American Caught With Taliban Seeks Review of 20-Year Term

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 - Lawyers for John Walker Lindh, the young American captured in Afghanistan after joining the Taliban and now serving a 20-year prison sentence, called on the Justice Department on Friday to review his case in light of the department's announcement this week that it might soon free another American captured with the Taliban.

"We hope that the government gives Mr. Lindh the same reconsideration they have extended to Mr. Hamdi," the lawyers said in a statement, referring to Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi who is expected to be released soon to return to his family in Saudi Arabia.

Justice Department officials had no immediate comment on the statement.

Mr. Lindh, a convert to Islam who is now 23, was sentenced to 20 years in prison as a result of a plea agreement reached in July 2002.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/14/politics/14detain.html

[skooooo]

1. Suck it up, Johnny Walker.

I don't have much sympathy for him.

[Tellurian]

5. How about letting Johnny speak...

I want to know what John knows..

Why have they locked him up and thrown away the key?

[CarolynEC]

2. Let him stew a while

He grows up in arguably the best circumstances ever offered on this planet... white, male, child of reasonably well-off parents, educated, healthy, countless opportunities awaiting...

... and he throws in with the mysogynist, medieval primatives of the Taliban?

The hell with him.

[Cronus Protagonist]

4. Aww c'mon - he fell in love with a fighter and was brainwashed

Two sides to every story. He was probably only there to do the dishes and provide "warmth" at night.

SHOVE IT! - Drop Bush Not Bombs! - Hero Kerry AWOL Bush
http://brainbuttons.com/home.asp?stashid=13

[AtTheEndOfTheDay]

3. I think he deserves a second chance

Almost everybody deserves one. The kid was screwed. If Georgie hadn't decided to start a war just to capture an outlaw he' d be happily doing his Afghanistan thing instead of doing 20.

[Pastiche423]

6. I agree

I think he should be set free.

[Xithras]

9. "doing his Afghanistan thing"?!?!?!?

Ah yes, beating women in the streets, executing people in public parks for selling the wrong kind of music, blowing up ancient irreplaceable statues...yeah, that whole "Afghanistan thing" was a real kick, how dare we interrupt his fun :eyes:

IMO, the Taliban are just modern day Nazi's, complete with their own homegrown version of the Final Solution. Little Johhnieboy willingly flew over there, pledged himself to their ideals, and joined their movement and army. Let him ROT for all I care. No tolerance for intolerance.

[Almost_there]

12. He does deserve a second chance...

He deserves a second 20 year sentence. Seriously, he wasn't "washing dishes" and providing "warmth at night". Perhaps he might have caught on to the fact that he had an automatic rifle, grenades, and was learning how to kill infidels.

Before September 11, Afghanistan was known as a hot vacation spot for those wishing to.. what?? Learn how to grow opium? Comb through Russian military debris? Let's not sugar coat this, shall we? He went to Pakistan to learn of Islam, fine. All cool with that. However, he then went to Afghanistan to learn the oppressive ways of the Taliban and how to kill Americans and others. Sorry, that says "Traitor" in my book, and the dude is lucky they didn't buy a $1.50 length of rope for him to swing by. That is the punishment for being a traitor, right?

Second chance? Yes, he got one when he confessed and spilled his guts. He saw what was going on, he knew what he was doing.

~Almost

[neverborn]

7. No. He is a TRAITOR.

[Pastiche423]

8. How is he a traitor?

When he joined the Taliban, they were our buds.

[geek tragedy]

10. His lawyers fucked him over.

Do you think those torture allegations would have been more powerful after the Abu Ghraib pictures?

[eridani]

11. Traitor? No fawking way!

His only crime was to have been born 10 years too late. It is a travesty that he is in jail while the following folks are running around loose.

http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Archive/CIA_Created_Osama.htm

According to Ahmed Rashid, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, in 1986 CIA chief William Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI proposal to recruit from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. At least 100,000 Islamic militants flocked to Pakistan between 1982 and 1992 (some 60,000 attended fundamentalist schools in Pakistan without necessarily taking part in the fighting).

