Posted on 05/23/2009 4:05:15 AM PDT by Scanian
PRESIDENT Obama is attacking a red herring when he defends his decision to send the worst terrorists at Guantanamo to United States prisons by saying the likelihood of escape from secure federal facilities is very low.
Of course it is. No rope ladder or prison laundry truck is likely to do the trick.
But when it comes to federal judges, we can't be so sure.
The reason we sent the terrorists to Guantanamo in the first place, rather than bring them onto US soil, was never really connected to worries that they might escape. The Bush administration feared, quite correctly, that if the inmates were in federal prisons on US territory, federal judges would take their pleas for constitutional rights more seriously.
That argument is still true, and bringing the terrorists to the United States puts us at risk that they could be freed by court order.
Some detainees will be tried in US courts on US soil. The first will be tried in New York.
This raises two problems: First, if he is acquitted, where will he be released? Likely, he'll just be invited to walk out the door and onto the streets of New York. Second, is there a danger of terrorist retaliation or attempts to interdict the trial with violence?
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Federal judges are a far more dangerous threat than al-Qaeda. Al Qaeda carries out sporadic acts in order to engender fear, but the fear subsides. Federal judges eat away at the US Constitution every day they are on the bench, like termites hollowing out the frame of a house. You aren’t aware of the damage until it’s too late.
I will actually be very surprised if Khalid Sheik Mohammad is convicted and executed for planning 9/11.
Executed? I would give 50 to 1 odds he isnt executed.
Not unless they can fit him into some womans womb.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2256770/posts
Man in terror trial sentenced to 2.5 years (Released today based on credit for time served)
Could, would, can and will happen here.
And what is wrong with Chicago? I would laugh my A off if Congress had the stones to pass a bill that said that any detainees from Gitmo that relocated to the U.S. had to be sent to a site within 50 miles of Chicago.
There is a terrorist training camp in Red House, Va 191 miles south of Fairfax, VA.
It is also too bad that Bush didn't simply have all of the terrorists executed prior to his leaving office (and maybe leave a standing pardon for any possible crimes that could have come of this)... I know I don't walk in the man's shoes, but I would think if there was a strong certainty that these terrorists could be released in the USA, it would simply be safer for all involved to execute the terrorists and be done with it.
Could, would, can and will happen here.
What is likely to happen is on two fronts:
- Obama says no one has ever escaped from a high-security prison. Probably correct, but the ACLU and lenient federal judges have been more effective at springing criminals than spoons and ladders made from bedsheets.
- Couple this BAD idea with the homegrown terrorist issue and what do you get?
Better call Russia and see if they can offer any insights in how to deal with terrorists who are holding schoolchildren hostage until demands are met, political prisoners are released, and media coverage is guaranteed.
>>>>> As far as I know Fairfax County went for 0bama <<<<<
Forty percent of us did not.
“Something happened... H.R. 1388 was passed yesterday, behind our backs. You may want to read about it. It wasn’t mentioned on the news... just went by on the ticker tape at the bottom of the CNN screen.
Obama funds $20M in tax payer dollars to immigrate Hamas Refugees to the USA . This is the news that didn’t make the headlines...
By executive order, President Barack Obama has ordered the expenditure of $20.3 million in “migration assistance” to the Palestinian refugees and “conflict victims” in Gaza .
The “presidential determination”, which allows hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with ties to Hamas to resettle in the United States, was signed on January 27 and appeared in the Federal Register on February 4. Few took note that the order provides a free ticket replete with housing and food allowances to individuals who have displayed their overwhelming support to the Islamic Resistance Movement.
So... why hasn’t the local militia taken it out?
But what he didn't mention was the fact that the towns around the prisons,the guards, the families of the guards, the children would all be likely targets for sympathizers and fanatics bound to prove their solidarity with the terrorists!
ping
I would laugh my A off if Congress had the stones to pass a bill that said that any detainees from Gitmo that relocated to the U.S. had to be sent to a site within 50 miles of Chicago.That's NOT funny.
But I could live with if they're released withing 1,000 feet of Obama's 'Mansion'. They could even live IN Barry's empty 'Mansion'. Or in Bill Ayers' mansion around the corner.
The crime rates wouldn't even be affected./s
Its funny but Barry's big house is called a 'Mansion'. But Ayers' bigger house, is called, a 'house', not a 'mansion'.
NYC Terror Case Latest of Many Homegrown Plots
Posted: May 22nd, 2009 04:08 PM GMT-05:00
By MICHAEL HILL and JIM FITZGERALD
Associated Press Writers
NEWBURGH, N.Y. —
The four men were ex-convicts who envisioned themselves as holy warriors, ambitious enough to concoct a plot to blow up synagogues and military planes, authorities said. But they were amateurs every step of the way. They had trouble finding guns and bought cameras at Wal-Mart to photograph their targets. One was a convicted purse snatcher, another smoked marijuana the day the plot was to be carried out.
Muslims fueled by hatred of America and Jews, they spent months scouting targets and securing what they thought was a surface-to-air missile system and powerful explosives - all under the watch of an FBI informant.
