From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Lindh
vs. the First Amendment
Marin mujahid John Walker Lindh has pleaded guilty to two charges--aiding
terrorists and carrying explosives--in exchange for the government dropping
the remaining eight charges against him. "Each charge carries a maximum
10-year sentence, for a total maximum of 20 years, though he could be eligible
for probation," CNN reports.
This renders moot the issue of whether Lindh's lawyers would be able to compel testimony from journalist Robert Pelton, whose interview with Lindh CNN aired last December. Over objections from news organizations, Judge T.S. Ellis ruled that the Lindh lawyers could call Pelton as a witness. But did anyone notice the outlandish claim the Lindh legal team made? It's buried in the New York Times account:
The hearing [Friday] was over the narrower issue of whether the defense may call Mr. Pelton for testimony about Mr. Lindh's physical condition. The defense lawyers have also said they want to show that Mr. Pelton acted as an agent of the government in the interview because friends in the Green Beret units helped him gain access to Mr. Lindh.
If Mr. Pelton were simply a journalist there would be no issue of whether Mr. Lindh needed to have been read his rights for that interview. But if Mr. Pelton was acting as an agent of the government, the lawyers have argued, Mr. Lindh should have been read his rights before that interview as well.
Any reporter who covers the government relies on sources within the government for much of his information. Had Lindh prevailed in this argument, it would make reporters the legal equivalent of cops, forced to inform every source of his right to remain silent--and, perhaps, required to provide each source with a lawyer.
Well, journalists in Wahhabi-land may be agents of the state, but this is America, and Lindh's claim would surely have been laughed out of court. Still, it's another example of how he and his fellow fanatics are trying to destroy Americans' fundamental freedoms.
No
Sir, Yaser
The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has overruled a federal district judge's
decision that Yaser Hamdi, a Louisiana-born Saudi-American captured in Afghanistan
and being held as an enemy combatant in Norfolk, Va., is entitled to a lawyer.
The Fourth Circuit hasn't resolved the matter definitively, only ordering the
district court to reconsider the issue:
Our Constitution's commitment of the conduct of war to the political branches of American government requires the court's respect at every step. Because the district court appointed counsel and ordered access to the detainee without adequately considering the implications of its actions and before allowing the United States even to respond, we reverse the court's June 11 order mandating access to counsel and remand the case for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
The court endorses the principle that the federal government may hold enemy combatants without charge or counsel, but seems to leave open the possibility that judges can review the designation of a prisoner as a combatant: "It has long been established that if Hamdi is indeed an 'enemy combatant' who was captured during hostilities in Afghanistan, the government's present detention of him is a lawful one," Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson writes for a unanimous three-judge panel (emphasis ours). That italicized qualification ought to silence the civil-liberties hysterics who are worried that the government will be able to detain American citizens for no reason.
A Seattle Times report illustrates why it's important that the government have the ability to keep enemy combatants out of the criminal-justice system:
A British Taliban fighter in custody in Guantanamo Bay provided U.S. investigators a crucial link between a group of Seattle militant Muslims and members of a radical mosque in London, federal sources say.
The prisoner, Feroz Abbassi, told CIA interrogators earlier this year that he had traveled to Afghanistan from London in 2000 with an American--a Muslim convert now suspected of being a key figure in the Seattle group suspected of supporting the al-Qaida terrorist network.
Would the CIA have been able to extract this information if Abbassi had a lawyer advising him to invoke the Fifth amendment? Another Times report says that the cell used a ranch in Bly, Ore., "as a possible training camp for jihad fighters":
For about six months beginning in September 1999, Semi Osman--a cleric at a small Seattle mosque named Dar-us-Salaam--lived on the ranch, a few miles outside town. Osman is now in federal custody in Seattle, charged with immigration and weapons violations and under investigation for terror-related activities. . . .
Among the men at the ranch in December 1999 were two men who federal investigators believe were sent by al-Qaida leaders to check out the ranch as a potential training camp. . . .
The two men were followers of Abu Hamza, leader of the North London Central Mosque in Finsbury Park, the heart of militant Islam in Europe.
Abu Hamza applauded the Sept. 11 attacks. His mosque had been attended by Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, and by Richard Reid, the man accused of trying to blow up an American Airlines jetliner with explosives in his shoes.
