Posted on 04/01/2002 1:38:53 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
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| U.S. Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh returned to federal court on April 1, 2002 as his lawyers battled with government prosecutors over what kind of evidence can be used in his conspiracy trial. This picture, released by Lindh's lawyers on April 1, 2002 as part of the evidence, was taken by the US government when Lindh was at Camp Rhino in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 2001. Photo by Reuters (Handout) |
The tip-off is that they seem to think FReepers like CNN!
Please reread what I said. Sheesh! Nice graphics though.
This should have been handled at a very low level. He should have been separated from his comrades, and given the chance to help, with whatever useful intelligence he may have had. If he was helpful, he should have been debriefed, thanked very publicly for his help (which would have burned him with his ex-comrades), and quietly released after the war.
If he was a jerk, in the opinion of the guys working with him, he should have been handed back to the Northern Alliance and put up against the wall. End of story. He never existed.
Actually, I thought that was kind of ironic too.
In my experience, the level of discussion and debate is pretty high -- with somewhat fewer flames than other forums.
I don't know if you'd agree with me right now -- you really seemed to hit a sore point with a lot of Freepers, but don't draw too many conclusions from one experience.
The rights spring from nature, but the protection of them from governmental infringement is codified in the Constitution, and applies to the government. For most purposes, the government's power ends at the border, and thus so do those protections. Some of them also do not apply in a wartime situtation, but not many. In this case I see nothing cruel or unusual about tieing up a guy whose buddies have just been trying to kill you, especially since that was after they had supposedly surrendered.
If you want to make sure you never end up a prisoner of the US military, don't go to other countries and participate in a war, unless you do it in OUR army or one of our ALLIES. Then you will never have a problem. You are free to go to other countries and participate in a war if you want, but change your citizenship to the country you want to fight for first, and then you can sit in a Northern Alliance prison instead of being treated to three squares and a blanket by Americans. But Walker dodn't change his citizenship. He didn't change his citizenship because his US passport was the single most important thing he owned that al-Qeada valued. People with US passports were and are in high demand in the al Qeada organization because they could easily enter the US and travel freely around the world, to commit terrorist acts not unlike what we saw in New York. This is a fact. He would have been very important in their organization had there been time. He would not be wasted as a foot soldier if they had been able to get his butt out to Pakistan.
Johnny claims now that he was just one of the regular guys and was only with al Qeada because he didn't speak Pashtu and so, wasn't of use to the Taliban. Well, too bad. If he had kept his nose in his schoolbooks back in Pakistan he wouldn't have 'had' to join up with al Qeada, a group he KNEW was a terrorist group.
He claims now he was just a poor unwitting foot soldier. But he admitted to being trained in a terrorist camp where the curriculum consisted not merely of battlefield skills, but also in different skills: slipping past airport security. Slipping past civilian airport security and looking innocuous in CIVILIAN garb, smuggling weapons onto aircraft or other civilian facilities, etc. These are not skills he needed as a "soldier." Soldiers don't sneak into airliners. Soldiers don't need to smuggle arms- they carry weapons openly because it distinguishes them FROM civilians. Soldiers don't need to pass themselves off as innocent civilians by dressing as such and hiding their weapons under their clothing or in luggage. Soldiers wear UNIFORMS to distinguish themselves from terrorists. Only terrorists need such skills.
John Walker was a TERRORIST, not a soldier, not a wayward youth, not a person with a 'difference of opinion' with the US. He did not need this training to get into Afghanistan to fight for the creation of a perfect muslim state, as he claims he was doing. (Translation: "All I wanted to do was to deny other human beings the right to free speech, the right to life, the right to property, the right to freedom of worship, the right to liberty, the right to live as free individuals." ) All he had to do was walk over the border to help the Arab terrorists impose Sharia Law on the people of Afghanistan. He wasn't there to give them free elections, people. He wasn't there to help them establish a constitutional republic. He wasn't there to defend the poor, to protect women, or to do humanitarian work of any kind.
