Losing the Moral Highground- Reprise 2

Great Debates
21

As always, it really, really helps to know what one is talking about.

pjen, ever hear of Sammy “the Bull” Gravano?
He is a famous American Mafia turncoat, best know for being the man whose testimony brought down John “The Teflon Don” Gotti, who was Boss of the New York Mafia through the 80s and 90s.

Why do I bring up Mr. Gravano? Simple. Mr. Gravano testified as the result of a plea bargain. In return for reduced charges and jail time, he agreed to spill the beans on Gotti.

Now, Mr. Gravano, in his lifetime, killed 19 people. Under the terms of the plea bargain, he wasn’t charged for most of these murders, and indeed was given immunity from prosecution. But he still, in fact, killed those 19 people.
How do we know? He wrote a book about it.

Now, the FBI knew about these murders (or at least most of them). It was decided that getting Gotti was more important than getting Gravano, so charges concerning a mess of other crimes were dropped.

Like in Gravano’s case, the dropping of charges against Lindh says absolutely nothing about whether or not the government would have been able to prove those charges had they gone to trial. It just meant that they considered Lindh’s cooperation more important than sending him to jail for the rest of his life.

BTW, “innocent until proven guilty” is a legal concept. It simply means that the government bears the burden of proof in a criminal court case, and no punishment may be imposed prior to a finding or plea of guilt. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether the defendant actually committed the crime in question.

Bricker’s description was precisely correct. Just ask O.J.

Sua

22

Sua, The Gravano plea bargain seems to have little relevance here, unless you are willing to state that the only reason a plea bargain is ever offered by the prosecution is to gain the cooperation and/or testimony of the defendant. How do you know that the government’s confidence in their case, or lack thereof, played no part in their decision in how to handle the remaining charges?

23

I think we can see easily that the bulk of the charges against JWL boiled down to being a member of the Taliban and fighting with the Taliban against US led forces. What exactly that would mean or exactly what criminal statues that would violate, and exactly what could be proven would remain up to the courts to decide.

But I don’t see how copping a plea that lands you 20 years in prison is exactly getting off scot free. He plead guilty to serious crimes, and is going to server serious, serious time for them.

But of course, the main thing he agreed to do is cooperate with the CIA, FBI, and whatever other alphabet organizations there are. Although he was a low level grunt, I’m sure they can pry some useful intelligence out of him. Before he plead guilty he had no incentive to cooperate. Now that he is immunized against the other charges, he can sing his silly little head off.

But I still don’t see how 20 years is an exoneration. Maybe Pjen can explain.

24

You can take your fingers out of your ears and stop repeating “nah nah nah nah” now.

It is pretty clear to anyone that the justice department has a lot better things to do than deal with Lindh. Lets look at this honestly. When Lindh was first captured there was nobody else to hold up to the american public as the responsible party. For purely political reasons the prosecution overcharged this guy to make an example out of him.

It turns out that this kid, well, did exactly what he pled to. He was in the Taliban (not Al Qaida) and carried some standard issue weapons. He was a standard foot soldier and nothing more. When he learned that Al Qaida was probably responsible (don’t forget, a non-trivial portion of the muslim world thought Sept. 11 was a covert plot by the CIA), he continued to fight for the Taliban for a couple of weeks, until he finally surrendered.

Nobody thinks Lindh has any real information. Nobody thinks Lindh had any part in Sept. 11. Nobody thinks he did anything but fight in another country’s civil war that eventually involved the U.S.

This is not a great test case. If Lindh were the one to challenge Ashcroft’s various curtailments of civil liberties, the results might not have been good for the Justice Department.

So the prosecution cut a deal that lets them redirect their efforts elsewhere, and use actual “wrongdoers” as test cases. Lindh, for his part, doesn’t have to gamble his life on a Virginia Jury that is under a constant alert and which felt Sept. 11 first-hand.

25

You misunderstand. The relevance of Gravano is that plea bargains in which more serious charges are dropped is absolutely no indication of whether or not the plea barganing individual actually committed the more serious charges.

Pjen’s error is his assumption that because the charges of treason, conspiracy, etc., were dropped in the plea bargain, Lindh did not commit those crimes.

It may very well be true that Lindh did not commit those crimes. But the plea bargain is in no way, shape or form evidence that Lindh didn’t commit those crimes. Indeed, it is irrelevant to the question.

IOW, what Bricker wrote.

Sua

26

Sua, I agree with you that the government’s decision to drop the remaining charges does not exonerate Lindh in any way. All I am saying is just because the government offered Gravano a deal to gain information from him, it does not necessarily follow that they offered Lindh a deal for only that reason. I merely assert that the government may have offered a deal in part because they were unsure of their ability to get a conviction on the remaining charges.