Death
for Pearl Killer
A Pakistani judge has convicted four men in connection with the murder of Wall
Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Lead suspect Sheik Omar Saeed is to be
executed, and his three accomplices, who were convicted of conspiracy, were
sentenced to 25 years in prison. Reuters
reports that in response to the verdict, relatives of the terrorists were full
of Islamist bluster:
Omar's family expressed outrage. His father, Saeed Sheikh, said the case against his son highlighted U.S. hypocrisy.
"The jihadis (holy warriors) used to be the apple of their eye," he said, referring to U.S. backing for the fight of Muslim Mujahideen against Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan. "Now they are rotten apples."
Perhaps it hasn't occured to the elder Saeed that it was the jihadis who betrayed America when they undertook to murder Americans. Reuters also reports that Omar's decision to become a jihadi was "inspired by atrocities against Muslims in the Balkans" (where are the scare quotes around atrocities?). In the Balkans, of course, America was on the Muslims' side.
Day
of the Jackass
"French President Jacques Chirac survived an assassination attempt Sunday
by a man described as an emotionally disturbed neo-Nazi who pulled a fully loaded
rifle from a guitar case and got off one shot before he was wrestled to the
ground," the Associated Press reports from Paris. Police say the gunman
"was linked to a far-right student group, the Groupe Union Defense, and
has a history of psychiatric problems." It's not clear how close his shot
came to hitting Chirac.
Baby
Wipes
At the risk of sounding slightly ethnocentric, Palestinian Arab culture is really
weird. These people apparently think there's nothing more adorable than a homicidal
or suicidal toddler. The Israeli
Defense Forces have released a photo
they found in a raid on an Arab home, which depicts a boy of about one "dressed
up with a real revolver and a plastic rifle." It's actually not a revolver
but a semiautomatic pistol, with a loaded magazine sitting alongside. The child
is also wearing a cap with the slogan "happy beaver."
Meanwhile, the Washington Post had this intriguing detail in a report last month on an Israeli shell that hit the bedroom of septuagenarian Palestinian Authoritarian Yasser Arafat: "In the bedroom, fine dust covered the Baby Wipes dispenser on his bedstead." Two weeks later blogger Charles Johnson noted another Baby Wipes sighting, and this page has a collection of photos showing Arafat with Baby Wipes.
What's going on here? True, Arafat has a young daughter, but she lives in Paris and seldom if ever sees her dad. Ha'aretz reports that the head of Israel's Shin Bet security services told France's interior minister last month that, in the Israeli newspaper's words, "Arafat's mental functioning has deteriorated greatly of late and his behavior is marked by faulty judgment." Is he regressing to infancy in his dotage?
Spies
Like Us
An alarming revelation by one Ritt Goldstein in today's Sydney Morning Herald:
The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of United States citizens as domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil liberties groups.
The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum of 4 per cent of Americans to report "suspicious activity".
Yikes, we're a police state! But a look at the Citizens Corps Web site shows that Goldstein is simply being hysterical:
Operation TIPS--the Terrorism Information and Prevention System--will be a nationwide program giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees, and others a formal way to report suspicious terrorist activity. . . .
Operation TIPS, involving 1 million workers in the pilot stage, will be a national reporting system that allows these workers, whose routines make them well-positioned to recognize unusual events, to report suspicious activity. Every participant in this new program will be given an Operation TIPS information sticker to be affixed to the cab of their vehicle or placed in some other public location so that the toll-free reporting number is readily available.
Sounds more like Neighborhood Watch than the Stasi--and indeed, Neighborhood Watch is another program of the Citizens Corps. So who is this Ritt Goldstein? From his bio in the Herald: "Ritt Goldstein is an investigative journalist and a former leader in the movement for US law enforcement accountability. He has lived in Sweden since 1997, seeking political asylum there, saying he was the victim of life-threatening assaults in retaliation for his accountability efforts." Sounds like a really reliable source of information.
Hassan
vs. Hussein
The Iraqi opposition confab went on as planned in London over the weekend, with
a surprise visit from Jordan's Prince Hassan, who, the Times of London reports,
"paid tribute to his 'fellow officers' in the Iraqi military and said that
he supported efforts to 'end the suffering of the Iraqi people.' "
The Jordanian government quickly distanced itself from Hassan's remarks, saying in a statement that "Prince Hassan's participation in a London meeting of former Iraqi officers and representatives of Iraqi opposition groups was a personal initiative that does not represent the Kingdom's official stand." But Ha'aretz quotes an unnamed Jordanian official in Ankara, the Turkish capital: "American pressure on the kingdom is intense and so it was probably necessary for Jordan to make a gesture toward the Iraqi opposition."
