“Thinking Meat” has been having a fit that I won’t publish his incendiary comments on this blog. I really don’t care what he/she/it thinks, and I think that’s part of the problem. This individual thinks I should consider his opinion as important and here’s how I’ve arrived at that conclusion. This was left on this post. I didn’t allow it be be published, because I am free to do what I like here. That obviously upsets the little guy.
Truly some shocking images of terrorist crimes, Cao.
They’re only representative of the group that Padilla joined. That is my point. If you don’t know what the Wahhabi sect of Islam stands for, you should do some reading up on it.
Which of those crimes has Jose Padilla been convicted of?
Those pictures are crimes committed by Islamofascists. Since he became one, it’s important to point out he doesn’t represent what you call “American values”. You say I don’t believe in American values? You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
Those are the crimes that terrorists and Islamofascists engage in, yet, I don’t hear any complaints from you about it, what I’m hearing from you is–the fact that you think that traitors should be afforded the same rights as everyone else. You’re wrong.
The Constitution defines treason as “levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” To me, that identifies people who join Al Qaeda and the people who support and defend their “rights”, which IMO, should be nonexistent, particularly in a time of war.
Can’t hear you. Which ones did you say?
Ok, I’ll put it another way. According to Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, “Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” The question of suspending habeas corpus, then, turns on interpreting “rebellion” and “invasion.”
Since Jose Padilla is a citizen of the United States, recently converted to Islam, changed his name to Abdullah Al Muhajir, and visited the Middle East, including Afghanistan and Pakistan and had contact with Al Qaeda operatives, this point is moot.
Section Three (the section on Treason in the US Constitution) also requires the testimony of two different witnesses on the same “overt” act, or a confession by the accused, to convict for treason. In Cramer v. United States , the Court ruled that “every act, movement, deed, and word of the defendant charged to constitute treason must be supported by the testimony of two witnesses.” In Haupt v. United States , however, the Supreme Court found that two witnesses are not required to prove intent; nor are two witnesses required to prove that an overt act is treasonable. The two witnesses, according to the decision, are only required to prove that the overt act actually occurred.
Furthermore, Section Three permits Congress to determine the punishment for treason. No-one convicted of treason “shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person” so convicted. In other words, the descendants of someone convicted for treason could not, as they were under English law, be considered “tainted” (i.e., their blood could not be corrupted) by the treason of their ancestor. Furthermore, the clause permits Congress to confiscate the property of traitors, but that property must be inheritable at the death of the person convicted.
I think that by claiming they can’t use the “witnesses” in the Padilla case because the information was obtained under “harsh questioning” is just a legal maneuver which is merely an attempt to negate the veracity of the evidence.
When was Jose Padilla convicted of joining Al Qaeda?
As I illustrated above, the Constitution states that Habeas Corpus can be suspended under certain criteria. Padilla’s situation met this criteria, IMO. Plus, he meets the criteria under Article 3.
Can’t hear you. When did you say the trial was?
He met with al Qaeda agents and planned to build detonate a radioactive “dirty” bomb in the U.S. You don’t find that particularly disturbing? Guess not. You don’t think Americans deserve to be protected from acts of terrorism? Guess we should let these guys run loose and not only not charge them, but not hold them, not arrest them, and just let them commit these acts of terror because we want to “understand” them. I suppose you also support the “art exhibit” at the memorial of the victims in the twin towers…or the “crescent of embrace” at the memorial to the victims of flight 93. BTW, take a look at all those 40-something comments on the Crescent of Embrace thread and tell me again how I don’t accept comments from people I don’t agree with.
The U.S. DOJ suspected that Padilla was involved with a terrorist organization and (may have) plotted a terrorist act. That’s pretty reasonable considering the circumstances and evidence, my dear.
You’re utterly terrified of any intelligent dissent from your views, Cao. That’s why you compulsively delete any comments or trackbacks that don’t toe your line. And that’s why you use ad hominem attacks (”leftist commie”) against blogs you’ve never read.
Ok let’s take a look at this statement. I just love how you engage in leftist authoritarianism and say I’m the one who doesn’t allow “dissent”. Do you make a habit of putting words in peoples’ mouths? So I’m “utterly terrified”. Hmmm. That’s interesting. On what do you base that statement? Xray vision? Guess? Made it up? Pulled it out of a hat?
If I was “afraid” why would I take the time to respond to this stupidity in detail? 
