People! The Bush Administration cares about your security! Our Leaders
TM are doing everything possible to rid our streets of Those Who Would Threaten Our Way Of Life
TM! We have used wisely our Tools In The Fight Against Terra
TM, to bring to inevitable justice the Enemies Of All Who Love Freedom
TM (which is on the march, by the way)!!
<cue calliope music>
Ladies and Gentlemen, if ever you had any doubts about the capability of this Administration to wage a War On TerraTM, you need look no further. The state of two - count `em, two - government prosecutions will tell you all you need to know about the clowns in charge of our tragically inept domestic battles in the WOT.
[WARNING: The following accounts may lead to severe skepticism of the ability of the federal government to protect you from ANY threat, foreign or domestic, real or imagined.]
In the Zacarias Moussaoui case, government prosecutors are
facing potential criminal charges for illegally tainting witnesses, in hopes of propping up a case against the so-called "20th Hijacker"
TM.
"I don't think in the annals of criminal law that there has ever been a case with this many significant problems," [presiding U.S. District Judge Leonie M.] Brinkema said.
Whoops! Hey! How many TSA lawyers can you fit in that Volkswagen Beetle, anyway? Wow, they just keep on comin'!
The official at the center of the furor is Carla J. Martin, who until last weekend was a senior Transportation Security Administration lawyer.
At a hearing before the judge Tuesday, half a dozen prospective FAA witnesses described how Martin repeatedly violated the judge's written order against shaping witness testimony or allowing them to see transcripts of trial sessions. They said she sent them copies of the prosecution's opening statement and pointed out errors that she thought made the FAA look less than diligent in the days before the Sept. 11 attacks. [ . . . ]
Matthew Kormann, a TSA intelligence liaison officer, said Martin had instructed him not to obey a subpoena by the defense or agree to be one of its witnesses. He said he then told the defense he would not testify during its side of the case, even as a "hostile witness."
D'oh!
Meanwhile, back at Ground ZeroTM for the Next Big Terrorist AttackTM - uh, that would be Lodi, California, for those of you who didn't get that memo - our intrepid Terra BustersTM are hard at work, skillfully crafting a case against two of the top brains behind the Imminent ThreatTM to Our DemocracyTM, one Umer Hayat, an ice-cream truck driver, and his son, Hamid.
Seems that the chief witness against Messrs. Hayat, a Mr. Naseem Khan, was convinced that he spotted Al Qaeda's No. 2 man, Ayman Zawahiri, in a Lodi mosque in 1998 and 1999. Given, of course, how many times during our Struggle Against Violent ExtremistsTM we have killed Al Qaeda's No. 2, it is not surprising that No. 2 would have shown up all over the map at various times, particularly during those wanton Clinton years.
Khan, after alerting the FBI in 2001 to Zawahiri's visits, was paid more than $200,000 to act as an informant on the Muslim community in Lodi, a sleepy community in California's Central Valley where midsummer temperatures routinely soar to above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Investigators have not said how much of that money was needed for Khan to successfully get an incriminating Bomb PopTM from ice-cream vendor Hayat into the hands of federal agents before the evidence melted.
Knowing they had the best testimony money could buy, investigators paid little heed to those Lodi residents who would Give Aid And Comfort to The EnemyTM:
[T]he Pakistani community of farmworkers, welders and truck drivers, many of whom have lived in Lodi for generations, reacted to the reports that one of the world's most notorious terrorists may have lived and worshiped here with a mixture of outrage and disbelief that the government would take the testimony seriously.
"What would he be doing here? We are Pakistani," said shop owner Mohammed Shoaib. "If there were an Egyptian speaking Arabic somebody would have seen him." Most of the estimated 2,500 Muslims in Lodi speak Urdu or Pashto, two major Pakistani languages.
"The FBI should know better," Shoaib said. "We don't know what is coming next. Maybe he'll say he saw Osama [bin Laden] in Lodi or Stockton."
The government is hoping that its case against the Hayats is rock-solid and not Sof-ServeTM, what with Khan's testimony and the NSA's patented, foolproof Spying On Ice-Cream Truck Drivers Here So We Don't Have To Buy Ice Cream There And Drive It HomeTM domestic surveillance program. Recent prosecutions in the War on TerraTM have had less-than-optimum results:
Elsewhere, prosecutorial missteps have prompted judges to toss out convictions, and several juries have sided with the accused. Jurors acquitted a Florida college professor whose support of a Palestinian group prompted a terrorism indictment, while a case flopped against an Idaho computer science student facing prison time for designing a website that included information on terrorists.
Do you know how hard it is to get these Big ShoesTM off when you're going through airport security? I wonder if these government prosecutors in the War on TerraTM have a special pass, or something?