Joe Scarborough, one of my favorite conservative pundits, has disappointed me. I like Joe because, even when we disagree, he is a plain dealer, and he is not a shouter. He gets his point across, and does it with respect.
But today on his morning show on MSNBC he was spouting the same fear mongering, and, to be truthful, cowardly baloney that has been bouncing all over both aisles of Congress, and around the punditry.
In a debate with Ed Schultz, he took the position that if one of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, was moved to a prison in, for example, Pensacola, it would make Pensacola a target for Muslim extremists.
Are you @#$%ing kidding me, Joe?
That is one of the lamest, yellow bellied, as well as unreasoned, hokey, and fallacious claims I have ever heard in my life. What, are these extremists going to somehow pull another 9/11 just so they can bust him out of jail, now that KSM is wide open in the Continental USA?
Have any of the people thinking this way actually said the words out loud to themselves before saying it on national TV? The reasoning is childish, sorry to say.
Not to mention that we have already jailed many "Muslim Extremists," most importantly, but not limited to the perpetrators of the original bombing of the World Trade Center!!!!
As of this writing, about a decade and a half after the guilty verdicts, a half dozen men are still incarcerated in the Federal Prison system, convicted in the very competent Federal Courts after prosecution from a very professional Justice Department. So far, no extremist attacks.
Also, until 9/11, there was a very peculiar fact about terrorism in the USA: the vast bulk of terrorist acts, as well as terrorist related deaths, were the result of good old, made in the USA domestic terrorists. Like Tim McVeigh. And there are tons of these guys, most of them from the KKK, White Power or such related fringe right wing movements.
Still, no extremists.
How about this: we use the very competent, very fair, very tried and true legal system we have, that is also very Constitutional. That way there is no second guessing the results, and we look like the good guys we think we are by actually living up to our ideals.
Good enough for ya?
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As I know nothing of our legal system I have some questions
ReplyDelete1: Is it possible that if these people (that being the prisoners) actually get to a court room their defense could argure that as non citizens of the US the laws would not apply? and if so then what?
2: My concern regarding moving them into our Prison system would be the terms under which they are held. Are they there for life with out porole? Or will they have a shot and being released on good behavior in 10 years?
-Fig
Thanks for the comments. And those are good questions.
ReplyDeleteHere are my best answers:
1) There is no such defense that their citizenship has any bearing on their having breached laws, either US laws or international laws. What they are entitled to under the Constitution is a trial and guilt being judged beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt. They do not have diplomatic immunity.
There could, conceivable be a problem with what crimes some people could be charged with. For instance, persons handed over to US custody by bounty hunters in Afghanistan in 2002, but who were never charged with a crime. The bounty hunter is long gone, and we have no other evidence. Then what? But a lot of people like this have already been released.
2) This would depend upon whether a given person is a) found guilty, and b) what the sentence handed down by the Court is. We have a sophisticated set of sentencing laws and guidelines. The worse the crime, presumably the worse the crime. And if it bad enough, they will never get out. But if they are not US citizens, and their sentence is up, it is likely they would be deported to their home countries at that point.