Innocent - John Walker Lindh »
Posted By tehranchik 7 months ago in NewsThe first American to get Abu-Ghraibed, long before Americans knew they were capable of such an exotic verb. The first to inspire Donald Rumsfeld to issue the order "Take the gloves off," and the first to be on the order's receiving end. The first to be denied medical treatment, the first photographed naked and bound, the first taunted while blindfolded, the first--certainly the first--to have ****HEAD scrawled on his blindfold, the first whose digital photos made their way round the world as souvenirs, the first denied access to the Red Cross, the first to be ushered into a legal limbo created ex nihilo by the administration's notions of executive power. He served as a test case for an administration eager to see what it could get away with, and what it tried to get away with was, well, this: His father hired him a lawyer as soon as he saw his son on MSNBC. The lawyer immediately wrote to John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and George Tenet and informed them that John Walker Lindh had counsel, and counsel was ready to fly to Afghanistan to meet him. They did not write him back, but John Ashcroft did not believe he was obliged to. He operated on the theory that John Walker Lindh had a lawyer only if he, not his father, hired one, even though at the time John Walker Lindh was blindfolded and duct-taped naked to a stretcher in Afghanistan. He was being held in a shipping container, and he had a bullet in his thigh, and by the time an FBI agent interrogated him, the bullet had been in his thigh for nearly two weeks and the wound was starting to stink. "Of course, there are no lawyers here," the agent told him, and two days after he gave his statement, he was moved to a ship in the Arabian Sea and the bullet was finally extracted.
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tehranchik
Well, I'm from and live in the Pacific Northwest. I did live in the middle east during the late 70's and early 80 ...
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tehranchik7 months ago
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Gung ho rumsfeld.
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Mutainia7 months ago
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You know, if he was JUST given a chance to succeed and NOT raised in squalor. If he was born in the US with priviledge and NOT disenfranchised. If he could have studied the Quran and SEEN Islam was a religion of peace. Well, I don't want to attack Mr. Lindh's religion, because, hey, I don't want to be labeled a racist. :)
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Ciera-Marie7 months ago
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I found this very telling: "A Christian guard--a good, decent man--told me something one day," says Shakeel Syed. "He said, 'Some of us try to provoke him once in a while. We try to make him mad.' Then he said, 'We fail miserably.' " So they are making sport of another's faith while demanding respect for theirs.
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I also thought this was good too: Christianity seeks to remake human nature, and its great ambition is its great fault. It is unambiguous in its prohibition of violence for any purpose, including self-defense, and so it makes hypocrites of its warriors. Islam's great advantage is that it seeks only to govern human nature as it is, and so it doesn't ask its warriors to be confiicted about confiict, as long as confiicts are conducted according to the principles of the Koran.
I also thought this explained why so many Muslims are against suicide bombing: Martyrdom is the goal of every Muslim, but Hamza wrote later in an essay to the court that suicide bombing is against Islam, because the suicide bomber seeks to become a martyr by his own hand, and martyrdom is only God's gift to grant.
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AndyJ2157 months ago
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Republicans continue to try to sweep under the rug issues of torture and other illegal actions under the Bush administration.
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THE GOP IS THE PARTY THAT CLAIMS TO HAVE CHRISTIAN "FAMILY VALUES," but promoted the TORTURE OF PRISONERS, in violation of international law, according to THE INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS.
Conservatives hate to have to admit it, but Obama has already signed an order for the closing Guantanimo and has ended the efforts to move prisoners (known as “rendition”) to places where torture is less likely to be prosecuted.
And many in the GOP are still tring to evade the issue or TORTURE, or downplay, explain and justify it. Some even continue to deny that it ever occurred. Many keep calling it "enhanced interrogation," which is one of the most horrible euphemisms ever created.
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fempatriot7 months ago
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To those who _will_ drag 9/11 into this: The Israeli Mossad was on the ball photographing the destruction of the Twin Towers, dancing with glee. They were arrested and hustled back to Israel. Also, they were about a block down the street from where Atta and some of the others were living--watching them like hawks. So how come they didn't warn our government? Back in the 80s when the US Marine barracks was truck-bombed in Lebanon, the Israeli Mossad knew in advance that the barracks was going to be attacked. Once again they did not inform the US government. Better to let the outrage happen so as to drag the USA into what is really Israel's war against all Muslims.
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