Why do you think Dubya has been so busy slumping for Jeb in Florida lately? He’s gotta keep an inside man if and when there’s another election to hijack…
I missed this, but as a point of fact, the Barbary pirates were based in two states with diplomatic representation, the largely autonomous Ottoman Beys of what are now modern Tunisia and Algeria and the Sultanate of Morocco.
Hmm, I see actually a link was provided by someone else. Reading that over I can share the obs that it’s not a terribly good work of history.
Aside from the rather hysterical tone (the piracy issue was something of a long-standing war by proxy between the Ottomans and the European powers for control of trade in the Med Basin, each side engaged in piracy against the other) it’s not terribly good scholarship either (terminology errors, calling the Ottoman Sultan the Sultan of Turkey, a state which would not exist for more than 200 years etc).
That aside, it does make the point, unintentionally evidently, that the Barbary pirates (who BTW by this period were often Euro renegades having ‘converted’) are not terribly analogous to al-Qaeda.
What if, for the sake of argument, they’re putting him in some terrorist version of the Federal Witness Protection Program? I’m not claiming that’s what they’ve done – I highly doubt it, and I’d much rather just see the appropriate charges made and presented to a Federal grand jury.
But what if that *is what they’re doing with some of these guys? From our perspective, nothing would look any different, and the government would gain valuable information without playing their hand.
In those cases, do they often hold press conferences announcing that they’ve got so and so and he’s done such & such and, we’re going to do, well, we haven’t yet decided what we’re going to do w/him, but by golly, it’ll be something?
what frightens me most is the sort of thing I heard on the local radio neanderthal “good riddence, so what, they aughta not even try him but put him at ground zero and let the victims/survivors stone him to death”
Damn those slopes are slippery.
pld, I think there’s numerous other, better ways to handle your scenario. Easiest way is to publicly release the witness, then quietly pick him up shortly thereafter and put him into the WPP.
Or they could allow all the material witnesses access to counsel, then allow counsel access to the discussions about putting a given witness in the WPP. (If they’re worried about counsel being an Al Queda plant, I’m sure that some of the heavy-hitter law firms would provide pro bono counsel to selected witnesses. An eon ago, I was a paralegal for Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, and they used to do stuff like that all the time.) Then, under the guise of moving the witness between prisons, put him in the WPP. Counsel vouches that he’s still in touch with the witness, keeping the civil libertarians happy, and everything’s fine.
I can think of others, but you get the idea. Anyhow, hiding treatment of literally hundreds of witnesses who have either committed no crime, or are guilty of the most trivial (before 9/11, at least) immigration violations, as a means of concealing the transfer of a handful of them into the WPP, is IMHO almost as bad as doing it for no reason at all.
What RTF said, plus — uh, why would Ashcroft announce the arrest and detention of a cooperative suspect he intends to quietly put in a WPP? Wouldn’t it be better security to make no announcement?
or, for example, what I posted above him??? hmm???
Why do you hate America so much?
It’s times like this that I’m reminded of my finest rant.
(The full 5-page thread is archived at Boardreader and thank goodness for that.)
I do love the theatre…
gobear, Baldwin, rsa, Slacker, etc – I love and appreciate you guys. Seriously.
However, are you aware that out in world beyond SDMB (yes, there is another world out there), your position is widely regarded as bizarre? I know that you’re Serious and Concerned, but 80% - 90% of Americans would see your position as somewhere between ignorant and treasonous.
Anyhow, you’re safe here. I won’t give your secrets away. ;j
Should I even bother asking you, december for some sort of proof that 80 to 90 percent of Americans think that holding an American citizen, without benefit of counsel, without being informed of the charges against him, without any charges being brought against him, for over a month, in military custody is perfectly OK? I really really doubt that they do.
And if this those are the kind of people you hang out with, well…I guess I feel bad for you. And a little afraid that you would count them among your friends.
Pastor Niemoller First they came for the Communists …
Our Constitution is supposed to serve all of our citizens, even the worst. For anyone, let alone our Attorney fucking General, to proudly announce that they’ve arrested a citizen, while on US soil, but have plans to suspend his civil rights, just ‘trust me’, 'cause I know he’s a bad guy, no, we don’t plan on having a trial, and for people to support this in mind blowingly scarey.
Pastor Niemoller First they came for the Communists …
Our Constitution is supposed to serve all of our citizens, even the worst. For anyone, let alone our Attorney fucking General, to proudly announce that they’ve arrested a citizen, while on US soil, but have plans to suspend his civil rights, just ‘trust me’, 'cause I know he’s a bad guy, no, we don’t plan on having a trial, and for people to support this in mind blowingly scarey.
It’s treason to question the treatment of citizens in a way that appears to violate the rights they are entitled to as citizens?
Is it somehow disasterous to give the man the same fair trial that you, as a US citizen, would expect for a transgression?
I used to think, ages ago, that people were mighty hard on the twelfth month.
Treason. Jesus wept.
Out of curiosity, regarding Ashcroft’s quote:
Does anyone know what Supreme Court case(s) he is referring to? The linked article doesn’t say, and I didn’t notice anything that did in an admittedly cursory glance around CNN’s site. And I didn’t notice anything in the Republican party brief about it either.
I have a feeling that what SCOTUS ruled was that American citizens who are apprehended, by the US military, while they are fighting as uniformed members of a foreign army, can be held as POWs without a trial, just as foreign soldiers can be. (Maybe some American citizens voluntarily fought on the side of Great Britain during the War of 1812?) At least that would make sense, but I’d like to know if my guess is even close to reality. I wouldn’t have a problem in principle with Americans being held as POWs in such a case, though, as always, the devil is in the details. Still, from my perspective, that scenerio seems to be pretty far from Abdullah Al Muhajir’s situation.
december has a point, sort of.
I’m sure the vast majority of Americans do, in fact, agree with the sentiments as expressed. Don’t make it right, mind you.
And therein lies the greater threat: when they start beating the drums, the brains go out the window.
How many here remember the desperate days of Operation Urgent Fury, America’s bold incursion to rout the Cuban bulldozer commandos from Grenada? The “liberal media” tiptoed about like 50’s style pansies in tutus.
On this very board, this very sanctuary of reason and calm, otherwise sane posters were slavering like wolves to see John Lindh drawn, quartered, emasculated, skinned stoned and then punished.
Why else do we have rules, if not to restrain ourselves in emotional times? Of what value are they if they are to be suspended at the whim of any given administration?
True, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Neither is it a set of malleable guidelines. At least, not to this patriot.
Very good point, elucidator.
I’d only add that december’s figure of 80-90% is fairly inflated. I’m sure you can find plenty of people who think that this is just fine if it’s in the name of safeguarding the nation. I’m sure you can find just as many who are as scared about it as I am.
THE WRING woMAN ALWAYS POSTS TWICE.
Yea, yea.
47 other times when I got a ‘page not found message’ the post didn’t go through (but I’d copied it, refreshed the page and posted it again), and the one time, the one time I hit ‘back’ and then ‘post’, it went through.
color my face
(and, thanks for adding the gender - every now and then a new poster comes along and is surprised at my gender. go figure )