27

notcynical, that is, undoubtably, a possible explanation for the plea bargain. Quite frankly, this interpretation has a whole lot of merit.

But note why I agree with you. You say “may;” Pjen leaped to a conclusion without evidence.

Sua

28

Hey, at least I left out the part about a tale told by a you-know-what.

29

Sua: “Pjen’s error is his assumption that because the charges of treason, conspiracy, etc., were dropped in the plea bargain, Lindh did not commit those crimes.”

On the contrary, I think it is you, Sua, who are misinterpreting Pjen on this matter.

Pjen’s own words:

*" To reinforce, so far the only crime proved against any Taliban/Al Qaida detainee is fighting with a foreign army! And that was only a crime because Lindh was an American Citizen."

“Declining to press charges equals legally Not Guilty (Innocent until PROVEN guilty.)”*

[bolding added]

Note the inclusion of “legally” in the above, denoting precisely the “legal concept” of innocence about which Sua–incorrectly–assumes, in one of his inimitable replies, requires his pontification.

And here, just in case it wasn’t already very clear, Pjen writes:

" [T]he State has not found them guilty, and therefore legally the State has to accept that they are Innocent of those charges as the have not been proven guilty"

I do not see how any of these statements amounts to “Lindh did not commit those crimes,” a point that doesn’t seem to interest Pjen.

Lemur and Pencil Pusher are, by contrast, more interested in the question of what Lindh may have done. Pjen seems quite specifically, and quite passionately interested in what Lindh has been found guilty of in a court of law. I suspect that’s because his ultimate concern is that Lindh but the detainees.

As Bryan might say, a tale told by a–er–walking shadow. :wink:

30

So either

he is guilty but small potatos and not worth the trial, or

he is guilty but the State is unwilling to bet that they can prove it and would rather not risk the bad face of a not guilty verdict as opposed to the twenty years be done with it, or

he is guilty and has information worth letting him off with “only” twenty years, or even

he is only guilty of what he pled to, innocent of other charges, and the State knew it and were happy to save face with getting him twenty years.

Any are possible (I lean to the first two … a sure twenty years leaves little enough additional to be gained by the expense and risk of losing at trial) but I fail to see what any have to do with “the moral high ground”.

Or with the seperate issue of the legal staus of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Have I missed something obvious?

31

Decent try, Mandelstam - but I think the fallacy of Pjen arguing that a plea agreement constitutes proof of government malfeasance is what’s struck most respondents here.

A question for you: once you’ve read all of Pjen’s Moral Highground (sic) threads on the detainees*, can you conclude that rants filled with such distortions and unretracted misstatements truly can have a positive effect? Or, in their ludicrousness, are they far more likely to turn off people potentially interested in the legal issues at hand, and give comfort to those who call on us to accept all U.S. anti-terrorism measures without question?

*I’m beginning to suspect that the motto on Pjen’s family crest is Ad Nauseum. :stuck_out_tongue:

32

What Mandalstam said

and

It is my contention that a great deal of the political bluster by Bush, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld will eventually be shown to be lacking any real backing- much of what they have said has been said for immediate political effect.

My posting at this time is just to remind people that what was said about Lindh before May 2002 has not been borne out in the subsequent trial. My prediction is that it will be similarly difficult to obtain more than a few sustainable ‘convictions’ of the inmates of Guantanamo.

History will out, and I see this phase as similar to McCarthyism of the fifties and the Japanese Internment of the forties. In the cold light of day, I believe that my take on these issues- that the US circumvented international law and probably its own constitution in dealing with this matter- will be the accepted view.

These actions were probably almost justifiable in their own terms according to the Moral Panic over terrorism currently affecting the USA (but not most of the rest of the world), but with hindsight it will be seen as political over-reaction as with McCarthyism and Internment.

33

Card-carrying member of the reactionary left just checking in to say… like, duh.

(I certainly prefer being reactionary than unreactionary; the latter implies rigor mortis)

I think even the most rabidly patriotic will stop foaming at the mouth soon and smell the stinkin’ java. America has a certain enduring way of waking up slowly; we get things, even though it may take a century or two, or at least a presidental term.

Lindh was an easy meal in a time when the hunters didn’t have anything meatier to drag back to camp. He’s outlived his PR usefulness already.

34

I understood that Lindh was bearing arms against the US. Which he has admitted. I understood that he was fighting on behalf of the Taliban at a time when we were at war with them. Which he has admitted. I understood that he had betrayed his country. Which he has admitted.