John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC television network and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, has revealed that Muslims recruited in the US for the mujaheddin were sent to Camp Peary, the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where young Afghans, Arabs from Egypt and Jordan, and even some African-American “black Muslims” were taught “sabotage skills”.

The November 1, 1998, British Independent reported that one of those charged with the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Ali Mohammed, had trained “bin Laden's operatives” in 1989.

These “operatives” were recruited at the al Kifah Refugee Centre in Brooklyn, New York, given paramilitary training in the New York area and then sent to Afghanistan with US assistance to join Hekmatyar's forces. Mohammed was a member of the US army's elite Green Berets.

These camps, now dubbed “terrorist universities” by Washington, were built in collaboration with the ISI and the CIA. The Afghan contra fighters, including the tens of thousands of mercenaries recruited and paid for by bin Laden, were armed by the CIA. Pakistan, the US and Britain provided military trainers.

Tom Carew, a former British SAS soldier who secretly fought for the mujaheddin told the August 13, 2000, British Observer, “The Americans were keen to teach the Afghans the techniques of urban terrorism — car bombing and so on — so that they could strike at the Russians in major towns ... Many of them are now using their knowledge and expertise to wage war on everything they hate.”

[Voltaire99]

13. "I'm just an American boy raised on MTV..."

"And I've seen all those kids in the soda pop ads
But none of 'em looked like me"

--John Walker's Blues

http://www.steveearle.net

[Tellurian]

14. No, that was Powell. John Lindh was in Astan when Powell gave $13M

as a gesture of good will to feed starving Stanis before they carpet bombed them..Or was the $13M a down payment to Bin Laden?

Lindh has a fantastic lawyer..Brosnahan-

"A lawyer for Mr. Lindh, James J. Brosnahan, said in an interview that a decision to release Mr. Hamdi should prompt discussions in the Justice Department over whether Mr. Lindh deserved similar treatment.

"We're not today saying exactly what we're going to do,'' Mr. Brosnahan said, "but this is a situation in which there's an enormous disparity, and basic fairness would conclude that the department ought to take a look at this."

He said Mr. Lindh had received especially harsh treatment because of the timing of his capture, which occurred within three months of the Sept. 11 attacks.

"It was sort of a ferocious reaction to him, which in human terms is understandable but in terms of fairness is not understandable," the lawyer said."

[Bo]

15. Bushy sucking Saudi *****

nothing new here...if your saudi your free to do as thou wilt.

[wolfgirl]

16. Maybe he

is a traitor..maybe not. From my perspective, he didn't stand a chance of getting a fair trial so he took a plea. Who wouldn't have. He was stupid...yes he grew up privileged and he took off around the world in search of himself and ended up with the Taliban. Look back on yourself, how many of us can honestly say we have never hooked up with a bad group or taken on a cause that a little age/wisdom has now taught us was wrong or just plain stupid.

As I get older and watch my children in their late teens, I've reflected back on my youth and found there a lots of instances where I came awfully close to making a serious mistake. I see my children, they are as idealistic and sure about their beliefs now as I was then. It takes experience and exposure to the world for us to learn; this young man, I believe, got caught up in something so far away from his experience that he got lost and trapped. Kinda like getting caught up in a cult. Once they have encircled you, how do you get away? And the younger you are when snared, the harder it is to find the truth and break away.

Again, I don't know. Maybe he is a traitor, but we the public have not been shown all the facts, so I refuse to judge him.

[daleo]

17. Had he been killing Russians for Islam and the Taliban 15 years ago

He would have been be hailed as a hero by the American authorities. Nobody cared then about women's rights in Afghanistan.

Given the disclosures about torture by U.S. interrogators, one wonders how much of his testimony was given under duress.