On The Road to Zanzibar.
Peculiar and turbulent news arrives the evening before the pressured POTUS speech about the war on terror and the Guantanomo characters. The Obama administration whispers to the AP that it will move a major suspect of the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa from GITMO to New York City to be tried in a Federal court for war crimes including murder. The suspect Al Qaeda's ops name is Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. Born in Zanzibar, Tanzania, in 1974, he was captured in 2004 in Pakistan and taken through a variety of secret prisons to GITMO. Ghailani is one of 21 people named as participants in the terror attacks, four of whom are dead, five of whom are now serving life without parole sentences and seven or eight of whom are still at large.
Break with the Bush Administration.
At GITMO, Ghailani was ruled an enemy combatant by the Bush administration was was slated to be tried in a military tribunal. The decision to move him to a Federal court for a trial by American rules of jurisprudence is a pyrotechnical break with the previous administration. The above video clip, from the famous NPR iconoclast Amy Goodman Show in New York, indicates that the Obama administration may be following the recommendation of at least one family member of a Tanzania bombing victim. What is most striking at this time about the decision is that it moves an Al Qaeda suspect to the center stage at just the moment the whole debate of detention, rendition, torture, GITMO, the Senate rejecting the request for money to close GITMO, the refusal of many states to accept transfer of the GITMO twenty score, the dispute between the FBI chief Mueller and the State Department over the national security risks of any GITM detainee in any state of the union, the battle of the Washington speeches on Thursday 21 with POTUS one one side arguing torture and closing GITMO and Dick Cheney on the other arguing that the nation is less safe in the Obama administration's charge -- all this, and now the story looks to where it all began on 9/11, Manhattan. (With the sensational twist that four knuckleheads, said to be from Newburgh, New York, are reported arrested this evening, suspect of plots both to bomb a Riverdale synagogue and to shoot down military aircraft with Stinger missiles. Nabbed in an FBI sting operation, the four suspects will now serve as useful idiots in the debate between POTUS and Dick Cheney about the necessity of vigilance.)
Ahmed Ghailani Thug.
What is thrillingly wretched about Ghailani is that he is not just an Al Qaeda devil. Ghailani is said to have worked for the vile Charles Taylor trafficking in blood diamonds in Liberia, which would mean that Ghailani was part of the sadism of the diamond fields before Taylor fled to Nigeria and was then, fleeing again, grabbed by the International Criminal Court to be tried for war crimes in Sierra Leone (right). More, Ghailani is said to have been part of a plan to launch an attack in the summer or fall of 2004. In all, Ghailani is a completely unlovable human being who is also accused as a war criminal. Six of the counts against him carry the death penalty. I will speak to Ed Hayes and others on Sunday 24 re the decision to bring Ghailani to NYC Federal court. The media circus, the TV stake-outs, the nightly summaries of the jury selection, the extremely high security warnings, the risk of shahid in the subways by copy-cats, all of it to contemplate, plan for, dispute, analyze with microscopes.
NYPD and NYFD
The prospect is so overwhelmingly operatic, that I can doubt that it can ever come to pass. Governor Paterson running next year, Mayor Bloomberg running this year, senators Schumer and Gillibrand always running, so many domestic partisan melodramas because of the financial failures, and the rookie POTUS seeking accommodation with his own party over what is to be done with the rascals held in GITMO, all will have a stake in when and if the trial begins in New York City. Who will be first to call for Ghailani to be tried in public, on TV, and to be sentenced to death immediately and to be excuted as quickly as the Feds can move? Who will first cry, "Hang em' high!" The NYPD Benevolent Association? The NYFD Benevolent Association? The Transit Authority Benevolent Asociation? Rudy? Yes, Ghailani is not a 9/11 plotter like KSM, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Binalshibh, but he will do for an opening spectacle; and he is suspect of plotting a follow-on in 2004. All is vigorous, useful, dynamic preparation for the day New York City will host Osama Bin Laden and his kindred of Cain on their journey to oblivion.
Did Bin Laden ever live or is he a figment of our imagination?
There are some pictures of this really tall guy with a beard walking down rocky mountains with a goat herding staff in hand and an appearance of being downcast and resigned, but, who was this on a stroll out of Tora Bora? QWas there?
Who might bring to trial and judgment something that never existed?
Schumer, of course!!!
My apologies everyone, but, if you won't proffer... I'll offer:
A litmus test for A Brave New World of Nations and who can be included in it...
Would your nation(s), if given the capability and capacity, blow up the International Space Station? ( ) Yes ( ) No
Would your nation(s), if having the capability and capacity, make Hubble the robot, disappear?
(By the way... CONGRATS you brave ones who went out and risked all for the eye that shows us the beautiful places. You are awesome examples of goodness! Thank you for the views!) ( ) Yes ( ) No
Does your nation(s), see the panoramic visages of our place in space and time as blasphemous? ( ) Yes ( ) No
Please submit answers by WingWang 1234-4321 and we'll get back with you ASAP
Forward queries to SAD (;) TRUE@comeonnow.psst
Good luck!!!
Obama's move appears to be an effort to check the Congressional Dems on the issue, i.e., show the obdurate electorate how ignorant and uncharitable they are in refusing to accept Gitmo detainees in the country, even deeply incarcerated. At some point the post-election, post-inauguration public must wake up from its profound euphoria about the first black president and start making its opposition known more forcefully.
