ZOT
Posted on 12/04/2004 9:55:28 AM PST by theblindhog
While I was heartened to hear that USAF Senior Airman Ahmad Al Halabi, like Army Chaplain (Capt) James Yee before him, had been cleared of charges of espionage and treason, I am nevertheless still deeply disturbed by the lack of media attention given this case.
Granted, the allegations made a huge splash when they first surfaced in the fall of 2003, fueled to a white hot frenzy by prosecutorial whisperings of possible death sentences. At that time, the government was happy to have us believe that the tentacled reach of Al Qaeda extended all the way to the ranks of the U.S. Military.
But as a military member of some 25 years, I wasn't buying it. I know too much about the nature of classified documents and the security measures used to protect them to place much faith in the government's allegations that each man was found in possession of hundreds.
Everything that has happened since has proved me right. Charges against Chaplain Yee, you'll recall, were dropped in March 2004, three months after Army Specialist Joseph Darby first set in motion the events that led to the Abu Ghraib scandal of April, 2004.
In dropping the charges against Yee, the governemnt announced they'd made a mistake and the documents weren't classified after all.
Last week, we get much the same concerning the case against Halabi: documents that were first classified "Secret" are now seen as "For Official Use Only".
If you are looking for an explanation of how the government could have been so wrong in their assessment of the value of these documents, consider a couple of very salient facts:
1) In determinging the classification of a document, one must consider the degree of harm its release would cause to the United States. Therefore, the documents possessed by Halabi and the Yee were, in the Fall of 2003, seen to contain information which would cause "serious damage" to national interests if it were commonly known. Again, that was in July - September 2003.
2) By March 2004, those documents were no longer considered clasified; that is, the information could no longer harm the United States.
Let's look at the timeline:
July 2003 - Halabi arrested with "hundreds of classified documents"
September 2003: Chaplain Yee arrested with a laptop full of classified documents
December 2003: The Red Cross begins filing complaints about mistreatment of U.S. held enemy prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib and locations in Afghanistan.
January 2004: Specialist Darby files a formal complaint with his chain of command at Abu Ghraib, detailing allegations of abuse and providing photos. The complaint works its way through the chain of command and a formal investigation is initiated.
March 2004: Charges dropped against Chaplain Yee.
April 2004: The Abu Ghraib story hits the press.
Sept 2004: Charges dropped against Airman Halabi.
So what was the information that was a serious threat to national security in Summer - Fall 2003 but was not a serious threat in March 2004?
I would submit that it was information detailing the severe abuses that have been occurring at Guantanamo since early 2003.
And if it became necessary to arrest two of our soldiers on trumped up charges to keep that fact from coming to light, well, no measure is too drastic to protect this administration, because what is good for the administration is good for the country and vice verse. Likewise, what is a grave threat to the administration is a grave threat to the nation.
And in the Summer - Fall of 2003, any hint of torture and abuse of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners, some of whom were as young as 13, would have been very grave indeed, as borne out by later events.
But in March 2004, with the leak of the Abu Ghraib scandal expected to hit the news wires at any moment, and given the nine month softening up of Chaplain Yee, and the imposition of a life-long gag order guaranteed to secure his eternal silence on the matter, it seemed not only safe but prudent to drop charges against him.
Plain and simple is the fact that this administration, who rose to power in large part because of their reputation for loving and supporting "The Troops", has allowed the unpardonable sin of slandering and defaming subordinates in order to protect the dirty secret that is the torture of our enemy prisoners of war.
Add to that the shameful, cynical, criminal treatment of these two U.S. soldiers. Then think of the treatment the lowest ranking troops got at Abu Ghraib, where they have been left twisting on the meat hook of public scrutiny while the brass bespangled policy makers get a free ride or are asked to retire.
It is truly an upside down world when those among the weakest of us, who yet fight so valiantly for American freedoms, can be so casually and callously denied their own freedoms, and have their reputations so blackly impugned.
And where is the press in all this? Meekly subservient to their corporate masters and far, far too afraid of alienating the uber-zealots of the far right fringe to fully investigate either instance.
There is a strong need for a resurgence of hunger and aggression amongst the Fourth Estate. They are so grateful for whatever small crumbs might fall from the master's table, and so afraid of being denied access to that table, that they have allowed this administration free license to invade countries under false pretenses, spy on and imprison their own countrymen, hold citizens without due process, seize and torture citizens of other countries, and alienate the whole of America for their own dark purpose.
The movement is gaining momentum.
Mohammedans living in the US, fortunately for them, live among the most tolerant people on earth, by far.
But our tolerance will only stretch to certain limits.
I suspect you'll get a knock on your door before that.
Yeah, just like all the Japanese did in the internment camps.
Do you chase parked cars?
ZOT
Halabi and Yee are both connected to Syria- if they are getting leniency, it isn’t because they weren’t guilty as hell- they were- it is because of political aims regarding Syria.
Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese Daily, reported on 7th (of May, 2004), "In Ryongchon Blast, Syrian engineers were killed and wounded. A wagon carrying a large cargo had a particularly heavy damage, revealed on 6th (of May, 2004) by a military news source who has great expertise on Korean matters." According to the source, "the content of the cargo is unknown. However, after the accident, N. Korean military personnels in protective suits arrived at the scene, and recovered the remains of the destroyed wagon. We strongly suspect that the accident occurred while transporting a top-secret cargo between N. Korea and Syria."
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