Hassan is the brother of the late King Hussein and uncle of the current king, Abdullah. Before his death, Hussein named Abdullah to replace Hassan as crown prince, or heir to the throne. Jordan, which as Ha'aretz notes "is almost completely financially dependent on Iraq due to the free oil supplies the kingdom receives from Baghdad and the huge amount of trade between the two countries," was one of the few countries to side with Saddam in the Gulf War.
Syria, on the other hand, was part of the coalition that liberated Kuwait, but it may be switching sides. Ha'aretz reports Damascus "is violating the UN arms embargo on Iraq by sending weapons and military equipment delivered to Syrian ports on to Iraq via trucks and rail." Syria is the current president of the U.N. Security Council.
The U.N. won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.
A
Religion of Peace
"Gunmen dressed as Hindu holy men threw grenades and opened fire in a crowded
slum in Indian Kashmir" yesterday, killing at least 25 people, the Washington
Post reports. "No group has asserted responsibility for the attack, but
authorities in Kashmir said they suspected Lashkar-i-Taiba, an Islamic group
based in Pakistan, the Associated Press reported."
Oh,
So That's What He Meant
Remember last
week when the Saudi ambassador to London compared Israel unfavorably with
Nazi Germany? Now he's "clarifying" his comments, the state-run Saudi
Press Agency reports:
Saudi Ambassador to the United Kingdom and Ireland Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi has sent a protest message to the chief executive of Reuters for distorting his statement last Tuesday. "I did not say that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was worse than anything Europe has witnessed even under Nazi Germany," he said. In his message to Tom Glocer, the ambassador said it was unjustifiable that Reuters, which is known for its accuracy, distorted his remarks. "What I said was clear that Israeli forces' occupation of the Palestinian territories is more severe than the occupation of European capitals by German armies," he pointed out.
We're going to have to side with Reuters on this one--and we're as surprised as you are to hear us saying that.
Those
Peace-Loving Saudis
The New York Times and others have been touting the Saudis as Mideast peacemakers.
We wonder what they would make of these developments: The Jerusalem Post, citing
Israel Radio, reports that the Saudi Trade Minister "has warned local importers
against dealing with Egyptian companies that have trade links with Israel."
And Globes,
an Israeli business journal, says Saudi Arabia has been confiscating Chinese-made
cell phones that contain components manufactured in Israel.
Saudi
Journalism
"French Government Says 'No' to NYC Firetruck in Bastille Day Parade"
reads the headline on a Paris dispatch by correspondent Paul Michaud. The dispatch
is dated July 14, the same day this
photo was taken.
Jacko's
Friends the Saudis
Fox News reports that erstwhile pop superstar Michael Jackson had "a deal
. . . with Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to start a number of business
ventures. None of those businesses--including theme parks and restaurants, TV
programming and films--panned out." Yup, as Mickey
Kaus notes, that's the same Prince Alwaleed whose $10 million Rudy Giuliani
turned down before Rep.
Cynthia McKinney tried to get her grubby little hands on it.
And
the Word 'Gullible' Isn't in the Syrian Dictionary
The Lebanon Daily Star quotes a member of Lebanon's Parliament as saying that
"Syrian President Bashar Assad is 'very keen on Lebanon's sovereignty and
complete independence.' "
You
Don't Say--I
"There is something distinctly icky about likening the victims of
the Holocaust to the perpetrators."--Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, July 12
You
Don't Say--II
"Divorce No Ticket to Happiness, Study Says"--headline, Reuters, July 12
Butterflies
Are Free
Palm Beach County, Fla., home of the infamous "butterfly ballot,"
held a demonstration of its new touch-screen voting machines over the weekend,
the Associated Press reports. "At shopping malls and supermarkets across
the county, nearly 4,000 residents voted on topics like favorite holiday, best
president, greatest American athlete and favorite patriotic landmark. About
73 percent of voters said the words 'under God' should stay in the Pledge of
Allegiance." Watch for Michael Newdow to file a lawsuit demanding a recount.
My
Felon Americans
Ex-con Phillip
Morris NaPier, who served 15 months behind bars after an armed confrontation
with police, is running for governor of Maine. His platform: felons' rights.
