Obviously, this guy was an idiot to start with. Imo, I would have rather this case gone to trial, unless they're sure they can get OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of intel info out of him that's worth more than if he was interrogated without co-operation.
On a side note, unless they give this guy solitary confinment, who here thinks that he'll be dead within the first month of servering time in the regular prison population? Kinda like walking in with a big sign saying, "Screw me, kill me - be the man that killed the american taliban!"
from his standpoint, this plea agreement was a no-brainer.
He only gets 20 years instead of most-likely life in prison.
I'm kind of curious why the US agreed to it. Perhaps they got some good info from him (though i doubt he really had too much high quality info), or just didnt want to risk losing.
i think he may be a lot like Jeffrey Daumer in that his lifespan is about 2 days in prison.
The plea bargin was definately a shock for me to see. Obviously, he said or did something for the US in order to get this deal.
I do not feel he was stupid at all. However, I feel he was very impressionable and was pulled deeper into the Taliban than he expected. "When in Rome..." and all that.
I do not fault the man. He was young, he had ideals, and he thought he could do something different and make a difference through Islam. The real world hit him harder and faster than most young people experiance. If he woulda been a member for more than a couple of years, I would be totally against him. I also feel that if he would've been involved with them for another 10-15 without interruption, he would've gladely flown the planes himself. He was putty for them to mold. I'm glad we got him when we did. At least he can be removed from that atmosphere and see the terror that he was invloved with. I do not believe he knew the higher purpose of the Taliban.
It is sad really. Many people are placing thier anger and frustration on him, as he is really the only Taliban we have ever seen and are able to recognize other than Bin Laden himself.
If the inmates don't kill him, Osama will find a way to have him killed, or damn it, I will if I have too! That fucker deserves to be beaten with a year old dead chicken that was left out in the Florida sun.
Cut off arms, and legs, cut out his eyes and make them stay open to show the sockets, then mutilate him, and hang him on a pool infront of the white house. Feed him intravenously so he stays alive. Leave his hearing intact so he can hear every cry, shout, curse, and everything else thrown at him.....
Or.... maybe stick him with a meat hook (through the pelvis) and hang him in front of a mirror.... Cut his eye lids off so that all he can see is the image of himself hanging to die.....
Hell, Jim Bob, I figger we jes' stik him in an ol' outhouse that's got a big ol' wasps nest in it. Then we pull his breeches down, back our Chevy up agin' the door to that ol' outhouse, and give it a good shakin.
I reckon that'd rile those wasps up good, and they'd give that ol' tally-ban feller a powr'ful stingin'....
Hawking - 80 Necromancer, AOC Mannannan server, TELoE
Also currently enjoying Left 4 Dead on XBL.
I was watching some of this on CNN this morning. The legal expert was guessing that the U.S. Government went with the plea bargain, among other reasons, to keep a lot of the information that the defense would have needed (and had some permission/rulings in their favour to access for that purpose) secret and out of the press/media.
I think his prison sentence would have to be either in solitary, or in some place like Guantanamo Bay with other Taliban, or you guys are right: the other inmates would end his sentence before it really begins.
As far as feeling sympathy for him, I don't. He is 21 years old. He was (presumably) over 16 when he went to Afghanistan. Idealistic kid or not, he knows what right and wrong are. Being against someone taking "aggressive action" against another country is one thing; joining a militant/terrorist organization to inflict acts of terror on civilians is another. As most Muslims have said from the time of the attack on 9/11, this was an abomination, not Islam.
Edit: spelling :/
Wulfran Moondancer
Stupid Sidekick of the Lambent Dorf
Petitioner to Club Bok Bok
Founding Member of the Barbarian Nation Movement
...on digging some, I can't seem to find whether or not he was just Taliban, or whether or not he was also Al Qaeda. Last I checked, they were two seperate organizations. (though one did help support and give asylum to the other...)
Anybody know for sure? Though far from making him into an innocent idealist, that still has a certain sway on the exact degree of his culpability.