“That’s why you compulsively delete any comments or trackbacks that don’t toe your line”
That’s interesting. I guess you haven’t read much of what’s over here in terms of long discussions with people who don’t agree with me. There are all kinds of long discussions that have gone on over here with these people. What’s happened as a result of discussions like this one is–where there are over 80 comments (and not all from people I “agree with”)-that makes your argument rather disingenuous. FYI-I can pretty much recognize the arguments of a leftist within the first few attacks or words that they say.
Take a look at whynot’s bio over at the frogblog–
My socio-political views are extreme left in ideology - Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Che Guevara were my guidelines when I was a teenager, and have been an essential thinking instrument in making me who I am now. But I’m happy to compromise in real life and to see a capitalist-based economic model with a nice layer of socialist-based humanitarian values.
He pretty much says it all. These guys came out en masse to attack me when I first hit the blogosphere with stupidity like “Christ was a socialist” and how Christians should be quiet about their faith, people should hide their faith to create their dream of the ideal secular utopian society. Those people are also talking about the invented crimes of our soldiers saying things like “how much Iraqi blood is going to pay for your freedom?”
And what about my experiences with Mike Whitney (aka the “Aggressive Progressive”), from Washington state, who now works for Al Jazeera? Mike Whitney was proud of his ACLU membership and striving to drive Christ out of Christmas–and now he’s working on discrediting guys like Jack Idema with stories of how Americans are harvesting body parts from dead Iraqis, or how he had a “torture chamber” at his safe house when there are over 50 safehouses in and around Kabul where SF Ops and Specats are conducting the same questioning of these people before they turn them over to Bagram AFB. These baseless accusations are totally based on fantasy, just like your accusations towards me, worth very little other than for their sick entertainment value.
But horrible in another way, when you consider all the damage these stories do to our mission, to our success in the battlefield. It hurts morale, it’s like a pack of wolves taking one bite at a time to bring down a caribou. Eventually it works and the caribou goes down.
You’d think that people who really want our boys home and safe, would do everything within their power to make certain that the war doesn’t drag on; that they have every means at their disposal to win. But that’s not how the leftists “support our troops”…they “support the troops when they shoot their officers”.
Whitney has written at Counterpunch about the Padilla case, you might want to go over there and look at how that scumbag is talking the same talk as you are. Are you aware that “progressive” has long been synonymous with “socialist” and/or “communist”? It just can’t be sold under the brand name yet. He’s always crying about the denial of rights for terrorists and “supposed” “freedom fighters” in Iraq. Just the same as Medea Benjamin with Code Pink. It doesn’t take long before you can smell this bullshit from a mile away.
One of the Code Pink people was saying something about ”what would you do if a tank pulled into your front yard?” This portrays the terrorists as innocent Iraqis, which in itself is surprising. The Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq are foreigners, very few of them are Iraqis. And the ones who are Iraqis, many times have been threatened by the foreign terrorists so they’re forced to do their bidding. You know, threats of killing their families and that sort of thing. You know, stuff that the “religion of peace” suggests in their ‘holy book’. Some suicide bombers’ remains have been found TAPED to the steering wheels of cars. The sorry SOBs couldn’t get away–they were coerced into committing those deeds and dying for the sake of Allah. Yeah, according to propagandists like Mike Whitney, the horrible American military is targeting innocent civilians. Sorry, that’s what the terrorists do. They’ve got it convoluted and screwed around, but that’s why long ago they coined the phrase “communist propaganda”.
Whitney is now writing made up stories about how our military is scavenging body parts from dead Iraqis and selling them on the black market. Pretty humorous, if you think about it…organs only last only a few hours–
Just prior to being removed from the donor, each organ is flushed free of blood with a specially prepared ice-cold preservation solution that contains electrolytes and nutrients. The organs are then placed in sterile containers, packaged in wet ice, and transported to the recipient’s transplant center.
Anybody stop to think where the ice would come from in this environment where there’s sand that’s powder fine and mixes together with water to create a filthy silt that sticks to everything? Where would they keep this ice in 140 degree temperatures? C’mon, this is getting more ridiculous by the second. And you can only have a successful organ transplant under very specific conditions.