Lindh pleads guilty, which you interpret as a sign of innocence, and that all the charges against him were just trumped up by Ashcroft and Bush as publicity stunts. If you can do that, you can prove alien abductions as well.

And mine is that all of the ones found guilty, you will say are innocent.

You just keep telling yourself that. Maybe eventually it will come true.

RIght after the monkeys fly out of my ass.

I like this - “almost justifiable”. Not justifiable now, no matter what. And after a few months or years during which the revisionist historians can work, it will become yet another example of how the US is wrong, always, everywhere, under any circumstance, and no matter what.

What minty green said in the second post to this thread.

Regards,
Shodan

35

Pontificate? My son, I do not pontificate. I think Terseus of Thrace said it best, “To correct your lessers is not arrogance; it is charity.” [smilie implied]
In any event, Pjen did write what you quoted, but, as his next blurb proves, has no idea what it means. (BTW, if you want to be hypertechnical, the government didn’t “prove” jack shit. They only legally proved it - Lindh confessed. The government presented no evidence to prove their contentions.)

No, the State doesn’t have to accept that Lindh is Innocent of anything. The State simply just can’t throw Lindh in jail for those crimes.
George Bush could walk up to a microphone tomorrow and say, “Lindh committed all the crimes of which he was originally charged.” If Lindh tried to sue him for slander, the dropping of the charges has no effect on whether he would win - Bush could still use the truth as an affirmative defense.

Pjen’s entire point is that, because the government dropped some charges as part of a plea bargain agreement, the government was wrong to charge Lindh with those crimes in the first place. His entire “evidence” is that the charges were dropped as part of a plea bargain. That evidence does not support Pjen’s assertion.

Sua

36

Shodan, for all your boredom I think you’re still missing Pjen’s point. He isn’t say that Lindh, as US citizen, shouldn’t have been found guilty of fighting for the enemy; he’s saying that the he wasn’t found guilty of anything else. From that he’s extrapolating (rightly or wrongly) that the Taliban detainees won’t be found guilty of anything else and, for them, fighting for the enemy isn’t a crime.

What you don’t seem to realize–or perhaps what you just don’t care about–is that the detention of the Taliban detainees is itself controversial. The best explanation of why, though, is offered in the Human Rights Watch link I posted.

**Jackmannii **, long time no see!

“Decent try, Mandelstam - but I think the fallacy of Pjen arguing that a plea agreement constitutes proof of government malfeasance is what’s struck most respondents here.”

Actually, I don’t think Pjen is saying that a plea agreement constitutes proof No, the State doesn’t have to accept that Lindh is Innocent of anything. The State simply just can’t throw Lindh in jail for those crimes.
George Bush could walk up to a microphone tomorrow and say, “Lindh committed all the crimes of which he was originally charged.” If Lindh tried to sue him for slander, the dropping of the charges has no effect on whether he would win - Bush could still use the truth as an affirmative defense. of government malfeasance. I think the Taliban detainees is the malfeasance issue; with the charges made but not proved against Lindh serving as an example of what Pjen sees as the government’s hysteria.

Personally, I don’t want to comment one way or another the latter issue since I haven’t even read Pjen’s link yet; and I don’t want to get started on the subject of Ashcroft (who I do find a genuinely scary figure as AG).

As to the former, as I said above, there has been a lot of global criticism levelled at the American government for the detention. I’m still not familiar with the nuances of the government’s counterargument, so I don’t want to offer an opinion. I repeat, though, that the Human Rights Watch statement seems reasonable.

"A question for you: once you’ve read all of Pjen’s Moral Highground (sic) threads on the detainees, can you conclude that rants filled with such distortions and unretracted misstatements truly can have a positive effect? Or, in their ludicrousness, are they far more likely to turn off people potentially interested in the legal issues at hand, and give comfort to those who call on us to accept all U.S. anti-terrorism measures without question?"*

Well this is my first Pjen thread, so I can’t experience any feelings of “ad nauseum” or, “yawn”.

I don’t think the moral highground argument is very strong for the simple reason that there are so many instances of lost moral high ground; and the US is not the only country that regularly loses the moral high ground.

To me the disgrace for the US right now isn’t so much this or that act of dubious morality: it’s the whole unilateralist position. The Kyoto position, the unsigning of treaties and, latest and most disturbing of all, the new Bush doctrine of preemptive action which is pretty much unprecedented.

Check out this fascinating article on the subject, written by an international relations expert (who, I should stress, was not opposed to a post-9/11 war in Afghanistan).

