point was that if this had happened just about anywhere else the suspect would also be provided with medical care.
When opossum says this shows “the world we are different” he is mistaken.
[/QUOTE]
That’s right; that’s the point I was trying to make. Follows up on my earlier post, at 1180 of this thread, responding to a similar “we’re different” post from Danja:
How is that different?
That’s exactly what Norway did with their home-grown terrorist. So did Canada (FLQ). So did Italy (Red Brigades). So did Germany (Bader-Meinhof Gang). So did France and Spain (Basque terrorists). So did the UK (IRA). All of them tried the people charged with terrorisim in the civil courts, under the standard rules of criminal law in each country.
[/QUOTE]
Well, call it a chance to show that we’re different than we were a few years ago, when suspected terrorists weren’t tried in fancy courts with due process?
If you want your jaw to hit the floor, Google “clueforums boston”. I’ve seen some lunatic conspiracy shit in my time, but those guys take the biscuit.
Not that they limit themselves to Boston, 9/11 etc. They seem to have decided that not only was every major news story of the past decade fabricated, but even satellites are a myth, because… er Illuminati.
I found it very hard to stop reading, but in the end I had to for the sake of my sanity. There are some very unwell people out there.
I’d like to have on record that I was tired after a long day at work when I submitted my post; I was searching for something like "show the (terrorist/despotic/3rd/rights-less/etc) world that we’re different, but none of those seemed sufficiently eloquent so I mistakenly left it as simply “world”. In retrospect that was a stupid choice of words; I’ve traveled to many different countries and most of the ones I’ve been to had a legal system that I trusted equally as that in the US. Additionally, the attitude of American exceptionalism usually gets an eye roll from me when I hear it voiced, so I should have caught myself using it.
That said, we are among the nations that pride themselves upon (on?) having a firm legal code that respects citizen’s rights. I stand by my original statement in that regard.
One Saudi national was questioned as a witness; another was detained and deported over visa issues completely unrelated to the bombing. Certain news sources (whose owner’s name rhymes with Burdock) got the two Saudis mixed up.
I’ve read in various news articles (example) that the Feds could charge the bomber with “use of a weapon of mass destruction to kill people”, which carries a possible death sentence.
This has me scratching my head. Of course the bombing was horrific and caused multiple casualties, but AFAIK that != weapon of mass destruction. Aren’t WMDs by definition either nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons? For example, when the US invaded Iraq and justified it by saying Iraq had WMDs, I’m pretty sure they would have been internationally scorned if they even attempted to say that low yield conventional explosives and IEDs are WMDs.
If they actually charge the bomber with using a WMD, then I think the term has lost all meaning and is useless.
This is a compound rumor. It starts with the President meeting with the Saudis in an unannounced meeting this week which was billed as a discussion of Syria. Then security analyst Steve Emerson (on Hannity) says a Saudi National was deported during the search for the terrorists. When questioned by a Congressman about it Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said: “I am unaware of anyone who is being deported for national security concerns at all related to Boston. I don’t know where that rumor came from,”. She then said: ““Like I said, again I don’t even think he was technically a person of interest or a suspect, that was a wash.” So it’s a bit cryptic. It sounds like someone got deported but it wasn’t a person of interest connected to the bombing. According to Emerson the Saudis don’t like publicity over deportations.
(2) the term “weapon of mass destruction” means—
(A) any destructive device as defined in section 921 of this title;
(B) any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals, or their precursors;
(C) any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector (as those terms are defined in section 178 of this title); or
(D) any weapon that is designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life; and
(3) the term “property” includes all real and personal property.
(4) The term “destructive device” means—
(A) any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas—
(i) bomb,
(ii) grenade,
(iii) rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces,
(iv) missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce,
(v) mine, or
(vi) device similar to any of the devices described in the preceding clauses;
there’s more to Section 921 but that’s the core of it.
It used to be that WMD was pretty much just used for nuclear weapons. Then it evolved to include biological and chemical weapons, but I thought that made sense due to their nature (large scale, indiscriminate, not conventional weapons).
I guess that’s the law and they can define words however they want to, but that just seems absurd to me. Any bomb or grenade is a WMD? Does this apply to everyone (including the US military), or only for their enemies? I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard anyone describe the US military actions in Iraq or Afghanistan as constantly using WMDs in their day to day operations.
Hmmm… upon Googling it looks like there’s a double standard for the military vs. terrorists as to what constitutes a WMD. According to Wikipedia, the US military defines WMDs as
Note that this is only chemical/biological/nuclear weapons.
However, the US criminal law concerning terrorism defines WMDs differently than the US military does for itself:
[quote]
For the purposes of US Criminal law concerning terrorism, weapons of mass destruction are defined as:[ul][li]any destructive device defined as any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas bomb, grenade, rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces, missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce, mine, or device similar to any of the devices described in the preceding clauses[/li][li]any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals, or their precursors[/li][li]any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector[/li][li]any weapon that is designed to release radiation or radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life[/ul][/li][/quote]
I’m not sure why there’s a different definition for WMDs when it comes to the US military or international WMD proliferation, compared to individuals and terrorists. I guess it makes it easier to charge them with something more serious, but it just seems wrong to me.
Personally, I thought the older term “NBC” (“Nuclear/Biological/Chemical”) was better than “WMD”. However the powers-that-be didn’t seem to think that it sounded scary enough.