Al-qeada pays big premiums to get people with US passports. The idea that he was just an unwitting idealistic peon was 100% BS. To participate in an al-Qeada training camp's programs you will be well-vetted by al-Qeada to insure that you are not an agent of a state interested in infiltration. He wasn't just some schmuck who wandered in from the cold one day and asked to play- if so, they wouldn't have run him through a camp to train him on evading airport security and bombmaking, they would have just taken him out to see if he could hold a weapon and shoot in generally the right direction, to disable landmines, or other BATTLEFIELD skills. Not in "Airport Terminals 101." Not in "Car Bombing 101." Al Qeada's training manuals make it pretty clear they aren't out to behave like simple soldiers. This guy had much more training than the Afghans of the Taliban, for Pete's sake. Al-Qeada was notorious for favoring western members and they actively RECRUITED them. An American or a Briton would be a big prize and extremely welcome, while an Afghan would be no big deal. I would submit that Mr. Walker was not some wayfarer but that he was probably being cultivated by al Qeada itself before he even left the US, and it was probably they who gave him the idea of going to Yemen of all places to study. There he could be isolated and further cultivated to prepare him for eventual use as something more than a foot soldier. That is speculation, of course.
Last time I checked he claimed he had a US passport, but I don't thing any papers of any kind were found on him. Which is odd- most people, even Taliban, had some kind of paperwork, even if it was forged. Chances are, he gave or sold someone ELSE his passport, and it may be that that person already used it to gain entry to other countries, perhaps even our own, for purposes other than worrying about OUR civil rights. Someone has it.
Luckily for Johnny, he probably won't be held accountable for the passport. We know he didn't renounce his citizenship formally, but according to the print on his passport, it could be said that he has renounced it by deed, and is not entitled to be treated as an American citizen. It would be amusing to deport him to Afghanistan and their new government, where I hear non-Afghans aren't treated too kindly.
That his career was interrupted before he could be used to commit acts of terrorism in the US in addition to whatever he has done in Yemen, Kashmir, Pakistan, and Afghanistan was lucky for us, and to be honest, lucky for him. If he'd been caught on a plane with explosive tennisshoes the passengers might have beat the snot out of him for real, and sympathies would be fewer. No doubt his lawyers would claim the passengers 'tortured' him, though, and some people would believe it.
Maybe Walker would not have blown up the WTC had he the chance, but he seemed perfectly pleased about the USS Cole. He knew darn well that al-Qeada's ideology was (people who train in their camps go through a formal swearing of allegiance to Osama and they are asked if what they are willing to do for al-Qeada, how far they will go. Al-Qeada makes no secret of its intentions to overthrow the government of Saudi Arabia AND the government of the US. That was the point in the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon, and the MANY OTHER TARGETS which were set to be hit on 9/11, including points on the US west coast, Chicago, etc, and places overseas. The intent was to strike such a blow to the US economy that it would collapse and bring down the US government. Walker KNEW al Qeada intended to bring down the US SOMEHOW. They preached it. They had manuals on their goals, and videos, as we have seen. He swore to help them, ere he would not have been among them in training and later in fighting. Walker's airport and bomb training indicates he was willing, at a minimum, to conduct espionage in western countries. And the maximum? Who knows. BUt he knew what the goal was and it was NOT to protect and to serve the constitution of the US. It was to erase it.
Now he wants to wrap himself in it?
Wishful thinking. I wouldn't bet the farm on that, if I were you.
I imagine there ARE things that we don't know, but there're not going to come down in Johnny's favor.
What are you so intent to defending this traitor? And he IS a traitor, no matter how you dress him up.
Here, here. If this were the case then all of the US citizens being held in jails all over the world would be subject to treatment under the US code and not of the country they are being held by. At the time this photo was taken the US had not determined what charges and in what court Walker would be held accountable for his actions.
"Al-qeada pays big premiums to get people with US passports"
Do you have any evidence or have ever heard any report to the fact that the AlQuaida or Taliban forces that Johhny was with ever knew that he was an American? I sincerely doubt that they would have ever let an American in there. Johnny had to lie and say he was from Ireland. So your contention that Johnny was Osama's American trophy bride is phony. There is just no way that Osama's Afghanistan camps were some sort of lure to American Jihadists. "No American's need apply" was the sign on the door.
Since you're such a fan, you should actually try reading it someday.
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