His Web site Felons
United explains:
People who have been branded/labeled "FELON", and their families, are one the largest groups suffering at the hands of discrimination in America. Together, as organized citizens, we can reclaim our heritage as a free people, a nation of individuals, and take back our country from those few self serving individuals who have robbed us of our heritage, our individuality.
The Washington Times explains that if elected, he promises to pardon any felon who moves to Maine, though it's unclear how he'd pardon people with convictions from other states. He's a dark-horse candidate, to be sure--he's not even on the ballot, since "his leg injury kept him from collecting enough signatures."
Then again, he has one thing going for him: Maine is one of only two states that allow imprisoned felons to vote. Vermont is the other. Massachusetts allowed felons to vote until 2000, when a ballot initiative changed the state constitution, in what the American Civil Liberties Union called an "anti-voting rights" measure. The ACLU backs enfranchisement of felons, and the Washington Times reports that "restoring the vote to felons would help Democrats get elected, studies indicate."
London's Independent, meanwhile, reports that Britain has the industrialized world's highest rate of serious crime, according to a new U.N. study. England and Wales have an average of 55 crimes per 100 people, vs. an average of 35 in the other industrialized countries. (It's not clear what time period the U.N. studied.) "Contact crime", defined as robbery, sexual assault and assault with force, was second highest in England and Wales--3.6 per cent of those surveyed. This compares with 1.9 per cent in the US." Maybe NaPier should join the Labour Party.
Your
Tax Dollars at Work
John Kasprowicz, a scientist working for the federal government, makes more
than $95,000 a year--but for nearly two years, he did no work. This wasn't by
choice, the Chicago Sun-Times reports:
When he asked his bosses at the U.S. Department of Energy for something to do to justify his $95,000-plus paycheck, they told him something would come along.
But for 22 months, nothing did--that is, he says, until he sent copies of his time sheets showing he was doing nothing all day to the DOE inspector general's office in Washington, D.C.
When the inspectors started making inquiries, Kasprowicz, 46, was transferred to a different department, where he was given work. . . .
Their problem, according to a federal lawsuit filed by Kasprowicz and six others, was that they were white men, and that supervisors, eager to promote minorities, froze them out in an effort to make them go away.
Happy
Days
"The pursuit of happiness" is a distinctly American concept. Just
how distinctly American is clear in this report in the Sun, a London tabloid,
which says Scandinavian socialists are trying to ban "happy hours"
throughout the 15-nation European Union on the ground that "big pub firms
lose money on happy hours simply to crush rival bars that can't afford discounts"
and "happy hours encourage irresponsible drinking."
Turning
Back the Clock
The "debt clock" is back. The late New York developer Seymour Durst
erected the clock--actually a billboard--in midtown Manhattan in 1989 to track
the total level of federal debt as well as "your family's share."
It went dark in 2000, as the debt was decreasing, but the recent deficits have
inspired Durst's son Douglas to restart it.
Back in the early 1990s, we used to walk past the debt clock every day on our way to work. The first time we saw the it, we got a little worried. As we walked past it every day, and saw both the total and our family's share gradually increasing, we thought more and more about the national debt and what a terrible problem it was. It got to the point where we'd get anxious before we even got to Sixth Avenue, where the clock was. When we actually saw the debt clock, our heart started racing and we started breathing heavily. We realized we were having a full-blown panic attack every day when we saw the debt clock.
Finally we went to see a psychiatrist and explained our problem: We were obsessed with the fact that our government spends more money than it takes in. He diagnosed us as suffering from--you guessed it--deficit attention disorder.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Michael Segal, Elliot Ganz, Tucker Goodrich, Mara Gold, Rosanne Klass, Nancy Eckert, Raghu Desikan, S.E. Brenner, Damian Bennett, David Potanzik, Natalie Cohen, Zach Wendling, Aaron Gross, Jerome Marcus, Jim Orheim, Howard Weiser, Monty Krieger, Reuven Weiser, Michael Delman, Chuck Smith, Janice Borawick, Dave Manchester, William Katz, Todd Warnick, Hershel Ginsburg, Rochi Ebner, Darren Gold, Zabelle Huss, Karen Bashore, David Waghalter, Howard Bashman and Chris Nicastri. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: The State Department detains an American journalist who questioned its Saudi policies.
- Robert Bartley: Lessons for today's war from Gettysburg and Omaha Beach.
- John Fund: A black Republican may give Rep. Eliot Engel a run for his money.