Also - correct me if I'm wrong here, but doesn't the U.S. send political prisoners such as spies, traitors, terrorists, etc., to a special prison? I don't believe he will ever even come into contact with your average John Q. Homicidalmaniac, though I may be mistaken about this.
He certainly needs to be sent away, though.
Hawking - 80 Necromancer, AOC Mannannan server, TELoE
Also currently enjoying Left 4 Dead on XBL.
Uhh, they can't give him a fair trial because he would get off. He didn't break any US laws and he wasn't even arrested on US soil by proper US law enforcment officials, was obviously not read his rights etc. etc. etc.
If they let him go to criminal trial a 1st year law student could get him off scott free in less than a week. At worst he should be exiled from the country because fighting in a foreign military against your country's military should be grounds for renouncing your citizenship.
What father pays for their teenage son to go to some far away country and study with ultra conservative islamic extremists?
I mean hell that's like sending you kid to go study with the Branch Davidians.
Somewhere along the line Mr. touchy-feely-to-spineless-to-be-a-real-father, didn't say what should of been said, "Son this idea is completely NUTS and I'm not paying for it! Now go do your friggen homework!"
"Oh we were very supportive of our son's search for spirtuality."
Yeah, but being part of a regime who openly warred with the U.S. may be grounds to try him as a traitor to his country. It's been done before, so the precedent is there - and I believe those cases are handled in a military court.
/shrug If that was the case, he would no doubt get a better deal by plea bargaining rather than face the U.S. Gov't that would make a public example of him.
Hawking - 80 Necromancer, AOC Mannannan server, TELoE
Also currently enjoying Left 4 Dead on XBL.
Adex, you've hit the nail on the head. These fucking hippie liberals have been trying to remove all responsibility from individuals and heap it upon government institutions. I think the best description of this phenomenon is "The victimization of America." If everyone is a victim of something, then they aren't responsible for anything
Here's a fucking reality check: the president/governer/mayor was not elected to raise your fucking kids for you. I love when the parents of fucktards like this guy get on the TV and say shit like "Somebody should have done something." Guess what? That somebody is YOU, Dad!
"There is at least as much need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the world of labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism in international relationships." -Theodore Roosevelt
Please don't tie my words to an attack on hippie libs, I'm aiming my "outta be in jail" stick right at those two individual parents AS WELL as the kid.
Yah blame it on the "hippy liberals" what a fucking intelligent way to pigeonhole everything.
Funny I don't recall congress passing an official declaration of war on Afghanistan or it's ruling government. That makes the US presence there technically an illegal invasion. You don't invade a country and then sieze a person who was defending said country and try him in a fucking criminal court. I could name about a million things about this situation that is just so unbelievably wrong that it makes me sick. Ashcroft and his cronies are using 911 to basically trample all over whatever liberties they feel like in the name of freedom and you guys are sucking it up like crazy.
Which implies that they are as much to blame for their son falling in with those whackos as he himself is. Responsibility all around. I was pointing out that the view pushed forth by the "hippie liberals" removes individual and familial responsibility and attempts to shift it onto a soceital or governmental organization.
EDIT: At no point did I argue the legal merits of the case in question. I attacked the mentality that allowed a 16 year old kid to go to fucking Afghanistan to "study" with a bunch of fanatics.
"There is at least as much need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the world of labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism in international relationships." -Theodore Roosevelt
Is that "Needful Killing" statute still on the books there? TX is teh pwn!
"There is at least as much need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the world of labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism in international relationships." -Theodore Roosevelt
Fucking hell, Impirius. No wonder our state has the reputation it does - everybody from presidents to pawns likes to make penis-waving a state sponsored event. You go get 'em, cowboy....yee-haw!
Hawking - 80 Necromancer, AOC Mannannan server, TELoE
Also currently enjoying Left 4 Dead on XBL.
Smoke while you sandblast the flash from his bones! We shall dance on his grave while drinking whiskey!
"There is at least as much need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the world of labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism in international relationships." -Theodore Roosevelt
Actually one year a bunch of guys from Texas A&M stole the University of Texas mascot cow.
