The Talk Show American

THE TALK SHOW AMERICAN: 11/19/2006 - 11/26/2006

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Five Marines may face charges in Haditha killings

Military authorities may soon charge five Camp Pendleton Marines in the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in the city of Haditha just over one year ago, according to a story Tuesday on National Public Radio that named the five men.

The radio network reported that prosecutors are weighing whether to file charges of negligent homicide or murder against the men. The five are identified in the story as Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who has since been promoted to the rank of staff sergeant, Cpls. Hector Salinas, Sanick De la Cruz and Lance Cpls. Stephen Tatum and Justin Sharratt.

Marine Corps spokesman Lt. Col. Sean Gibson said he could not confirm the radio report, which attributed its information to unnamed Pentagon sources.
"We are not making any announcements," Gibson said from his office at Camp Pendleton. "No decisions have been made."

Iraqi witnesses have contended that Marines from the 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon of Kilo Company attached to Camp Pendleton's 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment went on a rampage after one of their own was killed by a roadside bomb as the Marines passed through the city.

This summer, Wuterich made statements defending himself and the other Marines, saying the deaths occurred as the troops pursued what they believed to be enemy insurgents.

Wuterich's attorney Zaid said Tuesday that he was getting tired of unsubstantiated reports out of the Defense Department that his client and other Marines are "about" to be charged.

"The cowardly anonymous DOD sources have been saying for the last four months that charges were imminent -- so we have stopped trying to figure out when it is," Zaid said.

Tatum's attorney, Houston-based Jack Zimmerman echoed those feelings.

"People have been predicting somebody was going to get charged in this case ever since last summer -- so eventually, someone is going to be right," Zimmerman said in a phone interview late Tuesday. "Lance Cpl. Tatum did not commit any crime."


In August, Wuterich filed a lawsuit against U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., after the congressman told reporters in May that the Marines in the Haditha incident had "killed innocent civilians in cold blood." Murtha is a retired Marine colonel.

Wuterich reported that after his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb, a car full of "military-aged" men approached in a taxi. When the men ran after being ordered in Arabic to stop, the Marines shot and killed them, Wuterich stated in the complaint against Murtha.

In Tuesday's radio story, however, the network reported that investigators took photos a short time after the killings that showed all five bodies were next to the cab and no evidence that "any of them ran."

Zaid, who is representing Wuterich in the lawsuit against Murtha, said that even though the photos may show the bodies very close to the cab, that doesn't mean the men weren't fleeing.

"First of all, I don't believe any rumors coming out of the Defense Department -- I need to see the physical evidence," Zaid said. "We have no idea if anybody moved any of the bodies."

Secondly, most people have a "non-wartime" perception about what it means to say they started to run, he said. The convoy had been attacked at the time the men showed up and they failed to obey the order shouted in Arabic to get out of the car and on the ground, he said.

The Marines had no idea if the men were armed, and under the rules of engagement, once the men failed to obey orders and "started to run" -- even if only a few feet from the cab --- they could be considered hostile.

"I definitely think the rules of engagement permitted them to have fired," Zaid said.

Washington attorney Gary Meyers, who represents Lance Cpl. Sharratt, said his client was not near the cab at the time passengers were shot.

He added he is not overly concerned that charges may be filed.

"If charges are brought, charges are brought and we'll see what they are," Meyers said, adding negligent homicide should not be one of the charges.

"It's absurd to apply civilian standards of 'due care' in a combat environment," Meyers said. "Negligent homicide cannot be on the table in this setting."

In Wuterich's lawsuit against Murtha, the sergeant alleges that gunshots were heard from homes at the side of the road and that the Marines then invaded three of the houses in pursuit of what they believed were enemy combatants.

In the third house, the Marines saw a man running into the home, pursued him and killed him and three others as they "attempted to fire their weapons," the lawsuit complaint stated.

Don't Think Americans Support The Troops, The Comments Below Say Otherwise:

Samuel wrote on November 22, 2006 7:52 PM:"You know, pretty soon, at the rate they're going, they are going to try and charge every Marine who fought in combat for murder. Pathetic!"

pam wrote on November 22, 2006 9:43 PM:"hello!!!! war is ugly, if our Marines can't fight to protect themselfs then God help them bring them all home now."

