Posted on 12/06/2005 12:40:23 PM PST by Halfmanhalfamazing
There it is. Turn on the news it should be on right about now. His co-conspirators too.
Want to bet he sues O'Reilly?
these replies about "I am from California/Florida, and I am not like that" are all well and good, but they don't mean much. no one is classifying ALL persons in these states as idiots. But we have to face facts here, 12 residents of the state of Florida assembled on a jury acquitted a leader of Islamic Jihad in the US for god's sake - not ONE stood firm to at least hang it. there has to be something about that demographic pool of citizens there that is frightening for this to happen.
As others have noted, this shows the folly of trying to wage war through the court system.
War is the circumstance that exists when normal civil law is insufficient to contain a conflict. If courts and judges and police and subpoenas and juries are sufficient, you are not yet at war.
But when the situation has gone beyond normal rule-of-law, you are in a state of war. Once you recognize this, you don't serve papers on anyone, you don't send lawyers, you gather up some stout men and you go and deal with the threat, aggressively. You destroy whatever force is arrayed against you, you destroy whatever forces have lent them support and made it possible for them to function, you re-shape the facts on the ground, re-draw borders, knock over governments, whatever it takes, until an acceptable "new" status quo becomes possible.
Then you return to "rule of law" and your stout men go back to their farms and families.
It is very important to declare war. This is not for the purpose of informing your enemy that you are at war with him, he already knows he is at war with you. This is instead necessary to put your own people on notice that for the time being, until a defined threat has been put down, you are in a state of emergency, and you are going to do whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. Your actions will be limited not by normal civil law, but will be designed to meet the needs of the emergency, limited only by moral and practical constraints.
When you see the austere, sterile, brutal architecture of Wahhabism jutting out from the Florida peninsula and don't bat an eye, when you send your children to universities where they are indoctrinated by Arab jihadists masquerading as academics without a moment's hesitation, when you not only accept but condone the equation of Islam with Judaism and Christianity in this Judeo-Christian nation, then you know that the war has arrived on the domestic front.
People need to wake up and smell the Semtex.
we had a declaration of war in place to facilitate that.
this military tribunal issue is worthy of debate, I generally agree with you. but that aside, something happened in this case that is very troubling. if the jury pool on which the justice system relies is so polluted, has been so dumbed down by media coverage on terrorism issues, demonizing the US, the military and the CIA are all "torturers", etc - we are in serious trouble.
I like that post, it contained wise words.
W declared WAR.
Congress, yet again, is the force that is holding us down.
Maybe the best thing to do is to have an update to war powers act that reflects the reality of the world we live in today. A formal declaration of war from Congress is very far reaching. I would offer that rather than address this, Congress shifts the responsibility for this onto the office of the President.
I Think we need something more in the middle of a full congressional declaration and the simple authority of the CIC with a check and balance of Congressional funding for ongoign operations.
I agree many in this country forget that we are at war. Sad as it is, that is the reality of today.
do you realize how many mobsters have been put away for those crimes?
This reminds me of the verdict acquitting that jihadi "student" in Idaho, who led the MSA at his university and was a member of CAIR.
As far as I know these two cases are the only instances where a major anti-terrorism verdict has gone completely against the government.
One of the reasons is undoubtedly because of the sheer incompetence of our immigration and intelligence gathering systems, which are flaws that have been vividly illustrated by John Loftus, Rita Katz, Steven Emerson, among other dogged investigators.
In general, I agree that this jury fell down on the job.
This ranks right up there with the Crown Heights acquital of Limerick Nelson in terms of outright stupidity, though on a much larger scale.
I think ten years would be overly optimistic.Start saving now to buy foreign real estate would be my advice
I agree with others on this thread - the jury essentially put the US on trial here, not Al Arian. this constant barrage of anti Bush, anti US military, anti Patriot Act, "torture", Abu Ghraib, etc - has an effect on a populace who are ill informed to say the best, and idiots to say the worst. when filtered through a jury selection process, you get 12 of the dimmest bulbs assembled, and we a result like this.
wasn't the killer of Meyer Khane acquitted?
of course not. only the socialist ones.
I'm also concerned that some jurors may have been reluctant to convict out of fear of retaliation by associates of the defendant. Another reason why it's difficult to fight the WOT in the courtroom.
why do they routinely convict organized crime members then?
Before launching into incessant handwringing, might it be wise to first find out which way the jury was leaning? The articles suggest that there was just 1 holdout. Huge difference between 11-1 to convict and 11-1 to acquit on the 9 charges, and right now we don't know which was the case.
The process has been successfully subverted far too many times to simply blame this latest failing on a jury.
It's systemic.
Justice being meted from the courts should now be viewed as an anomaly rather than the normal course of events.
leaning on what? he was acquitted, are you suggesting there were 11 people for conviction, and the one holdout for acquittal convinced them all to flip?
I don't think it's Florida per se, but the jury selection process itself.
It's become so manipulated...well, let's just say a jury's not what it used to be.
My husband recently was called for jury duty and after watching them spend the day eliminating one person after another, and getting eliminated himself, he said that he was sorry to admit it but the ones that were not eliminated seemed like the least competent to be on a jury.
I'm sure that's not the case in every trial, but lawyers have learned to manipulate the jury selection process.
Just MHO.
Yes, he was acquitted of murder, but convicted of a lesser gun charge.
Bin Laden bankrolled Kahane killer defense
By GREG B. SMITH
Osama Bin Laden helped pay for the legal defense of the man who shot militant Jewish leader Meir Kahane in a midtown hotel in 1990, officials revealed yesterday. The FBI had never heard of Bin Laden at the time, and the New York police were saying Kahane's killing by El Sayed A Nosair was the work of a lone gunman with no affiliation to terrorist groups.
The revelation surfaced in a report by Eleanor Hill, director of the Senate Intelligence Committee that's investigating pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures by government agencies.
Nosair gunned down Kahane after a speech in a midtown Manhattan hotel in November 1990. Nosair was first charged in state court and went on trial in early 1991 in Manhattan Supreme Court.
During that trial, the FBI learned that one of his relatives "traveled to Saudi Arabia to obtain money to pay for Nosair's defense," Hill wrote.
"He received funds from a wealthy Saudi - Usama Bin Ladin [sic]," Hill wrote.
At the time, an FBI agent handling the Nosair case told the Senate investigators, "this was the first time the FBI's New York office heard Bin Ladin's name."
Acquitted, then convicted
Nosair was acquitted in the Kahane murder but convicted of a gun charge. He was found guilty of the murder in federal court.
One of Nosair's lawyers in the 1991 state case, Ronald Kuby, recalled yesterday that a cousin of Nosair's paid for some of the legal expenses with money he said was raised by "family and friends."
"We never got any checks signed Osama Bin Laden," Kuby said yesterday. "We just barely got paid. We barely covered expenses."
http://www.nydailynews.com/10-09-2002/news/wn_report/story/25583p-24195c.html
had Al Arian been some low level "Sopranos" type with a vowel at the end of his name and some basic RICO evidence against him - he would have gone down. it happens every day.
no, in this one, the jury put the US on trial, not Al Arian.
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