They quickly gave it up when threatened with the still existing "hang the cattle rustler" laws.
Funny side note: One time Texas A&M beat UT 13-0 they stole the mascott again and branded 13-0 into its hide.
The UT folks knowing that they couldn't remove the brand instead burned a few more marks into the cow and turned the 13-0 into the mascot's name "BEVO".
I dunno, Kyo. While I don't like people blatatly engaging in redneck cock-mongering and then attaching something like "in Texas," as justification, I do love my state.
We don't do everything right, we may be host to both the sweatiest and (debatably) the most polluted cities in the U.S., and I do feel our capital punishment laws are a bit..um..draconian, but it's not *such* a bad state.
My family's one of the older ones in Texas, and all in all, there are a lot of good things here, too. You just have to wade through the shit to find them these days.
Hawking - 80 Necromancer, AOC Mannannan server, TELoE
Also currently enjoying Left 4 Dead on XBL.
Wulfran- While at some point you have to start holding people responsible for what they do, whether its entirely fair or not, its also true that at 16 (or even 21 for that matter) virtually nobody is a fully developed politically/socially/intellectually savvy human being yet. At 16 youre just barely starting to feel like you're nearly an adult and looking forward to the stuff that brings, but its also still very much a formative time in most peoples lives, and many 16-year olds are fanatics about something (cars, the band they play in/wanna form)and he just ran into circumstances and random events that formed him the wrong way without him ever stepping back and thinking about the whole picture before it was too late. I understand how it can just happen, with no intent or concious decisions, and since it could happen to many people I have some sympathy for him. Still gotta hold him responsible for it to make a point, but without more information about how exactly he came to that position I feel it should be with more of a "sorry, its a bit unfair but we gotta whap you" motivation rather than "you're evil incarnate, diediediediedie".
At 21 more people are fully developed than at 16, and certainly most people that age think theyre fully developed, but speaking from my advanced decrepitude at 40 its my observation that most still have a few years to go. 25 to 27 is about the real age for full intellectual maturity and sophistication for my money.
*Hugs*
Varia
I think that bearing arms for a foreign power against the country of your birth is inexcusable ( There are obvious exceptions here, but the US is definantly not Stalinist Soviet, or Hitlers Germany, for all of it's faults)
But I think he should be turned over to the current Afghani government for prosecution, after all he was a foreigner in their country carrying an AK47 and representing a group who had siezed power militarily.
I personally feel ( not think we are skipping logic here) that his parents should be imprisoned and or barred from being around minors. Yeah good parents have bad kids, but it takes bad parenting to turn your kid into a psychonutcase.
She Dreams in Digital
\"Led Zeppelin taught an entire generation of young men how to make love, if they just listen\"- Michael Reed(2005)
Kylere's suggestion is actually the best and most sound (probably why he copped a plea) as well as being the most likely to deter future stupidity along this line. What retard is going to do something like this guy when they know the consequences are removal of citizenship and being handed over to a foreign power's justice system? Third World no less. Personally I think the best solution for handling all the Taliban fuckers they caught would be to hand them over to Russia for prosecution and imprissonment. Say what you want about them, but Russians don't fuck around when dealing with terrorists.
And for the record, taking up arms against your own country is always treason, no matter what country you are doing it to. But as its been pointed out, sometimes treason has merrit and sometimes it doesnt.
War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them. . . .
Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.
--RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983)
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
In my opinion: no matter where we stick Walker in, either solitary confindment or general population, if he doesn't help us find Osama and/or his terrorist buddies, his ass is dead even if and when he gets out of prison. I guess he'll be killed even if he does help our country with whatever info he has, they'll always be someone waiting...
Lil Johnny isn't likely to be breathing a year from now, regardless of what prison population they put him in.
His parents should be flogged in public for being afraid to tell their child no. That's your job as a parent, acting as a guard rail along the highway of life until your kids can steer the car reliably.