Adam wrote on November 22, 2006 9:45 PM:" 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in the month of October. What's a few more here or there. During time of war people get killed If we don't like it then the president should pull our troops out of there. I have no problem with "cut and run". Let the Iraqis fix their own problems."

Cpl S. wrote on November 25, 2006 12:49 AM:
"SSgt Wuterich was one of my instructors at Marine Combat Training. I would've followed him then and now. He was calm and collected and always trying to do the right thing for we Marines. -Semper Fi"

Walter... wrote on November 25, 2006 8:15 AM:"i want some leakers doing ten to twenty, especially when the consequence of the leaks is destructive of the moral of front line troops."

Friday, November 24, 2006

Rice Beats Clinton in "Most Powerful" Poll

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the most powerful woman in the United States, but she falls short of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., with respect to presidential leadership, according to a recent poll.

A Quinnipiac University survey revealed 45 percent of voters think Rice has the most power and influence. Clinton trailed with 29 percent and House of Representatives Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., captured 23 percent.

However, when asked who is the most qualified to serve as commander in chief, Clinton topped the poll with 56 percent. Rice came in second with 50 percent approval. A full 47 percent do not think Pelosi is qualified to lead from the White House.

The poll showed Democrats split with 34 percent for Clinton, 33 percent for Rice and 30 percent for Pelosi. Republicans go with Rice by a large majority over Clinton, 60 to 22 percent, and only 15 percent for Pelosi. Independent voters back Rice at 43 percent, with 29 percent for Clinton and 24 percent for Pelosi.

Troops Abroad Proud to Serve on Holiday

From the Middle East to Central Asia and beyond, U.S. service members like Staff Sgt. Dominco Washington passed a day meant to celebrate American bounty in far-flung deployments, longing for home while focusing on their missions.

"There are times when you think it would be nice to be home, nice to be with the ones you love," Washington, of the 3rd Reconnaissance Military Transition Team, said while waiting in the dark along a wind-swept Fallujah street for a company of Marines searching houses.

"But you can't think too much about yourself, get too down and be a disruption to the other guys," said the 30-year-old, who hails from Norfolk, Va., but lives with his wife and 10-year-old daughter on a U.S. military base in Okinawa, Japan.

From their positions across Iraq's dangerous and insurgent-dominated Anbar province, more than 20,000 Marines quickly and quietly marked Thanksgiving amid their work, while trying to bring some homestyle traditions to Iraq.

There was a flag football tournament on fields of hard-packed sand that became blanketed by blinding dust whenever medical evacuation helicopters took off or landed nearby.

"Thanksgiving is food and football. That's what we do every year. It's America, even if we're in Iraq,"
said Cpl. Daniel J. English, a native of Antwerp, Ohio, in the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion.

Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter arrived in Iraq on Wednesday and visited the camp while touring several Anbar locations.

"The morale seems very good. Yes, they have thoughts of home as everybody does, but I think that they recognize the importance of their mission and many have told me that very directly and without prompting," Winter said in a lunchtime interview. "The sense that the sailors and the Marines have is that they are making progress."

In the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, there was no lack of thought for families back home among U.S. personnel at Manas Air Base.

"My wife and 5-month-old daughter, Emily, are waiting for me at home," said Air Force Capt. Karl Recksick of Cheyenne, Wyo. "I have four months left to serve, and I'll do my best to make my relatives proud."

Supporting refueling and cargo missions for U.S. operations in nearby Afghanistan is the main purpose of the base, established in 2001.

Several servicemen wearing Santa Claus hats distributed handfuls of sweets to their fellows, and military machinery was decorated with little Christmas trees and red ribbons.

In South Korea, U.S. Air Force personnel at Osan Air Base chowed down on turkey and mashed potatoes in mess halls.

Staff Sgt. Benjamin Short, 26, who fixes electronics equipment on F-16 fighter jets, said being at Osan was better than Balad, Iraq, where he spent last Thanksgiving.

"They have a lot of random mortar attacks on that base and that's frustrating. You don't know where they're going to hit," said Short, who is from Seattle. "They're more of a nuisance but they have hurt some people pretty bad."

In Iraq, special convoys delivered turkey to some of the Marines manning remote outposts, but others had to settle for the same rations as a normal Thursday.

