..out of the dark

(-updated below.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/us/23charity.html

In the end, one defendant, Mohammed El-Mezain, was acquitted on all but one charge, involving conspiracy, on which the jury failed to reach a verdict. A mistrial was declared on that count, and on all the other counts involving the other defendants.
(...)
"The government spent 13 years and came back empty-handed,”

This, of course, is about one of the many cases where the Bush- administration has used specially assigned terrorist hunters - or experts on muslim terrorist world caliphate conspiracies between sunni and shia groups through Teheran and Damaskus - to freeze assets helping these evil terrorists. Unfortunately - no evidence.

Thankfully, not all cases end is such humiliating circumstances, of course. Even though some still slip through due to, oh, uncharacteristic incompetence and hubristic idiocy, both in application and theory of how to conduct government:
http://thismodernworld.com/4030

Higazi first adamantly denied any involvement with 9/11 and could not believe what was happening to him. Then, he says, the investigator said his family would go through hell in Egypt, where they torture people like Saddam Hussein. Higazy then realized he had a choice: he could continue denying the radio was his and his family suffers ungodly torture in Egypt or he confesses and his family is spared. Of course, by confessing, Higazy’s life is worth garbage at that point, but … well, that’s why coerced confessions are outlawed in the United States.

So Higazy “confesses” and he’s processed by the criminal justice system. His future is quite bleak. Meanwhile, an airline pilot later shows up at the hotel and asks for his radio back. This is like something out of the movies. The radio belonged to the pilot, not Higazy, and Higazy was free to go, the victim of horrible timing. Higazi was innocent! He next sued the hotel and the FBI agent for coercing his confession.
(...)

But that’s not the end of the story. The end of the story is that all this came out in the decision in Higazy’s case, which was posted online last week. But the court apparently realized they’d made a mistake in allowing Americans to read about the threats the FBI made against Higazy’s family–so the court took down the decision, then replaced it with a version that redacted those parts, and actually called a blog which had published that section and asked them to TAKE IT DOWN. The blog said no.

I mean, really! It's not like they're asking them to just shut up because it's something embarrassing being shown about their government, that might have serious implications. I mean, and if it did, shouldn't it be the patriotic duty of everyone involved to smile genially and forget all about it? I mean, come on, it wasn't supposed to be out there in the first place, so it's not any talk about censorship.

Verily! "Not so much that I am on the side of God as that God is on my side! Oh, glorious condescension, that the Lord of heaven and earth will be on the side of His creatures! And yet, being what He is, where else should He be? Where else could He be?".

I'll say. Traitors!


addendum:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/10/25/BL2007102501344_2.html

"The Quds Force, the foreign operations branch of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, will be designated separately as a supporter of terrorism under Executive Order 13224, which Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to obstruct terrorist funding, U.S. officials said. It authorizes the United States to identify individuals, businesses, charities and extremist groups engaged in terrorism."

And so it goes.. Just so we understand what is going on here: one takes any individual, associates him or her with "affiliated" organisations to designated terror- groups. And then shoots two birds with one arrow, so to speak, in tying the nation in question with terrorism, while enabling the president to go amok with any assets currently defined as involved in the global struggle against hydras.

I hear the "coffin- industry" is blooming..