It is important to transport the organs from the donor to each intended recipient as quickly as possible. Hearts and lungs must be transplanted within approximately 4 hours after being removed from the donor. Livers can be preserved between 12 - 18 hours; pancreas can be preserved 8 - 12 hours; intestines can be preserved approximately 8 hours; kidneys can be preserved 24 - 48 hours.
And that’s if they’re carefully prepared and chilled/preserved at just the right temperature immediately and airlifted to wherever they need to go. The organs simply wouldn’t keep well in order to do any good- in the terribly hot temperatures of Iraq and Afghanistan…even in the winter months. Plus, you’d have to have access to a database of recipients for these organs….the right blood tissue type match has to occur. Plus, the recipient would need to be prepped and in the operating room completely ready to receive the organ–and all of these things have to happen within a small time window from the organ’s removal. You don’t just put them in a refrigerator until someone needs one, and you can’t just “harvest them” from dead Iraqis. The window on all of these things is incredibly small in order for an organ recipient to receive and be able to use an organ.
The recovery of the organs is performed in the Operating Room where the donor is being cared for. The transplant coordinator oversees the arrival and departure of the surgical recovery teams. The recovery team consists of surgeons, nurses, the transplant coordinator and an organ preservation technician.
So where would they be keeping all these experts in the event they’d run across an Iraqi body that would meet all the qualifications of an organ harvest? In their jeep? In their battle rattle? Shoe? M-16?
Medical expertise in Iraq and Afghanistan are not as advanced as they are here–so what they’d have to be doing is teleporting these organs through Star Trek type teleporting equipment to the US–and that technology doesn’t exist yet, unless they’ve discovered some advanced technology we don’t know about from alien space ships at Roswell. All in all, it’s pretty ridiculous…but horrible when you consider the undefinable damage it’s doing to our soldiers’ morale and the success of the missions in both Afghanistan and Iraq as a whole.
Guess those kinds of details are insignifant to people who don’t think things all the way through, though. Or people who enjoy thinking the worst about our soldiers. Does anybody honestly think they have the TIME to do all that when they’re working 12 hour days, getting shot at, avoiding income mortar attacks, while they’re looking for buried bombs and ieds or traveling with their full battle rattle on patrol? Guess so. And what do you suppose the muslim world who is mostly illiterate has to think about this? Seems as though it’s information put forth completely to fan the fires of discontent against the west; the same as the stoopid stories eminating from the Gitmo cabal. The same sort of propganda that was put out by the Iraq Information Minister.
Whitney, by the way, has also had a hand in taking Jack Idema down in the media. Oh. What a surprise.
And that’s why you use ad hominem attacks (”leftist commie”) against blogs you’ve never read.
First, I find it interesting that you would draw the conclusion that I never read your blog. How did you arrive at that conclusion? ESP? Crystal ball? Voices in your head?
You consider “leftist commie” as an ad hominem attack? Perhaps you don’t quite “understand” how it is I arrived at the conclusion that what you’re saying is both “leftist” and “commie”.
Engels said there’s no problem with the Communists working alongside the democrats to achieve their goals.
thus long do Communists and democrats fight side by side, thus long are the interests of the democrats at the same time those of the Communists.
Take a look at the forces of the Anti-war people in Congress. John Kerry belongs to the House Progressive Caucus, which was started by Bernie Saunders, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. These people are hard core leftists, make no mistake.
Consider this.
Zalmay Khalilzad was on the Board of a company called Friends of Afghanistan. Also on the Board was Zbigniew Brzezinski, the self-described mastermind of using Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan to attack Russia. Khalilzad taught at Brzezinski’s university, Columbia. Everything suggests Khalilzad was a Brzezinski protégé.
Congress proposed that Khalilzad’s organization, Friends of Afghanistan, teach the Afghan terrorists how to win international support by portraying those opposing them as human rights abusers. This technique is now a staple of U.S. strategy.
Brzezinski was on the faculty of Harvard University from 1953 to 1960, and of Columbia University from 1960 to 1989, where he headed up the Institute on Communist Affairs.
So when I hear people whining about the “human rights abuses” of known or suspected terrorists, I immediately think of Khalilzad and Brzezinski, the “Friends of Afghanistan” and Congress. And all those people both above and below the covers who are connected with them. These are the same people who are are demonizing and cutting our military and doing horrible things to guys like Jack Idema without flinching. It’s a blatant double standard:
Idema was tortured with boiling water, starvation, threats of death, and assault with various implements (such as wire cables and rubber whips), resulting in broken ribs, a separated sternum, torn rotator cuffs, hemorrhaged eyes, multiple concussions, lacerations, contusions, and bruises.