"You get used to it, missing the holidays, because you're always gone," said Cpl. Adam Kruse of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force's Headquarters Group.

Kruse left Camp Fallujah on Wednesday for a multiple-day mission to hunt for roadside bombs and said he wouldn't have time to do much Thanksgiving celebrating. A native of Huron, S.D., he will likely still be in the field when he turns 21 Saturday.

When asked what he planned to do for his birthday, Kruse didn't hesitate: "Don't get shot."

Washington and other members of the 3rd Reconnaissance Military Transition Team were still at work near Thanksgiving's dawn, after a search mission in Fallujah's southern Nazaal district that began Wednesday night ran long.

As Americans back home prepared to offer their gratitude over heavily laden tables, Washington was focused on safety in the Iraqi desert.

"While you're here you're thankful for your team," he said. "You're thankful that all the guys with you are all right."

'Destroy America' hidden in puzzle in Teacher's Lesson

Teacher quits after placing message in word-search calling on Allah to annihilate 'evil-sponsoring U.S.'

A high-school Spanish teacher has resigned his position after placing hidden messages inside a word-search puzzle calling on Allah to destroy America, which he called the "body of evil that is making human life so miserable."

Khalid Chahhou, 35, a native of Morocco who was a first-year language instructor at Smithfield-Selma High School in North Carolina, quit after a student deciphered the anti-U.S. message which also voiced support for terrorists.

The secret message, when put together, read:
"Sharon killed a lot of innocent people in Palestine. Hamas is not a terrorist group. They have the right to defend their country. This is something that forms part of our freedom and dignity. Allah help destroy this body of evil that is making human life so miserable. Destroy America, a country where evil is sponsored."

Sophomore Chris McDaniels told the Observer the word search caught his attention because it was handwritten; they were usually typed.

"I think some of the people in the class were kind of afraid, because how the world is today, you never know with people," McDaniels said. "Even if you've known them for a while, they could turn out to be someone completely different."

His mother, Carla McDaniels, wondered how someone having what they see as extremist tendencies landed in a public class, where such views could be broadcast to students.

"With him resigning, who's to say he's not going to go to another school district to do the same thing?" she asked.

Shakil Ahmed, president of the Islamic Association of Cary, N.C., said Chahhou told him he created the puzzle when he was upset after viewing news reports of deaths of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli troops.

"He must have gone through an outburst of emotions at that time," Ahmed told the News & Observer.

Ahmed said Chahhou is a mild-mannered man, who has taught Arabic and religious studies to children at a mosque of about 200 members since he moved to the local area five months ago.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Ejected imam linked to Hamas, bin Laden

Served as spokesman for 6 Muslim clerics barred from US Airways flight

One of six Muslim imams pulled from a US Airways flight in Minneapolis last night by federal authorities is affiliated with a Hamas-linked organization and acknowledged a connection to Osama bin Laden in the 1990s.

Omar Shahin, who served as a spokesman for the clerics, is a representative of the Kind Hearts Organization, which had its assets frozen by the U.S. Treasury pending an investigation, notes Islam scholar Robert Spencer on his weblog JihadWatch

A Sept. 28, 2001, story in the Arizona Republic that said Arizona appears to have been the home of an al-Qaida sleeper cell, named Shahin as one of three part-time Arizona residents who "fits the pattern" of the terrorist group.

Shahin, identifed as being with the Tucson Islamic Center, said members of his mosque may have helped bin Laden in the early 1990s when the al-Qaida leader was fighting against the Russians.

The CIA at that time, Shahin said, called bin Laden a "freedom fighter."

"Then they tell us he is involved in terrorist acts, and they stopped supporting him, and we stopped," he said.

In the story, Shahin expressed doubt that Muslims were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks and said he "didn't trust much of what the FBI has divulged - including the hijackers' identities."

As for Al-Qaida nests in America, Shahin said, "All of these, they make it up."

Witnesses to the imam's explusion last night said some of them made anti-American comments about the war in Iraq before boarding the flight, according to Minneapolis airport spokesman Patrick Hogan.

Also, some of the men asked for seat belt extensions even though a flight attendant thought they didn't need them.

"There were a number of things that gave the flight crew pause," Hogan said.

