Badly-written movies or novels have predictable plots. One of the plot devices involves discovering that the main character has an "evil" twin brother who is doing all of the bad acts like robbery or murder. In today's New York Times, the story notes that the ex-aide to President G.W. Bush, Claude A. Allen, has a twin brother. Interestingly enough, this twin brother named Floyd had a history of "running into bad times."
Mr. Allen denies all charges saying it "was a mix-up concerning his credit card." Um...I don't know. You get caught trying to fraudulently return stuff you didn't bought and it's now a mix-up? I guess that when you're around G.W. Bush, Carl Rove, and Dick Cheney, you kind of forget about being the "straight and narrow" guy. Talk about bad influences...
I've been a Sci-Fi fan. I enjoyed the original trilogy of Star Wars. The prequels, however, left something to be desired...like using the Death Star to destroy Skywalker Ranch for ruining the Star Wars series. Jar Jar Binks. Enough said. Now they're going to extend the travesty by making a TV show. I hope they freeze this dud like Solo in carbonite.
It took the death of Milosovich for the UN to realize that war criminals might die and that Khmer Rouge leaders responsible for the death of nearly 1.7 million Cambodians might die also. Twenty eight years after the fact. To quote from the Reuters article:
"We all know that the possible accused all are aging, so we really have to start the process as soon as we can," Michelle Lee, the U.N.'s deputy director of the court administration preparing the trials.Considering how fast the UN operates, the critics might be right. They people responsible will die free men without ever having to face a judge. Oh, and what about Darfur, Uzbekistan, and many other places? Of course, I don't advocate hasty action, but you've got to think that 28 years is way too long.
No date has been set for the trials of the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge under whose rule an estimated 1.7 million people were killed or died of forced labor, starvation or disease between 1975 and the end of 1978.
But Halen Jarvis, the tribunal's Australian spokeswoman, said at a ceremony for the signing of an agreement on the logistics of the trials that everyone involved wanted them to start soon.
"Not only for the possible accused, but also the victims and Cambodians who are waiting for justice, everybody needs to move forward quickly," Jarvis said.
"And of course this concern is heightened by the death of Slobodan Milosevic over the weekend," she said.
With all of the emphasis on the war against terror, the United States government is focusing efforts on keeping America safe. By catching Vietnam War draft dodgers who went to Canada. Isn't that a good way to spend money? Prosecute people who dodged the draft over thirty years ago. I guess the war on terrorism has been won...
On a related note to the war on terrorism, the Moussaoui sentencing trial has been put on hold. Not because the defendant performed one of his outbursts, but because a government lawyer had improperly coached witnesses. Not that the government would purposely violate court order, a restriction commonly used in death penalty sentencing cases.
The government lawyer, Ms. Martin, e-mailed FAA witnesses because the prosecution created "a credibility gap that the defense can drive a truck through." Make sure you that hammer the fact that the carriers could have prevented all short-bladed knives from going through. Assert that the FAA "did not necessarily need to wait until we got all available information, that we acted independently, indeed we thought that we had a statutory mandate" because the defense will try to make the FAA look clueless. Oh yeah, and don't admit that the government knew of Al Qaeda plans to fly planes into buildings, despite evidence to the contrary. Here are some ways to skirt the truth...You mean that I can't do that? Oops. Sorry. My bad. I shouldn't have done that. Besides, we admitted we made a mistake and this is the second time we messed up. No harm, no foul, right? Just let the defense do a tougher cross-examination and everything will be all right...
It's too bad that they four of the seven were going to be used as WITNESSES FOR THE DEFENSE. Even the prosecution's argument is full of holes that a defense lawyer could drive a truck through, to use the government lawyer's words. The government's basic argument is as follows:
"If Mr. Moussaoui would have told us the truth about his involvment in 9/11, we would have done more to protect the airports and this tragedy could have been prevented."
OK. Let's look at the facts. The FBI and CIA were monitoring the hijackers several years before 9/11 ever occured. They had the transcripts in Arabic with the Al Qaeda members talking about this plot. The CIA and FBI just so happened to downsize the number of Arabic linguists and told the ones that remained to slack off, only because the department heads wanted more money. Basically, if the department looked like it was being overworked, the department could justify getting more money later. The entire intelligence community, put simply, messed up.
Even if they did have more latitude in intercepting phone calls, the government didn't have enough translators. If they had more information about the plot, there's a good enough possibility that the government wouldn't have stopped the plot. That's looking at the government's argument at face value. Objectively. Which, I might add, is how the President wants justices to look at the Constitution. Literally. Too many "what if's" infest the chain of logic. Too many "would have" and "could have" in the chain. Using the same chain of logic, if the CIA and FBI would have done better in processing, sharing, and using information about Al Qaeda plots, the government would have focused their priorities better and would have done more to protect the airports and this tragedy could have been prevented. Same conclusion as with Moussaoui, but with the government being involved in the chain. Two differences. The American government wasn't actively a part of Al Qaeda (though we did give money to the mujahadden that became the Taliban) and nobody is going to put government officials on trial for criminal charges...
Not that I'm saying Moussaoui doesn't deserve to go away as a free person. He deserves to go to jail for what he's done. But I am saying when it comes to the government, they're doing a good job at messing up and I wouldn't trust them when it comes to protection. Think about Hurrican Katrina and "we didn't know about the situation and if we did, we would have done better." Or any of the other messes. You can't trust the government when it comes to these things. Their record isn't that great.
That's all for now.
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