As to the value of threads. Well, I think this is a personal issue. In my view if someone is distorting the facts than you offer a corrected view that is itself free of distortion. If, in response to distortion of some kind, you go to the other extreme, then–in my view–it becomes pointless. We might as well got the Pit.

pld, I checked out your link and, quite honestly, I’m not sure what you want me to say–other than there are lots of conspiracy theorists on the web. I don’t particularly see a leftwing position there; radical or otherwise. The reiterated theme of “government-must-be-screwing-you-coz-that’s-all-it-can-do” sounds more libertarian than left to me. Lefties tend to support the idea of government, even if, in doing that, they criticize a present government. I suppose anarchists would be the exception but I didn’t notice that your linked site was identifiably anarchist.

In any case, the idea of using such a nutter’s website to offer substantive proof of irreponsible radicalism on the left sort of stymies me.

If you’d find something on, say, Z-magazine’s website that was irresponsible, I’d be duly instructed. As it is, you’ve just found one of the world’s many loonies, and a rather politically incoherent one at that.

Ah, I see Sua on preview:

“No, the State doesn’t have to accept that Lindh is Innocent of anything. The State simply just can’t throw Lindh in jail for those crimes.”

I think that is exactly what Pjen’s point is though–I’ve yet to see him make any larger one, especially given his reiteration in the excerpts I re-posted.

"“George Bush could walk up to a microphone tomorrow and say, “Lindh committed all the crimes of which he was originally charged.” If Lindh tried to sue him for slander, the dropping of the charges has no effect on whether he would win - Bush could still use the truth as an affirmative defense.”

But that wasn’t Pjen’s point as I undertand it. By “the State” he meant, I think, precisely the State in its institutional embodiment of the only legitimate means of trial and punishment. In that sense, the State did in fact not prove Lindh gulity of any other crime.

We are not talking about a hypothetical libel case here, however interesting that point may be.

I don’t actually agree with your characterization of what Pjen’s entire point was. See my comments to Shodan. Pjen will, perhaps, clarify for us.

Btw: are you calling me “My son”?

37

Heavens to Betsy, politicians using bluster without backing for immediate political effect? I think I’m getting the vapours.

That’s the kind of factoid one learns in the first five minutes of the first class of a third-rate community college course of Political Science 101. Using it as a source of moral outrage is like complaining that the squirrels are conspiring against you (maybe they are, I dont know you that well).

The federal prosecutors who negotiated with Lindh didn’t believe he was innocent, but they may have been thinking Jeez, if this froot loop insists on going to trial, it’ll take a few months or years out of my career. Better to let him plead quickly to the charges that are dead certain rather than waste time arguing the solid but difficult-to-legally-prove charges before a jury. If a prosecutor had unlimited time and resources at his command, of course he would bring every case to trial. The fact that prosecutors are mere mortals should not stand as evidence of corruption. Besides, a federal district judge (T.S. Ellis) had to approve the plea agreement. What’s his incentive to screw Lindh?

38

Oh dear, due to an editing glitch part of Sua’s post ended up stuck into the middle of my reply to Jack. Here’s just that portion of my own post, re-posted.

Jackmannii , long time no see!

“Decent try, Mandelstam - but I think the fallacy of Pjen arguing that a plea agreement constitutes proof of government malfeasance is what’s struck most respondents here.”

Actually, I don’t think Pjen is saying that a plea agreement constitutes proof of government malfeasance; I think the Taliban detainees is the malfeasance issue; with the charges made but not proved against Lindh serving as an example of what Pjen sees as the government’s hysteria.

Personally, I don’t want to comment one way or another the latter issue since I haven’t even read Pjen’s link yet; and I don’t want to get started on the subject of Ashcroft (who I do find a genuinely scary figure as AG).

As to the former, as I said above, there has been a lot of global criticism levelled at the American government for the detention. I’m still not familiar with the nuances of the government’s counterargument, so I don’t want to offer an opinion. I repeat, though, that the Human Rights Watch statement seems reasonable.

39

Nobody is “…innocent until proven guilty.” This a classic misconception through lousy editing. Defendants are “presumed” innocent until proven guilty. Courts have nothing to do with any reality that cannot be proven with evidence.

Courts of law only presume someone is innocent. So another way of stating this might be:

You may well be guilty as hell but we will presume you innocent until you are proven guilty, if ever.

Therefore a plea deal is in no way any kind of admission that the charges which were dropped are not true. Rather, it is an admission that the government did not feel like trying to prove them.

40

Pjen’s point is that:

He assumes that because certain charges were dropped that those charges were merely “hysterical accusations.” He has no evidence of that, and his assumption that that is true displays an ignorance of plea bargaining in the American criminal justice system. That’s all I’m trying to say.

[QUOTEBtw: are you calling me “My son”?[/QUOTE]

Isn’t that the appropriate way for Pontiffs to address others? :smiley:

Sua