Obama aide defend trial for suspect in Christmas Day attempt to bomb plane

[alp227]

Source: Karen DeYoung, The Washington Post

President Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser on Sunday defended the administration's decision to try in federal court the man charged with attempting to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day and indicated that he would be offered a plea agreement to persuade him to reveal what he knows about al-Qaeda operations in Yemen.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged with the failed attempt on the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight, was initially "talking to people who detained him" but now has a public defender and "doesn't have to," John O. Brennan said on "Fox News Sunday."

"We have different ways of obtaining information from individuals" in the criminal-justice process, Brennan said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "A lot of people . . . understand what they're facing, and their lawyers recognize that there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements, we're going to pursue that." Brennan told CNN's "State of the Union" that other terrorism suspects have "given us very valuable information as they've gone through the plea-agreement process."

Brennan's tour of the talk shows -- he also appeared on ABC's "This Week" -- came as the administration tried to counter, and move out in front of, widespread criticism of intelligence systems that did not identify Abdulmutallab as an al-Qaeda operative or detect the explosive he was allegedly carrying before he boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/03/AR2010010302191_pf.html

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. "we have ways of maknig them talk"

I never thought I'd hear that from a US official. Usually they keep these things under cover.

[No Elephants]

2. Plea bargains and immunity are among the lawful ways of making people talk.

So is pretending to be on their side and/or "good cop/badd cop." Methods like those and others are routinely used on common criminals every day in every jurisdiction in the country. No need to leap immediately to dark conclusions.

[customerserviceguy]

4. Plea bargain = leniency for someone who would have taken

hundreds of lives. Bullshit.

I hope the next time some Johnny Jihad asshat tries this sort of shit, the fellow passengers who would have been his victims beat him to death on the aircraft, or train, or whatever.

[Robb]

6. Well, thank goodness you're not in charge.

We're a nation of laws. "Johnny Jihad," indeed. :eyes:

[customerserviceguy]

19. Maybe you'll be on the next plane that one of these asshats

decides to blow up. While you're apologizing to him for what the West has done to his religion, the rest of us will beat the shit out of him.

[Robb]

22. Make up more things for me to have said, why don't you?

You want to be a vigilante, move to Somalia. We have laws here.

[customerserviceguy]

24. There's a difference between a vigilante

and someone who deals with a war crime in an effective way. There's also a difference between the first two things, and a victim.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

8. Your lack of interest in actually catching terrorists is puzzling.

Offering things for turning in the gang is older than steam. What's wrong with that?

[customerserviceguy]

20. Do you really think they told this stupid asshat anything?

He's dumber than a bag of rocks, that's the main reason he couldn't pull off the detonation. He was sweating like Michael Vick at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show when he went through security in Amsterdam.

He's a spoiled rich kid who was doing something to get back at his daddy. All they told him about were his 72 virgins.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

25. "Who contacted you? Where? When? How does he look like?"

See there? Useful information.

[customerserviceguy]

39. All of which were supplied to him with phony names, no doubt

Besides, we know who's running AQ in Yemen, it was the dickheads that Bush released from Gitmo. We hired President Obama to not make the same mistakes that Bushco made, and I don't see how closing Gitmo serves that purpose.

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. Great. So, you want thousands of innocents to die.

This guy KNOWS he's looking at life in prison. We offer to cut that life to 20-30 years if he fesses up about people he knows who are involved in planning similar attacks. His deal can stop a dozen future attacks, which you don't apparently want to stop just so you can have your pound of flesh.

Who's the fucking terrorist?

You don't beat these people by making them martyrs. You beat them by psychological means, turning them back on themselves and their specious beliefs, undermining the movement to which they belong. Refusing to deal, treating them with summary execution and torture just validates everything they believe.

[customerserviceguy]

21. See my response above to what he knew

Besides, they all know that they get 72 virgins if they succeed, or a lawyer and a comfy Supermax cell if they don't. Some probably think they're going to get sprung when their buddies take over.

I can understand when jihadis attack a military target, especially one in their own land. Who on that plane, or in Detroit did this asshat any wrong?

[The Stranger]

13. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

A plea bargain is not "leniency." Get a fucking grip.

[Abq_Sarah]

18. Huh?

Of course it is. It's a promise of leniency in exchange for cooperation.

[jberryhill]

26. No

It is an exchange of certain punishment for an uncertain one.

And that's all it is. In the absence of a deal, neither a conviction nor a particular sentence is guaranteed.

Last I checked, the DoJ does not actually impose sentences after trials. The courts do.

[Abq_Sarah]

28. No

If a plea bargain were not a guarantee of a lesser punishment for negotiation and cooperation, no one would ever take it.

You can try and weasel it to make it appear that Mr underpants bomber isn't going to be offered a lesser punishment but that's exactly what is going to happen.

[jberryhill]

32. Two things...

First, a judge does not have to respect a plea deal.

Second, it is not an exchange of a "lesser punishment". In the absence of a plea deal, you get a trial. You might be found guilty, you might be acquitted for a number of reasons. Sentencing is up to the court, not the prosecutor. While the prosecutor may recommend a sentence, and there are guidelines for sentencing, it remains up to a court.

Because judges will *usually* respect a plea deal, then you have a better idea of the outcome than if you go to trial. But if you go to trial, you do not know what you are going to get.