JB said: I will speak to Ed Hayes and others on Sunday 24 re the decision to bring Ghailani to NYC Federal court.
Well. There's a dialog fraught with . . . insignificance. He's probably on the pro bono defense team provided by the ACLU.
Yes, John. You've listed most of the vectors, all pointing to the promise of a highly entertaining summer. The political vultures are circling, each already liberally salivating at the prospect of dining on his assigned pound of flesh. The talking heads are upping RAM. There will be surprises; like, who'll emerge shilling for the opposition? Who'll defend this scoundrel? Will it be Kuby? Let's see to it that we can get a Bronx jury. It's not inconceivable that when it's all over, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani will end up going free. We all hate Bush so much, after all. Don't we?
Spencer these are one of the few times, I might agree with you.
Benazir Bhutto said Osama bin Laden was dead on December 27, 2007. She was interviewed on BBC TV where she told the viewing audience that Bin Laden was dead.
Every enemy combatant deserves a fair trial and not some 'kangeroo' court which these men whom have been sitting in Gitmo and other places for the past 8 years. I would not welcome that even upon my worst enemy. No one ever hear "do unto others as they do onto you" except BushCo and now Obama has continued 'guilty until proven innocent.' These military commission courts are no different from the show trials in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
The more American population is accustomed to using 'torture' of prisoners, it will eventually done on it's own citizens. It has happened already and will continue to happen if people keep on going around in a daze that the government is looking out for the 'greater good.'
Agencies
Lahore, May 21:
'The Taliban is forcibly recruiting young men and training them to fight against the army.
A young Taliban operative arrested by security personnel from the Mata tehsil region of the Swat Valley has disclosed that the outlawed unit is recruiting teenagers in large numbers to fight against the military in the ongoing operation in the Valley.
The Taliban is threatening young people of the region to either join the insurgents to fight or else face dire consequences. "They said you will have to fight against the army and threatened to kill me if I did not join them and got training," The Daily Times quoted the arrested man, as saying.
The man arrested by the army claimed that he was a student of a seminary from where the Taliban forcibly took him and asked him to join them for fighting against the military. He said that over 150 recruits were being trained in the camp from where he was arrested, and was later destroyed by the security forces.'
KABUL (AFP)--'Troops killed 34 Taliban rebels and seized 15 tons of drugs during an ongoing operation in southern Afghanistan's insurgent stronghold of Helmand, the U.S. military said Thursday.
"A total of 34 militants have been killed," the statement said. "The most recent enemy deaths were caused by a series of precision air strikes during heavy fighting in the area."
The Afghan army had announced 25 deaths on Wednesday.
The latest battle started when troops began to secure an area called Loy Cherah Bazaar, which the statement said was a militant stronghold and drugs-processing hub. They found at the bazaar two "war rooms" stocked with maps, communication equipment, Russian-made night vision goggles, U.S. military vehicle parts and weapons, the statement said.
The troops in the Marja operation had uncovered 15,000 kilograms of high-grade narcotics, including 14,750 kilograms of black tar opium, 11 kilograms of processed heroin and 30 kilograms of morphine. They also discovered "a massive supply" of products used to make heroin and 40 tons of explosive materials and drugs packed into drums for use in suicide car bombs, the statement said.
"The Afghan commandos have dealt a significant blow to the insurgents," said U.S. military spokesman Colonel Greg Julian, adding routing a main command center and uncovering the massive supply of drugs "hit them where it hurts the most".
Helmand is the main producer of Afghan opium, which accounts for more than 90% of the world's supply. Most of it is turned into heroin in the country before being smuggled to markets in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Afghan officials say the Taliban use the profits from drugs to buy weapons.'
I assume now that BushCo includes Congressional Democrats, at least with respect to the treatment of Gitmo detainees.
Also, I'm still at a loss as to why in the world the rights of the Gitmo detainees matter more to you than the rights of the people whom they endanger.
Tell me why, Sam, you are more troubled by the allegedly lost "rights" of the Gitmo detainees, than you are by the innocent lives lost on 9/11? These people FLEW AIRPLANES INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER, for heavens' sake. They'd do it again if given the chance. I'd step on them with as little remorse as I would a cockroach darting across the floor. And so would most Americans. All this worrying about having the moral high ground - who cares. Give me the moral low ground and the opportunity to strangle KSM or OBL in their sleep - and I'll take it part and parcel.
We are genetically wired to defend ourselves, to the death if necessary. Let's split into two species, Sam, if we haven't already. On this side of the room, anyone who gives a rodent's hindquarters about the rights of Gitmo detainees. On the other side, everyone who believes we have the right to defend ourselves against this kind of trash and mete out the death penalty if it suits us. You all on the other side, who have zero survival skills, can go on thinking you're the evolution and we're the devolution - right up until you all die from your unwillingness to defend yourselves. Those of us who survive, well, we'll have the moral low ground, sure enough, but thankfully no damned liberals will be around to remind us of it, which will be a new coming of Eden as far as I'm concerned.
Brilliant point! Except, what happens when all the pantywaists on the other side of the room come rushing over and put us all in straight jackets?
If we permit them to do that, then who are the real pantywaists?
I think we all need a refresher viewing of "Braveheart"!