Where’s the Red Cross on this one? Amnesty International? The American Embassy? Oops, the embassy is the one that tried to drive off with their water, just like the Red Cross who’s giving water to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. For some strange reason I hear the creepy and suspicious sound of crickets chirping on this one. You can believe that if this were a terrorist instead of Jack Idema, there would be all kinds of complaints from organizations like Human Rights Watch. Instead, there is complete and utter silence. Something wrong with this picture? You bet there is!!!!
Apparently you must think I’m pulling this stuff out of my ass. Well there’s proof as to what I’m talking about. And if you realize it or not, you’re a mouthpiece for communists like those at the frogblog who’ve visited me many a time. I have a long history of fighting people with your ideological bent in the blogosphere, let’s make that clear.
Marxists like Code Pink have been giving money to the terrorists, ($600,000 to the terrorists in Fallujah as I recall) international Marxists and Maoists have their 10 Euro campaign to do the same thing. I’m not inventing this stuff, there’s plenty of documentation to back it up.
And to add fuel to the fire, stop to think about all the International Socialist Organization (sponsors Jane Fonda tours against the war), Russian Communist Party (George Galloway’s a member), World Worker’s Party (supports Cindy Sheehan’s anti-war rants) front groups like International ANSWER, Veterans for Peace, United for Peace and Justice, etc., etc.–who talk the same talk as you do. You think I give a damn that you deny the roots of the rhetoric you spew when it’s as plain as the nose on your face? Puhleez. Spare me the hyperbole.
And is there any small question in anyone’s mind when you consider that both Zalmay Khalilzad and Brzezinski taught at Columbia University that there might be some connection between them and the incendiary piece that Mariah Blake (Columbia Journalism Review) put out discrediting Jack Idema called “Tin Soldier”?
Bin Laden himself said:
“Socialists are infidels wherever they are,” the statement said. But it added: “It does not hurt that in current circumstances, the interests of Muslims coincide with the interests of the socialists in the war against crusaders.”
I don’t need to allow your comments here. Go ahead and cry about it from your own blog.
People like you always want to get the last word with personal insults (like telling me I’m “scared” or “terrified” of dissent, that I don’t support “American Values” [whatever that means] etc.). If anyone is smart enough to refuse to play the game by your rules, it’s met with that kind of stupid crap. You’re not even remotely interested in the truth, only in red herrings, straw men, and ad hominem arguments. This I’ve learned to recognize early on, so I’m sorry if you don’t get the opportunity to grandstand and drive my traffic to your stupid blog.
You should have been here from August through December of 2004. That’s when I let this kind of thing go on because I didn’t know better and wasn’t very experienced with IP addresses and that sort of thing. Over time I learned this important lesson; engaging in battle/debate with people who lie, cheat, argue over the meaning of words (ala Naom Chomsky) and use cyberterrorism (hacking into sites, sending them viruses, etc) as a way to shut down our voices–is a total and utter waste of my time. You people are pretty much all the same; cookie cutter images of one another, cut from the same cloth. Good luck with driving traffic to your pathetic site. Linkage denied.
BTW, Duncan Avatar did an exemplary job of fisking your Salon article argument about Bush’s rationale for the war in IRAQ. But Frontpage Magazine has a some great articles Bush’s rationale for the war in Iraq, too.
we always wondered about this ridiculous title– until we watched blade iii the other night. a wesley snipes film about hunting vampires, filled with cool effects, bad jokes, and guess what, “the honeycomb” hideout. (Floggin Fraud 5).
2. the floggin fraud and everyone else keeps saying how 9 men were found hanging upside down in their compound.obviously someone has a fetish with the punisher, which just happened to hit theaters two weeks before our “arrest.” in that film the punisher hangs his suspect upside down and interrogates him. this is laughable. first, you can’t find a ceiling in kabul that won’t fall down if you even hang a big light, no less a person. Second, we doubt a person could answer any questions swinging upside down. Third, we are quite sure they would all be dead after hanging upside down for ten days unable to swallow food or water (they would not last three days without water), and fourth, from a purely medical standpoint, hanging upside down for any extended period of time (like more than a few hours) would surely cause a variety of medical conditions from cardiac arrest to brain hemorrhages.
