<leonard78sp@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:1187316382.768587.297990@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Aug 16, 7:27 pm, "Mandra" <Signa...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> August 16, 2007
>>
>> Conviction of Padilla is Bad News for All Americans, Including
>> Journalists
>> and Protesters
>>
>> By Dave Lindorff
>>
>
> Lindorf is an anti-American fascist without a clue.
Lindorf is neither an anti-American nor a fascist, you are the one without
a
clue.
They needed a distraction at the time and Padilla was the answer.
They Always Get Their Man
MIAMI, Aug. 16, 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS) Attorney Andrew Cohen analyzes legal issues for CBS News and
CBSNews.com.
With stunning speed - they deliberated for less than a day and a half
after
a trial that lasted three months and involved three defendants and
mountains
of complex evidence - the seven men and five women of the jury signaled
definitively that they believe the narrative federal prosecutors had
offered
them in bits and pieces and through evidence that was not nearly as strong
as expected: The trio walked and talked like terrorists during the 1990s,
tied themselves to terror-related causes, and otherwise found themselves
in
the wrong places, like Afghanistan, at the wrong time - when Osama bin
Laden
was hanging out there with a nascent al Qaeda.
It apparently did not matter to these jurors that none of the facts
alleged
against the defendants took place after Sept. 11, 2001 (or at all during
the
21st century), and that no people were ever murdered or injured as a
result
of any of the conversations that took place between the conspirators. In
fact, no specific people ever were mentioned as possible targets -
certainly
not any Americans here at home. It was a case without victims or bodies.
It was a case without a specific target. It was a case from the 1990s that
was tried more than a decade later - and yet tried with stunning success.
Jurors learned that of the more than 300,000 intercepted telephone
conversations reviewed by federal authorities, only seven involved any
conversations between Padilla and the other men. They convicted him
anyway.
They learned that the feds never thought enough of the trio to indict and
prosecute them before 2000, when the surveillance ended. They convicted
them
anyway. They learned that there were questions about the validity of the
terror camp application form that Padilla was said to have signed - the
clearest proof that he actually attended the training camps. They
convicted
him anyway.
While fairly noble and not entirely illogical, the defense theme - don't
let
prosecutors force you to look at pre-9/11 conduct through the lens of the
post-9/11 present - was an abysmal failure in the eyes of these jurors.
They
didn't want to hear explanations about context and perspective. They were
not interested in nuances.
You knew the men were in trouble when during closings arguments, one of
the
defense attorneys had to explain to jurors how they should interpret the
laughter one of the defendants displayed during one of the wiretapped
phone
calls. If you are focusing upon such little battles at the end of the
case,
chances are you are going to lose the war.
And when you try to convince a group of Americans that three zealous
Muslim
men were essentially forming their own little version of the Red Cross -
or
the Red Crescent - to fight against infidels overseas, it's usually going
to
end as badly as it did for these defendants.
Few people who have followed this case closely were surprised by the
guilty
verdict. But almost everyone was shocked at the speed with which jurors
were
willing to end this long, hard-fought, often-nasty trial.
The verdicts mean that government tribunes now can declare that three
dangerous criminals have been taken off the streets - having become
dangerous in 2004 when they weren't in 2000 - and that the ranks of the
terrorists have been thus depleted. The feds no longer have to figure out
creative and extrajudicial ways to put Padilla on ice; they no longer have
to apologize for bringing such a paltry case against the man after having
raised him to up terror star status when they rushed onto the airwaves
back
in 2002 to label him a "dirty bomber."
What is the lesson in all of this? It depends entirely upon your point of
view. For me, these verdicts are a reminder that the government usually
gets
its man, by hook or by crook, and that the feds were banking on precisely
this sort of a sympathetic jury when they changed from Padilla Plan A
(hold
him as an "enemy combatant" until someone told them they couldn't) to
Padilla Plan B (bootstrap him to an existing, low-level terror cell case
that never would have made headlines otherwise). It's good to the be King;
good to be able to figure out a detour around a road block raised by the
Constitution; good to have options against men who have none.
So now Padilla, finally, will go away, this time probably for good. But
his
legal legacy will last long after people forget who he is or what he did
(or, more accurately, what he did not do). He is a dirty bomber who never
bombed, a conspirator who only rarely conspired, a terror sup****ter whose
sup****t was so minimal that it never worried law enforcement officials at
the time he was offering it.
The government got its man, a fellow the evidence suggested was more
"slow"
than a "star." The only judgment left is whether, in the end, it all was
worth the effort.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/15/opinion/courtwatch/printable3168949.shtml
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