Shahin claimed three members of the group prayed in the terminal before the six boarded the plane. Last night, however, he said they had prayed on the plane.

The imams boarded the plane individually, Shahin said, except for a blind member who needed assistance. They didn't sit together and "did nothing," he contended.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

California Court: Bloggers Can't Be Sued

State's Supreme Court said a federal law gives immunity from libel suits

The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that bloggers and participants in Internet bulletin board groups cannot be sued for posting defamatory statements made by others.

In deciding a case closely watched by free speech groups, the court said a federal law gives immunity from libel suits not only to Internet service providers, like AOL, but also to bloggers and other users of their services.

"Subjecting Internet service providers and users to defamation liability would tend to chill online speech,"
today's unanimous ruling said.

The decision is a victory for Internet free speech advocates, who warned that a contrary outcome could have affected users of newsgroups, blogs, listservs, and bulletin boards who enter those forums to discuss the views of others. A loss could even have jeopardized websites run by students to evaluate their professors, said the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in friend of court briefs.

The case involved a lawsuit against Ilena Rosenthal, a women's health activist, who created an e-mail list and a newsgroup (alt.support.breast-implant) to discuss issues related to breast implants. Six years ago, she posted a letter written by a man who was highly critical of the efforts of a doctor to discredit advocates of alternative health treatments.

In the letter, the doctor, Terry Polevoy, was accused of trying to get an alternative medicine radio program canceled by using "scare tactics, stalking, and intimidation techniques" against the program's producer. Polevy, who maintained a website himself to expose what he called "health fraud and quackery" sued Rosenthal for libel.

She argued that because she did not write the letter herself and instead posted the work of another to her newsgroup, she was immune from suit under a section of the federal Communications Decency Act, passed by Congress in 1966. It protects both Internet service providers and their users from lawsuits.

In today's ruling, the California Supreme court said that granting such broad immunity for posting defamatory statements "has some troubling consequences."

Nevertheless, the court said,
"Until Congress chooses to revise the settled law in this area" people who contend they were defamed on the Internet can seek recovery only from the original source of the statement, not from those who re-post it."


See the court document here: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S122953.PDF

The Constitution Bends in an Emergency

Torture in interrogation, open-ended detentions, sifting through domestic phone records, profiling � all the unfortunate, but arguably necessary, byproducts of keeping a nation safe from determined fanatics � are examined in "Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency."

The author, Richard A. Posner, is also a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. He has the legal community buzzing with his argument that restrictions of civil liberties are warranted whenever the benefit to be derived from those restrictions in terms of increased security outweigh the limited rights cost to society.


Within his remarkable latest tome, Posner applies his controversial balancing test to the ongoing debate over how much force the government can employ against terrorists and how much snooping it can engage in � without doing more than bend what he perceives as a necessarily malleable Constitution.

He frames his thoughts around the question of whether the U.S. is at war with terrorists or whether they are simply a particularly noxious form of political criminal.

"I argue that the terrorist threat is �sui generis' � that it fits the legal category neither of �war' nor of �crime,' Posner writes. "It requires a tailored regime, one that gives terrorists suspects fewer constitutional rights that people suspected of ordinary crimes, though not no rights."

One of his first conclusions, he describes, was recognition of "the danger in interpreting the Constitution in a way that it really makes it difficult to respond to novel threats."


Looking to the long history of the "flexible interpretation" of the nation's most hallowed document, he concludes that if U.S. judges were more knowledgeable about the terrorist threat that they "would see how the Constitution can be interpreted in a way that protects civil liberties adequately but does cripple our counter-terrorist effort."


Posner notes that the U.S. has by tradition a generalist judiciary � nothing truly resembling an anti-terrorist court the way that the French have. "[U.S.] judges at least think they know a lot about civil liberty. They don't know anything about terrorism," he says.

"[W]e have, I think, about 30,000 murders a year, and we would like maybe to reduce that number slightly," Posner says. "We want to prevent it from growing. That is the function of our current justice system. But we can't take the same approach to terrorists and say, �Well, as long as we don't have more than 5,000 people killed a year in terrorism, it's just a spike in our murder rate. We will use the same old means.' That is just wrong."


Under the traditional system in this country, Posner says, you wait for the crime to occur, and then you arrest the person � and the fact that you have caught someone has a deterrent affect on other people, as well as incapacitating the person arrested.