Texas is a kick to visit. I spent some time down outside of Kingsville a few years ago. Tresspassing is not something you do lightly in that part of the country.
Dunno if i agree about the parent things. I wouldnt let my kids go there, but i know some great people whove been to the middle east, and have learned OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS from their experiences there. I doubt when the kid decided to join the islamic faith he knew that a few years later he would be weilding guns and possibly helping in the terrorist attacks on americans. Living there would surely change your view of america dramatically seeing the poverty and shit conditions, that are there in part of america's actions since we became interested in oil there.
Call me a hippy liberal if you want but we DID fuck over many middle eastern countries over for our own economic benifits, just like we have fucked over many other peoples since we first came here(/wave native americans, etc, etc.), we gain from others losses, its the biggest reason we are the most powerful country in the world. These things dont make people happy towards us...
Terrorists are complete scum and can all die for all i care, but you gotta understand theres centuries of history behind it and if you lived in those conditions even just a year itd change you more than you could ever imagine.
Dont get me wrong, I love the USA, but theres OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of things weve fucked up and things we could improve on..
well yes i think the kids parents made a bad decision, and they sound like idiots.
but they didnt break the law, so all this talk about doing anything to them is a bunch of hoo-ha.
unfortunately being an idiot is not a selectively prosecutable offense.
i say selectively, because somebody out there has to be stupid enough to pay me massive sums of money so i can sit on the beach sipping beverages, and i sure wouldn't want him/her going to jail.
By the apologists who want to say it was our fault, I am disgusted. Yep the US as a country has screwed up in the past and will in the future, but so has every other country.
Even seemingly harmless Canada was just as corrupt to the native population. But if we want to stack up crimes, country by country, we are still virgins in the field of evil.
As for his parents, they popped out this bastard, and failed to raise him properly. That is their crime.
She Dreams in Digital
\"Led Zeppelin taught an entire generation of young men how to make love, if they just listen\"- Michael Reed(2005)
No, i dont think US is entirely to blame, there are OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of factors to it, but our actions in the middle east DO have a large part to it and we were not being respnsible for our past actions there. And also as i said i dont think it justifies terrorist actions against us, terrorism is never ok, but people seem to not even think about why maybe these people are terrorizing us. And no we arent virgins in the field of evil. If you do some research beyond what you learned from highschool, CNN and from our government, you may be suprised. Again i dont think shit from the past should be drudged on forever, but i do believe that if we tried harder to mend the wounds we created and we wouldnt be in these situations
About the kid...his parents knowingly sent him to a fundamentalist school? didnt know that...if its true that is horrible and no as i said before i would never let my 18 yearold go anywhere near there and would discourage anyone from going there because i care for their safety, but i have respect for mature people who are 'brave' enough to go over there to learn about their cultures etc, i think its very important to travel places that differ very much from your own culture.
I agree with you concerning adults travelling, Keverian. help to cut out the idea thaty the U.S. is the beginning and the end of the world. Heck, ya might even learn something!
As far as trying harder to mend wounds int he Middle East, that won't help. Remember, that particular area has been at war for at least several thousand years now. The most provocative thing the United States has done in the region is to support the state of Israel against Palestine.
Still trying to decide whether that's a good idea. Morally, it would seem to be the right thing. Tactically, politically and economically it's been a fuck up since day one.
I have talked with a friend from the middle east, and he said the negative attitude towards the US comes from us trying to force our morals and ideals on them (along with out military prescence). He gave a few examples about religion and womens rights and a few other things. He explained that the educated population quietly (very very quietly) supports the US in its actions, while the extremests rile the uneducated majority into hatred of the US. This is coming from a well educated, and upper class mid easterner. This leads me to believe a lack of education causes OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of this blind hatred. They dont seem to have too many free thinkers there, so when a religious fanatic tells them the US is evil and should be destroyed, they absorb all the propoganda without a second thought. Then they use that propoganda as if it were their religon. Whats really weird is the fact they all listen to US music and follow us pop culture over there. They showed some stuff on the news about that a few months ago.