The four were arrested late Wednesday outside a synagogue in the Bronx, following a long line of homegrown, headline-making terror plots since Sept. 11 that never came close to reality because the FBI inserted itself in the earliest stages.
The bombs they planted outside two synagogues Wednesday were useless, packed with inert explosives supplied by the FBI instead of the Pakistani terrorist group they had pledged to support, according to a criminal complaint.
Still, officials see the case as a vivid reminder of risks the U.S. faces from homegrown terrorists.
“It’s hard to envision a more chilling plot,” assistant U.S. attorney Eric Snyder said. “These are extremely violent men.”
James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen were calm as they appeared in court Thursday with their hands shackled, to answer charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles. They did not enter pleas and were held without bail; they face life in prison if convicted.
Besides destroying the two synagogues in the heavily Jewish Riverdale section of the Bronx, they intended to shoot down planes at the Air National Guard base in Newburgh, about 50 miles north of New York City, prosecutors said.
Relatives said the defendants were down-on-their-luck men who worked at places like Wal-Mart, a landscaping company and a warehouse when they weren’t behind bars. Payen’s lawyer said he was “intellectually challenged” and on medication for schizophrenia. Marilyn Reader said he has “a very low borderline” IQ.
David Williams’ relatives were floored by the allegations against a man they knew as a good father to his 7-year-old daughter and newborn son.
“You don’t raise your children to be terrorists,” said Aahkiyaah Cummings, his aunt. “I don’t know that guy that was arrested.”
Just four years ago, Williams, now 28, told a parole board that prison was a wake-up call after his conviction on drug and weapons charges - drugs he said he sold because was making only $150 a week in his job.
Onta Williams, 32, and Cromitie have also served prison sentences for drug convictions - Cromitie said in court he had used marijuana as recently as Wednesday. He said he was 55, though law enforcement records give his age as 44.
Payen, 27, did time for attempted assault - in 2002, he and others fired a BB gun out an SUV window, hitting two people in the head. He snatched purses from two women later the same day, said state Division of Parole spokeswoman Heather Groll.
Payen appears to be a Haitian citizen, while the other three are Americans. The Williamses are not related.
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said he believed the defendants knew each other from their time behind bars. Relatives said Payen, David Williams and Onta (pronounced ON-tay) Williams were introduced to Islam in prison - a phenomenon present in prisons around the country in recent years.
“The Onta I know wouldn’t do something like this, but the new Onta, yeah,” said Richard Williams, an uncle. “He wasn’t raised this way. All this happened when he became a Muslim in prison.”
He said his nephew, who loaded tractor-trailer trucks at a warehouse, had been shaken by his mother’s death in 2006 and a separation from his wife. She has custody of his three children.
Payen was apparently staying in a rundown house that neighbors say was known as a home for parolees. Penniless and jobless, he had been fighting deportation and seeking custody of his 3-year-old son, said Hamin Rashada, an assistant imam at the Masjid al-Iklahs mosque, where authorities say the informant first met Cromitie in June 2008.
Cromitie was burning with anger about the U.S. war in Afghanistan, where his parents had lived before he was born, according to the criminal complaint. He told the informant he was interested in jihad and “doing something to America” and was crestfallen that “the best target (the World Trade Center) was hit already,” the complaint said.
In the same conversation, Cromitie said: “I hate those mother-———, those f——— Jewish b——— .... I would like to get (destroy) a synagogue,” according to the complaint.
In one conversation, Cromitie said how he longed to shoot Jews in the head as they walked on the street near a synagogue, the informant said. In another conversation with the informant, Onta Williams said that the U.S. military is killing Muslims “so if we kill them here with IEDs and Stingers, it is equal,” according to court papers.
A woman who answered the phone at a Bronx listing for several of Cromitie’s relatives said she didn’t want to speak about him and hung up. No one answered the door at his Newburgh address, but neighbor Luis Pena said Cromitie was a real nice guy.
The complaint portrays Cromitie as the instigator of the conspiracy, telling the informant last July that he wanted to join Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistani terrorist group with which the informant claimed to be involved. Authorities say Jaish set up training camps in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and several senior operatives were close to Osama bin Laden.
By December, Cromitie was asking the informant to supply explosives and surface-to-air missiles, in one of many discussions secretly recorded in a Newburgh home the FBI had outfitted with video and audio equipment, the complaint said.
The suspects obtained the weapons - not knowing they were disabled - earlier this month, according to the complaint.
But much of their scheme was more pedestrian, according to the complaint. The alleged plot fit a pattern of schemes involving ragtag groups of aspiring terrorists infiltrated and brought down before they could do any harm.
The plots include the “Virginia jihad network,” a group of men accused in 2003 that trained with paintball games In Los Angeles, four men including the founder of a radical Islamic prison group were charged in 2005 with conspiring to attack synagogues and other targets. And seven men in Miami were accused of planning to blow up the Sears Tower. Two of those men were later acquitted.
In New York, authorities have broken up plots to bomb gas pipelines near Kennedy Airport and the tunnels underneath the Hudson River.
Some have criticized informants’ roles in such cases, saying they egged on and ensnared suspects who weren’t dangerous.
And if the courts rule that these wackos deserve due process, the result of ajudication in the U.S. court system is truly a wild card.
INTREP
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