On Tue, 08 Jul 2003 19:42:15 -0400, Art Clemons <artclemons@no-spam> wrote:
[...]
> Even
>Nixon would not have dared to grab a US citizen and hold that citizen
>as a non-combatant indefinitely without judicial review. Believe me I
>remember the Chicago 7 trial, and I note that the trial came about in
>part because the Justice Dept got a pro-prosecution federal judge, who
>ignored questions of evidence and Constitutional rights. That seems
>like a major improvement compared to now.
This presupposes that his actions wouldn't have been just as punitive
if he had faced terrorist controlled jets crashing into the tallest
buildings in NYC
and their subsequent collape, another jet crashing and burning
into the Pentagon. And yet another jet possibly destined for
the Capital Bldg or White House, crashing and burning in western
PA. He didn't face any of those
challenges. How would he have behaved I wonder when he had
things like enemies list from which sprang the entire Watergate
debacle.
KByrd
Karen Y Byrd wrote:
> This presupposes that his actions wouldn't have been just as punitive
> if he had faced terrorist controlled jets crashing into the tallest
> buildings in NYC
> and their subsequent collape, another jet crashing and burning
> into the Pentagon. And yet another jet possibly destined for
> the Capital Bldg or White House,
Actually, even Tricky richard wasn't silly enough to arm potential
terrorists in large numbers and turn them loose with weapons, some
training and more importantly training in subterfuge and noticing
weaknesses. That was Raygun's or his handler's role with bin Laden and
the dear people of Afghanistan. I'm not discounting our "ally"
Pakistan's role in this either, but Sept 11th could never have happened
if the US hadn't funded, partially trained and provided weapons to
drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Then a bunch of radical folk
were left to stew, continue training others and with a whole stirred up
region to hide in. I'm also neglecting the role of the Saudi's in this
even if Bush et al deny any Saudi involvement. At the very least they
turned a blind eye to funding of bin Laden for a long period of time as
well as funding fundamentalist schools.
I also repeat that if al Queda had not been more interested in immediate
bang for the buck, it could have produced a constitutional nightmare
for the US by waiting until the night of the state of the Union address
in 2002, and crashing four planes into the Capitol Bldg. The 2001
speech featured all of the folks in line for the presidency, most of
both branches of Congress and several Supreme Ct justices too. It's
still unclear under the Constitution what happens when most of Congress
is wiped out. Admittedly a new Senate could be gotten together by
appointment of the various and sundry governors, and whoever was
President pro-tem could become president, but what would happen in the
meantime? A little more patience and we would still be really
recovering from the result in more ways than one.