Month: June 2008

Read every line of this stupidty from The Examiner:

Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers said Tuesday that Osama bin Laden, if captured, should be allowed to appeal his case to U.S. civilian courts, a privilege opposed by John McCain.

Responding to questions from The Examiner, Sen. John Kerry and former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said bin Laden would benefit from last week’s Supreme Court decision giving terrorism suspects habeas corpus, the right to appeal their military detention to civilian courts.

“If he were to be brought back,” Clarke said of bin Laden, “the Supreme Court ruling holds on the right of habeas corpus.”

Kerry, who applauded the Supreme Court ruling, said it will be carried out by whichever candidate wins the presidency.

“The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that they have those rights,” he said. “If John McCain were president, he would have to give them those rights.”

Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser, said those rights should not be extended to bin Laden or the hundreds of terrorism suspects being held by the U.S. military at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“The individuals we hold at Guantanamo are very, very dangerous people,” Scheunemann said. “To give them full access to the federal courts and the criminal justice system is fraught with danger, moving forward, and likely to make America less safe, unlike Senator Obama’s claim of supporting the decision that it made America safer.”

On Monday, Obama applauded the civilian prosecution of terrorists before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“In previous terrorist attacks — for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center — we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial,” he told ABC. “They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated.”

First, apparently, Barack Obama isn’t aware of that fact that Omar Abdel-Rahman (the “blind sheikh”) was far from “incapciated”. His defense attorney, Lynne Stewart, was convicted in 2006 for “carr[ying] messages between the sheik and top members of an Egypt-based terrorist organization [al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya], helping spread Abdel-Rahman’s call to kill those who did not subscribe to his extremist interpretation of Islamic law” according to CNN.

Abdel-Rahamn was arrested and convicted in 1995 “of seditious conspiracy, solicitation to murder Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, conspiracy to murder President Mubarak, solicitation to attack a U.S. military installation, and conspiracy to conduct bombings.” (Foundation of American Scientists)

Among some of the attacks by his group al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, include the Luxor massacre in Egypt which killed 59 foreign tourists in 1997.

Obama said President Bush has relied too heavily on military prosecution of terrorists, which has “given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, ‘Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.’ ”

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Obama wants “to take a step back to the failed policies that treated terrorism solely as a law enforcement matter, rather than a clear and present danger. Barack Obama appears to believe that terrorists should be treated like criminals — a belief that underscores his fundamental lack of judgment regarding our national security.”

The attack sounded familiar to Kerry, who was the Democratic presidential nominee four years ago.

“This is exactly what they tried to say back in 2004, and the record absolutely contradicts it,” Kerry told The Examiner. “Every Democrat voted to go to war and attack the Taliban and al Qaeda, the people who attacked us. That is not a [legalistic] approach.”

Despite what some people seem to think (e.g., John Kerry, Barack Obama), the police and the armed force have different and distinct jobs:

The military’s job is to blow up and kill the enemy’s armed forces with the minimal lost of life on the United States’ side; or as George C. Scott states in the film Patton, “that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”

The police’s job is vastly different, the principal jobs of police are a) prevent crime; b) when a crime occurs, respond effectively; c) collect evidence and investigate to enable the successful of prosecution of said crime; d) adjust their tactics based on previous events to prevent crime in the future.

When you have the military doing the police’s job and vice versa, there’s something seriously wrong.

Since the “privilege of the writ of habeas corpus” (United States Constitution; Article I, Section 9) has been given to terrorist combatants, it’s only a matter of time before some judge starts throwing out evidence that collected without reading a detainee his Miranda rights (United States Constitution; Amendment V) or was procured without a search warrant (Untied Stations Constituion; Amendment IV).

In fact, one detainee has already challenged the admissibility of a confession he gave, since he was not given a Miranda warning (Ace of Spades HQ).

So, I have a hypothecial going back to the title of this post, illustrating the difference between what a soldier is supposed to do, and what police are supposed to do:

Let’s say that the United States military has received “credible intelligence” that Osama bin Laden is hiding in a cave on the Afghani side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

In a proper and sane world, the United States military would gather every soldier, vehicle, and aircraft, surround the area and capture/kill bin Laden. If he managed to survive the encounter (let’s just say I pray he doesn’t), he would be sent to Gitmo, tried and executed.

Just like what happened to the German infiltrators that wore American uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge. They were lined up and shot.

Or the German spies that were caught on the United States mainland during World War II, tried by a military commission and executed by electric chair.

However, in the insanity that is this world, where terrorists have rights to United States civilian courts and the rights provided to United States civilians under the United States Constitution, no one bloody knows:

Osama bin Laden does have a warrant for his arrest after he was indicted for his involvement in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, so his arrest wouldn’t be a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

However, who does the cave belong to?:

Another question is: Does Osama bin Laden have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” while he is in someone else’s cave?

If the cave belongs to a third person, an arrest warrant does not authorize the search of a third person’s home while seeking to arrest the original person (Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204 [1981]). If you want to search a third person’s home and there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy”, you must also have a search warrant for those premises in addition to the original arrest warrant.

Now, assuming we haven’t violated the precious rights of a piece of crap that’s responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, and we have said piece of crap in custody: You better read him his Miranda rights before you interrogate him! (Maybe I can get in on the Miranda-rights-in-Arabic/Farsi/etc.-pocket-cards-for-the-military industry?)

Now, again, assuming that we haven’t violated “reasonable expectation of privacy” and are able to use any evidence collected in the cave against bin Laden, and assuming we have properly given him his Miranda rights before interrogating him; there’s another question: Do a couple hundred armed to the teeth soldiers/sailors/Marines/airmen constitute a threat of violence that would render a confession invalid?

Do you see the point I’m making here?: The sheer absurdity of giving people that would gladly strap a bomb to themselves and detonate themselves in a crowded place in an attempt to kill and wound as many people as possible have been given rights normally reserved to United States citizens.

We are so screwed.

RWL has more.

As a aside: Of course, we all know that Barack Obama’s opinion of police officers isn’t too high in the first place, especially when his campaign staffers set up porta potties on top of a memorial for fallen police officers (Police Link).