Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Bin Laden death, the lost trial & Eichman.

Tonight President Obama announced the death of bin-Laden. Much like the president who failed to bring us single payer health care, failed to close Guantanimo, failed to stop the travesties of the Bush administration, Obama has failed the American people and the people of the world with his speech. Read the article. His 2nd line states:

"Tonight, I can report to the people of the United States and the world, the United States had carried an operation that has killed Osama Bin Laden, a terrorist responsible for killing thousands of innocent people,"

Huh? Was bin-Laden tried and found guilty of bringing down the Twin Towers in a court of law? Did I miss it? Did New York or the Haigue find him guilty? I don't think so nd yet you, Mr. President, made the statement that he was "a terrorist responsible for killing thousands". President Obama, why do you disregard the law? You attended Harvard, taught law classes. You've been called a "Constitutional scholar." I am not a lawyer but my understanding is that a person is innocent until PROVEN gulity. It's not good enough for the person just to "take responsibility." Hell, there are thousands who confess every year to the police that they killed Kennedy; it doesn't mean that it's true!

Even Nazi's got a trial...and they killed 6 million jews and MILLIONS of catholics, homosexuals, gypsies, communists, and others and were part of a war machine that killed tens of millions worldwide. The Nazis were brought to trial in Nuremburg at the end of the World War II.
Many were tried in abstentia. President Obama, you remember "In Abstentia"... That's a legal term that according to the wiki means:

"In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use it usually means a trial where the defendant is not present, and pertains to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial."

Hell, even Adolf Eichman received a trial.  Eichman was a Nazi, SS Lieutenant Colonel, the highest ranking officer at Auswitz and it can be argued he was responsible for millions of deaths.  He PERSONALLY killed hundreds, if not thousands.  He received a trial in Israel, the country founded by the families of his vicitims. Many in court had been tatooed at the death camp he controlled, they had watched their families be led off to the death chambers and had suffered beyond human reasoning.

Of course, Eichman was found guilty and after his trial put to death. Israel does not have the death penalty but they do have a law demanding that perpetrators of the holocaust face the ultimate penalty.

...but is being put to death the ultimate penalty? One could argue that Eichman got off easy...he got to die. He went to sleep. Unlike his victims he did not have to live his life alone, with the constant nightmares of friends and family murdered and with their bright futures turned to dust. Their tattoo their only companion.

Eichman got off easy. Wouldn't it have been better for the victims to have been able to know that Eichman was living in solitary confinement, without his family, suffering through his remaining years in squallor and confinement. Hopefully with his own nightmares that got richer over the years. Maybe his vicitims would have wanted to visit Eichman on Rosh Hashanna, new Years, and wish him another year of suffering or Yom Kippur, to see if he had remorse. Wouldn't it have been fitting for Eichman to live year after year looking to the families of his victims for his very existance, experiencing the pity he had not showed them.

Wouldn't the victims of 9/11 appreciate a similar fate for bin-Laden?   I've heard the victims families. Wouldn't a trial be excellent.   If he would have found guility, and he probably would have since the President said so, Bin-Laden could have lived out his final years in confinement, living with his failed kidneys and the almost daily dialyis and seeing that the country he so despised did not fall. By showing justice and mercy he would have to live with a daily reminder that he had failed.

Well Mr. President, you get your Sunday evening press conference, the praise from friends and the the hurried heckling from foes. Wouldn't REAL justice have been better? Was this not the duty of the US government? Justice. Not retribution, not revenge...but justice!

Sunday, May 1, 2011

On the reported death of Bin-Laden:

Ok, who is crazier? The man who's been accused of bringing down two buildings and killing 3000 people or the president who used this act as an excuse to invade a country that had not attacked us. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died because of our timid congress acquiesced to idiot Bush. I read somewhere that a society can be judged by it's treatment of it's prisoners. We've failed: we torture, hold foreign citizens without trial, assassinate with impunity, constrict religious freedom of our prisoners and lock up US citizens up without trial and in torturous conditions like WhistleBlower Private Manning.

The US is better than this...or at least it should be. This so called War on Terror is a waste of resources & lives. Worse, it's a distraction from the problems at home. We need real health care, the best infrastructure in the world, a free education for all and, most importantly, public funding of elections to get our representatives off the corporate teet that has wrecked our republic.