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Jacob Sullum shuttles Ali al-Marri to criminal court and takes notice of the worried-looking Republicans gawking along the way.

Comments

jon | June 13, 2007, 8:38am | #

"With the Bush administration winding down and the strong possibility of a Democrat in the White House come January 2009, perhaps Republicans will begin to see the wisdom of this warning."

They'll probably see the wisdom at about the time some of our troops are getting enhanced interrogation techniques administered by North Koreans, Chinese, or Iranian intelligence agents. To the Republicans, power is something only they have. No one else has any, so why worry?

Grant Gould | June 13, 2007, 8:54am | #

jon -- admitting that anyone else might ever have power at any point in the remainder of history is a lack of resolve which will send a message to our enemies that nothing stands in their way to create 9/11 times one hundred!

To escape utter and humiliating dhimmitude at the hands of our enemies, we must resist the stab in the back at the hands of domestic traitors who are enabled by any openness on our part to notice any features of observable reality whatsoever.

Or something like that.

James Ard | June 13, 2007, 8:59am | #

I hope the trial doesn't turn into another Moussaoui circus. Even so, civil trials, no matter how ugly, are probably the best option for these guys. But the judges have to be careful with the intelligence. And the feds should be allowed a little detention time for a thorough evaluation of the guy.

thoreau | June 13, 2007, 9:00am | #

A friend of mine who's pro-life and usually very conservative said that he's confounded by his pro-life friends who support this stuff. He observed that if the feds still have these powers when there's a Democrat in the White House, and a bomb goes off at an abortion clinic, all sorts of people could find their names on lists, people who had voted for Bush and supported his infringements of civil liberties.

Warren | June 13, 2007, 9:06am | #

thoreau,
Wielding power against people doing good would be as unconscionably wrong as failing to wield it against people doing bad.

thoreau | June 13, 2007, 9:11am | #

I'm not sure what point you're getting at, Warren, since your response was confusingly worded, and I don't see how it follows what I said.

My point was that, as Jacob said, I suspect a lot of conservatives will regret this if there's a Dem in the White House. I don't want them to get that karma bite in the ass, but I fear that they will. And, for the record, my friend wasn't saying that his friends are violent. He's saying that, just as after 9/11 a lot of innocent people got their names put on lists, if there's an abortion clinic bombing a lot of innocent people who fit a somewhat different profile will get their names on lists. And he fears that.

Son of a! | June 13, 2007, 9:19am | #

I hope the trial doesn't turn into another Moussaoui circus.

The real question to ponder is: Will there even be a trial, or does double-jeopardy apply here? From the PDF of the decision:

The Government then returned al-Marri to Peoria and he was re-indicted [in the proper venue] on the same seven counts, to which he again pleaded not guilty. ... On the following Monday, June 23, before that hearing [on pre-trial motions] could be held, the Government moved ex parte to dismiss the indictment....

...

The federal district court in Illinois granted the Government's motion to dismiss the criminal indictment against al-Marri. ...

Ken | June 13, 2007, 9:22am | #

"A friend of mine who's pro-life and usually very conservative said that he's confounded by his pro-life friends who support this stuff."
Thoreau, I'm afraid you friend is a minority among pro-life conservatives, who usually eat this authoritarian shit with a spoon. I suspect its part of the orthodox religious spirit (God does not endorse the Good because it is Good, it is Good cuz God endorses it, so you just let the authorities tell ya what is right and then your rightness is measured by how zealously you adhere to that command).

jf | June 13, 2007, 10:38am | #

There are a lot of pro-life conservative atheists who think you are an idiot, Ken.

R C Dean | June 13, 2007, 1:00pm | #

They'll probably see the wisdom at about the time some of our troops are getting enhanced interrogation techniques administered by North Koreans, Chinese, or Iranian intelligence agents.

The ignorance embodied in this statement is truly astounding. How anyone can believe that the North Koreans, Chinese, or Iranians would refrain from torture if only we were nicer is truly beyond comprehension.

rm2muv | June 13, 2007, 3:20pm | #

R C Dean;
How anyone can believe that the North Koreans, Chinese, or Iranians would refrain from torture if only we were nicer is truly beyond comprehension.

What passes beyond all understanding is your desire that we DO engage in torture so that we might join the ranks of the North Koeans, Chinese, and Iranians. Most Americans do not want our country to engage in torture because it is immoral, and because it gives aid and comfort to those nations that would gladly employ such tactics. How can one find torture of our own loved ones abhorrent and yet support its use against others?

isildur | June 13, 2007, 3:21pm | #

"There are a lot of pro-life conservative atheists..."

ORLY?

dhex | June 13, 2007, 10:43pm | #

isildur: i dunno if i'd say "a lot" but i've definitely met some.

"How can one find torture of our own loved ones abhorrent and yet support its use against others?"

people have a remarkable capacity for cruelty against "evil." and a remarkable blindness for that capacity, as well.

Terence Nugent | June 14, 2007, 4:50pm | #

Court decisions like this are early indicators, along with the 61% of Americans who favor a President from Al Qaeda in America (aka the Democratic party) that the US will lose the war on terror. The decisive tactic will be nuclear terror aided and abetted by constitutional lawyers, unless Al Qaeda dies laughing at its foolish enemies, us.

Consider the ramifications of this defeat, which involves meeting Al Qaeda's initial terms of surrender, which are as follows:

1. End US support for Israel
2. Remove all US military presence on the Arabian peninsula (presumably this willl extend to naval presence in the Gulf)
3. End US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan
4. End US support for Russian, Chinese, and Indian opposition to Islamic jihadis
5. End pressure on Arab oil suppliers to keep oil prices low
6. End US support for secular government in predominantly Islamic countries

What this means to us is skyrocketing oil prices, dealing with a nuclear-armed Islamic caliphate fueled by petrodollars that will eventuially demand our conversion to Islam on pain of nuclear annihilation, another holocaust in Israel, nuclear world war, and other "inconveniences".

Is this worth the preservation of legal freedoms for a murderer?

Libertarians have to realize that the only choice we have in a jihadi-infested world is whether we will be enslaved by an Islamic caliphate ot a secular military dictatorship. Pick your poison. I prefer the latter, thank you very much.

MacnFLA | June 14, 2007, 5:07pm | #

I sometimes think these Reason correspondents are just the literay equivalent of a common shit stirer. More like a Jerry Springer, bring controversy to get visceral feedback. Sullum can't really believe that these raghead terroists are deserving of humane treatment!
What's it gonna take, another 9/11? Torture them all, save 6 for pallbearers