August 16, 2007

Cognitive Dissidents

I'm very happy that Jose Padilla was just convicted on all counts in federal court today. I'm glad that -- barring a successful appeal -- he'll spend the rest of his life behind bars.

But I'm not pleased with the continuing cognitive dissonance within the elite media, as they prosecute their unfathomable war against global intelligence gathering. To see the absurdity you must swallow to be an anti-military tribunal liberal, read on:

Neal Sonnett, a prominent Miami defense lawyer who heads an American Bar Association task force on treatment of enemy combatants, said the verdict proves that the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is unnecessary to deal with terrorism suspects.

"This verdict once again demonstrates that federal courts are perfectly capable of handling terrorism cases," Sonnett said.

Note that Neal Sonnett is the only legal expert cited in this entire article; he thus stands as the voice of the media. The thrust of his argument is that, since Padilla was eventually tried in federal court and convicted, therefore we don't need military tribunals... the federal court system can handle all terrorist prosecutions.

But wait, let's add the very next paragraph:

Neal Sonnett, a prominent Miami defense lawyer who heads an American Bar Association task force on treatment of enemy combatants, said the verdict proves that the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is unnecessary to deal with terrorism suspects.

"This verdict once again demonstrates that federal courts are perfectly capable of handling terrorism cases," Sonnett said.

The charges brought in civilian court in Miami were a pale shadow of those initial dirty bomb claims in part because Padilla was interrogated in a military brig and was not read his Miranda rights.

In other words, assuming the federal authorities were not simply lying (which I suspect is what AP and most other members of the drive-by media believe)... we had good evidence that Padilla specifically came here to carry out a "dirty-bomb" attack -- that is, an explosive device wrapped with a dangerously radioactive shell to create "dirty" shrapnal. But we couldn't use it, because (a) we obtained it from highly classified sources that could not be jeopardized by being introduced at trial; in addition, (b) we confirmed the accusation via Padilla himself admitting it... but we couldn't use that, either -- because we didn't allow him to have an attorney present, directing his response to every question.

We know (a) that we had evidence of the dirty-bomb charge before Padilla's capture, else why would we have nabbed him and talked about a dirty-bomb in the first place? (Unless, again, one begins by believing that everything the Bush administration says is a lie.)

And we know that AP believes, rightly or wrongly, that (b) Padilla confessed to the dirty-bomb charge; if not, why would his non-Miranda-ization even matter? The Miranda rule only covers evidence obtained at least in part by statements made by the defendant.

Thus AP believes that there was evidence of a dirty-bomb attack that we could not, for various reasons, use in federal court. So thank God he also committed other crimes that were more easily prosecuted!

However, other terrorists may be more clever than Padilla and his co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi; they may not leave a trail that can be followed by a normal criminal investigation -- subject to all the normal limitations on the collection of evidence; but which can be tracked by the use of expanded intelligence operations that could not be introduced in federal court, either because they violate some right guaranteed to ordinary criminal defendants or because introducing them as evidence would expose covert sources, methods, and technology. Such exposure allows other terrorists to elude capture by the same means.

In ordinary criminal trials, we accept the fact that a certain percent of guilty defendants will get off "on a technicality." We even say things like "better a hundred guilty defendants go free than a single innocent defendant be wrongly convicted." And what is the consequence of the guilty going free? So there will be a bit more crime, a few more robberies... even, sadly, a few more murders. But nothing with the potential to shred the very fabric of society.

This philosophy works exellently well... when the primary purpose of the judicial system is to punish transgressors who get caught and to deter others by the threat of punishment.

But where national-security is concerned, we are much less concerned with punishing the guilty than protecting society from dangerous people. Nor does deterrence factor into the equation when dealing with attackers who expect to die during their crime... as Cal Thomas put it, fanatics "who see death as a promotion." (Ralph Peters repeatedly uses the line, but Cal had it first.)

Especially in the current environment of existing weapons of mass destruction, just one of those guilty defendants who go free could later set off a bomb that kills tens of thousands (as would have happened on September 11th, 2001, if the Twin Towers had fallen immediately), drive the economy into recession or depression, lead to wars where more tens of thousands must die, possibly split us from our allies, and even lead to draconian security laws here in the United States that suspend actual civil liberties.

The enormity of letting guilty hirabi terrorists go free "on a technicality" vastly outweighs the abrrogation of any putative "rights" those terrorists may claim.

Of course, this puts a great responsibility onto the Executive, who must honestly and to the best of his ability distinguish actual terrorists from innocents caught in a web of suspicous-looking circumstances... and even from terrorist wannabes who don't really do anything but shoot off their big mouths, like Ward Churchill or most of those teenaged imbeciles who march around at "peace" rallies carrying Hezbollah flags.

Even when tribunals are conducted entirely by the Executive, they must include adequate safeguards against wrongful conviction; thus I support in theory the Hamdan case... but I think the Court went too far down the road of demanding that those who violate the Geneva Conventions themselves be offered the protections of Geneva. But clearly, we were unable to try Padilla in federal court for the most serious charge of plotting a radiological attack in New York City... because of the restrictions inherent in trying people in ordinary, civilian court.

And even the elite media agrees -- despite simultaneously trying to argue the opposite.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 16, 2007, at the time of 3:31 PM

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(Scroll for updates) Jose Padilla was found guilty today of federal terrorism support charges including such wonderful things as conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas. Isn’t that fun? I feel sorry for him already, that poor terror... [Read More]

Tracked on August 16, 2007 6:21 PM

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