So, after 2 years in a military brig getting the "treatment" Jose Padilla..

...now admits that he is a terrorist. Stick enough objects up my ass for 2 years and I will tell them that I am Osama bin Laden. After finding out how our military treats suspected terrorists anything this guy says now is absolutely meaningless. Sad state of affairs.

Don

you're still on the story Don........

some other threads have sunk like a rock.

I think the RW talk shows are going to go nuts over this story for the next few days...somehow this will be a justification of all Dubya's policies.......

..as quickly as Padilla was, and for the same reason.

Did they say anything about prosecution? Plea-deals etc....

If nothing was said then the whole premise of the release was political.

btw: Looks like Lacy Peterson blew the story off of MSRNC.

I hope I am on the damn jury too. I will find this guy innocent of all charges so fast Ashcroft won't never know what hit him.

Don

A fair trial is part-and-parcle of Democracy

Just a thought: If he doesn't get a fair trial Osama Wins!

Gave us a smorgasbord this morning: a whole new spiffy govt in Iraq, a nasty home-grown terrorist whose very existence validates the extra-judicial (which the Supreme Court will hopefully find unConstitutional) "enemy combatant" status and the Patriot Act too.

Did I miss anything? Oh, yes, Lacy Peterson's murder trial. Probably no Bush admin hand in that, but it's still their great fortune, isn't it?

I wasn't able to give the press conference my full attention this morning but I was stunned by all the detail -- all the high-ranking people Padilla allegedly had dinner and other fun with, all the nasty plans he/they had (to blow up precisely 20 apartment buildings and maybe others that I missed in addition to the explosive-encrusted uranium they thought would result in a dirty bomb).

I don't believe it -- but then that's my practice. Whatever this administration says, about ANYthing, I automatically disbelieve. It's the safest approach. He has an attorney but the attorney has been kept from him and was not present during all this "questioning" which led to all these startling facts, facts that oh-so-beautifully justify his extra-judicial, extra-Constitutaional status.

I guess that makes me a supporter of "terrorists," huh? I prefer to think of it as a supporter of the Constitution, but that's kinda gone out of style.

And how ironic that this news comes on the heels of the dedication of the memorial for the last people who actually served and died in a war for anybody's freedom, eh?

It's surreal, how they often tell the exact opposite of the truth.

so they have to reveal more horrendous plans from someone they have had in custody for 2 years.

Did I tell you that I had plans to have Rick Nelson sing at my graduation party ? Don't laugh, it was 1961. And on our honeymoon my husband and I stopped by the White House and we had plans to have tea with Jack and Jackie but Jack was out and Jackie was in India.

Anyone else have any plans they want to talk about ?

Most of the people the US has picked up have been innocent but because of their "looks" ethnicty, religion, location etc. they were assumed to be "terrorists." I would love for Padilla to be able to speak to the public.

He held out a long time.

was giving an account of Jose Padilla's activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. How he was trained by al Qaeda, and all the languages the guy spoke. And how the FBI found his application to join al Qaeda.

I thought that Padilla was a Chicago gang member, a simple thug? To listen to this guy from the Department of Justice this morning you'd have thought Padilla had the skills of an CIA agent.

Take about having a jacket put on 'ya!!

He is Osama's #2 operative and Bush caught him single-handed!
Bush was overheard saying, "Take this because you hate our
freedoms, take that because you love terra, and take this one for the gipper..."

Could the gipper be under house arrest?

If true Ashcroft would be eating eel shit under water for the rest of his life, LOL!!

they sorta called the fuckwads on that last "terror alert" thing by Asscroft.

Don't they recognize this is just plan B?

"Look at the scary dark-skinned guy who wanted to blow up your apartment building! And poison you with radiation! Be afraid! There's more of him out there! You're lucky we caught this one!"

have been replaced by
the terrorists of al qaeda.

And we shall subject them to
trial by fire
trial by water
and other trials by ordeal.
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Trial_by_ordeal

QUESTIONS FOR HANS BLIX
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: March 28, 2004

Your new book, ''Disarming Iraq,'' recounts your futile search for weapons as the former chief United Nations weapons inspector.

Yes, President Bush and Tony Blair were convinced there was something there. They were convinced there were witches.

You yourself initially believed there were weapons! Only later did you change your mind.

Yes, I, too, believed there were weapons. I began to be skeptical when we went to sites that were given to us by U.S. intelligence and we found nothing. They said this is the best intelligence we have, and I said, if this is the best, what is the rest?

Anyway, Saddam Hussein is a kind of witch, isn't he?

No, he is Satan himself! Evil personified.

You never even met him.

He considered it far below his dignity to meet any sort of lowly creatures like international inspectors.

Can one say the same of certain leaders in democratic countries? Wasn't Vice President Cheney equally dismissive of you?

The Pentagon and Cheney have been very negative toward inspections. Cheney said inspections are useless at best.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/28/magazine/28QUESTIONS.html?ex=1086235200&en=109bd04c749c0dca&ei=5070

Aaah,
anglo-saxon jurisprudence triumphs again.

Downes v. Bidwell
182 U.S. 244
May 27, 1901
There are certain principles of natural justice inherent in the Anglo-Saxon character, which need no expression in constitutions or statutes to give them effect or to secure dependencies against legislation manifestly hostile to their real interests." <182 U.S. 244 at 280>
http://www.ark-of-salvation.org/hooven_downes.htm

Although Mr Blix says he is not bitter, he is scathing about the "faith-based" approach of Messrs Bush and Blair which he says was tantamount to a "witch hunt". After a conversation with John Wolf, Assistant US Secretary of State for Non-proliferation, who is accused of obtaining secret information from his office, he says: "I understood his formulations to say, 'The witches exist; you are appointed to deal with these witches; testing whether there are witches is only a dilution of the witch-hunt'."
http://truthout.org/docs_04/030904F.shtml

Part III deals with the legal procedures for prosecuting a witch. This includes rules for taking testimony, admitting evidence, procedures for interrogation and torture and guidelines for sentencing. Hostile witnesses were permitted to testify because everyone hated witches.
Torture is dealt with matter-of-factly, if the accused did not confess after a year or so in prison, then torture could be applied as an incentive. So, confessions attained by torture were valid.
Judges were permitted to lie to the accused, promising leniency if they confessed, reasoning that is was done in the best interest of the society and state.
For some crimes light sentencing was prescribed, but, according to the authors' acknowledged purpose of executing as many witches as possible, most of the instructions on sentencing pertained to death.
http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/m/malleus_maleficarum.htm

Two years ago, the president of the United States faced a very difficult choice. After a careful process, he decided to declare Jose Padilla for what he was, an enemy combatant, a member of a terrorist army bent on waging war against innocent civilians. And the president's decision was to hold him to protect the American people and to find out what he knows.
We now know much of what Jose Padilla knows. And what we have learned confirms that the president of the United States made the right call and that that call saved lives.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/01/comey.padilla.transcript/

... by depriving Padilla of his.

press conference this morning, and this is the first chance I have had all day to comment on it, but this whole confession stinks badly to me. So a :kick: for the leftcoast.

This guy is supposed to be the evil mastermind behind 911? Him and a handful of religious fanatics beat the US Air Force and destroyed the capitals of our empire the WTC and the Pentagon? Were UFOs involved too?

Some people will believe anything.

You are royally screwed. The Justice Department is definitely trying to influence the Supreme Court decision. Welcome to Ashcroft World! Just the beginning.

As far as I know the government has pathological liar syndrome.