Posner posits that such a system is "feeble" as the strategy against terrorists, who are by nature extremely difficult to deter and in many cases suicidal. "Incapacitation is not very effective because there is this huge reserve army as potential terrorist," he opines.


There is no more sticky area than the detainees held by the U.S. Subject to certain qualifications, Posner suggests that a terrorist-suspect-detainee should have the right to insist that a regular court make the initial determination whether he can be held as a likely terrorist. If the court determines that he is, he can then be handed over to a military tribunal for trial as an unlawful combatant.

As to "torture," which can be defined somewhat arbitrarily, Posner also favors a refreshingly common-sense approach.

"It is probably better to recognize the discretion of public officials to disregard in extreme cases the prohibition against torture, or the discretion of the president to suspend habeas corpus in such case though not authorized by the Constitution to do so, than to try to codify the instances in which such conduct is allowed," Posner writes in "Suicide."


And those nettlesome phone-intercepts also fall under the Posner umbrella of common-sense balancing. He writes: "I believe that the government could, in the present emergency, intercept all electronic communications inside or outside the United States, of citizens as well as foreigners, without being deemed to violate the Fourth Amendment, provided that computers were used to winnow the gathered data, blocking human inspection of intercepted communications that contained no clues to terrorist activity."




In the end, notes Judge Posner, our judges when confronted with civil liberties issues involving terrorism, are much more likely to give way to the civil liberties concerns because that is what they know about � rather than the terrorist concerns which they don't know about.


There's no truly simple answer offered by Posner � or anyone � as the nation grapples with the unique new circumstances of existing in a world populated with fanatics who pay no attention whatever to the most fundamental rules of civilized people.


Somehow, a civilized nation with a custom of civil rights must adapt.


Unfortunately, says Posner, our justice system and institutions are ill-designed to help fight the good fight.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Dirty Bomb Scare in New Mexico

Hundreds of people were evacuated from the New Mexico State Fairgrounds Saturday afternoon after two suspicious and radioactive items were found in a parking lot.
People were told to leave their cars at the fairgrounds and were then taken by bus to a nearby shelter.

They were allowed back in to get there cars at about 8:15 p.m. nearly five hours after a pipe bomb type device and another container were found under a car parked at the fine arts building.

�One of the containers said nuclear on it,� New Mexico State Police Lt. Juan Martinez said. �The other was a pink can that said �Cobalt 57.��

The devices were about 4 inches long and were made out of metal pipe, police said.

The Albuquerque Police Department bomb squad and a New Mexico National Guard civil-support team were called in to determine what these devices were and whether they were dangerous.

Police said they tested them with a Geiger counter, and they had low radioactive emissions.

State Police determined after several hours that the pipe bomb like devices contained cobalt 57 and cesium.

The radioactive emission from the two devices was so low they were removed from the scene by hand.

State Police said they can be used for some types of medical procedures and plumbers often use cobalt 57 to look for leaks.

State Police said a criminal investigation into who left the chemicals here is ongoing.

Police said the Department of Energy did deploy a special team from Sandia National Laboratory to help recover the items.

They said the devices will be stored temporarily at Sandia until they can be destroyed.

Dem Rangel: Bring back the draft

New York congressman says he'll introduce legislation to beef up number of U.S. troops

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., the incoming chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said he will introduce legislation to reinstate the military draft, claiming U.S. forces are inadequate to face possible threats by Iran, North Korea, as well as Iraq.

"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," Rangel said today on CBS' "Face the Nation" program.

"I don't see how anyone can support the war and not support the draft," he said. "If we're going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea and then, as some people have asked, to send more troops to Iraq, we can't do that without a draft."

Rangel is a Korean War veteran who unsuccessfully sponsored legislation on conscription in the past. He said his proposal would be filed early next year.

Appearing on CBS with Rangel was Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who serves as a colonel in the U.S. Air Force Standby Reserve.

While Graham did not say a draft was the definitive way to go, he did leave open the possibility.

"I think we can do this with an all-voluntary service, all-voluntary Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy. And if we can't, then we'll look for some other option," Graham said.

Polls have shown about seven in 10 Americans oppose reinstatement of the draft, and military officials have said they don't expect to see its return.