You are confusing pleading guilty to "a lesser charge" with obtaining a "lesser punishment", and that is why you don't understand that the bargain involved in a plea deal is obtaining a more certain punishment over a less certain punishment.

Even when you agree to the charge - the court *STILL* determines what the sentence is.

[Abq_Sarah]

37. And when you plea

To a lesser charge, you receive a lesser punishment.

No need to spin this.

[jberryhill]

38. What spin? If you don't take the plea, you get a trial /nt

[Iowa]

16. This guy was going to take himself out too...

This kid planned to kill a plane-load of people, check himself out permanently in the process, and is obviously fucked up beyond anything we can imagine. This is a criminal matter, nothing more. It's akin to dealing with nut-cases and mass murder, which society has dealt with forever. It's nothing new, and there's no need for hysteria. This isn't a threat that should drive us to trash our civil liberties or become monsters ourselves. Ignore the propaganda and calm down. What Obama's aide suggested in the article is on target and completely appropriate.

[customerserviceguy]

23. If we treat it as a criminal matter

then we can expect more of it. If we treat it as war, then we begin to eliminate it.

This is war, what happened on that plane, the shoe-bomber's plane, and the 9/11 planes is naked aggression against American civilians. Maybe we have no damned business in Iraq or Afghanistan, but I expect the jihadis to take that up with our military there, if they don't like it. When they ruthlessly attack American civilians, then we have been enlisted in that war.

We can see ourselves as soldiers in that battle, or we can see ourselves as casualties. The people aboard Flight 93 figured that out rather quickly and decisively. They saved many other innocent lives as a result of their actions.

[jberryhill]

27. A war against what? Our system? Our principles?

Yes, by all means, let's get rid of them. Then, the war will be over.

I've heard of pacifists, but I've never seen anyone so forcefully advocate surrender as a strategy.

[CynicalObserver]

29. I am stunned by the attitudes of many on this site

who seem to prefer harsher measures against the US political opposition (GOP) than againt unlawful combatants attempting to do quite horrible things to the country (a successful attack over detroit would have had all kinds of catastrophic effects, and operationally the only reason it didn't succeed is equipment failure, not detection). When you hate your next-door neighbor more than the 9/11 attackers or the guy who very nearly joined them in the successful attacker list, this country is totally screwed.

I would bet the % of voters who support trying this guy as a civilian criminal case, much less cutting a 'deal' with him, is astonishing low. I don't understand where the payoff is in letting future attackers know they can get a deal too, presumably.

[jberryhill]

33. LOL - the "payoff" of a successful suicide attack is death

Yes, I'll bet there's some guy right now thinking...

"Gee, should I become a suicide bomber?"

And deciding...

"Oh, heck yeah, if I get a CRIMINAL TRIAL, then I should go for it, and blow myself up."

[CynicalObserver]

34. correct, the actual bomber's motives, being religious, are not likely to change

but the public perception of the US response is that this country is fundamentally unable to defend itself from the huge threat posed by decades of wahabbist indoctrination of young muslims all over the world.

people here would be screaming bloodl murder if a christian sunday school were taken over by weird zealots who taught children that suicide attacks were a viable form of death, etc. that other religions were inferior, if they simply reprinted the vast amount of anti-jewish propaganda and cartoons from the middle east, and all the other stuff being taught in radical mosques were instead taught in this hypothetical sunday school. Yet, change the supposed venue from a sunday school to a mosque, and everyone is worried about doing anything but attacking the problem.

[jberryhill]

35. Good golly, such cowardice....

We managed to retain what the US means in the face of a much larger and definite threat of Soviet nuclear annihilation.

We managed to retain what the US means while burning off 58,000 lives in Vietnam - orders of magnitude above and beyond what jihadi morons have accomplished in a decade.

Join the team.

Stand up for what this country is about.

Grow a pair, and stop peeing your nappies.

[CynicalObserver]

36. you clearly aren't informed about what the US 'meant' in the 1950's.

this isn't eisenhower's US. American society verges on unrecognizable. Commonly accepted practices of federal powers are things that were unthinkable then.

Your premise is flawed.

People who stand up today for what this country was about in the 50's would be banned from this site, and would be far more conservative than most republican office-holders. They would also (correctly, for the time) simply refuse to accept the notion that the federal government had the ability to in any way do much of what it has done since that time.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

40. Meaningless hawkish speech signifying precisely nothing. -nt

[groundloop]

3. Why the hell should the administration have to defend a decision to put a criminal on trial?

Damned talking heads sure must be starved for attention.

[stray cat]

5. The guy is a criminal pure and simple not a legitimate member of any armed forces

Predators don't deserve any honor

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

9. Honor? What honor? He IS being treated as a "criminal pure and simple". -nt

[fascisthunter]

14. honor has nothing to do with this

[Alcibiades]

7. We have had to release many of those who have had no trial

But those folks were captured, and sometimes only have dubious status as combatants. This is someone who tried to blow up an airliner, and, as a consequence, must be tried, if we are to uphold the principle of rule of law.

"An equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental." --Thomas Jefferson

[neverforget]

11. Absolutely amazing that in today's America, we need to defend putting

people on trial. We are a nation of laws, aren't we?

[Bonobo]

12. +1

[fascisthunter]

15. not according to some

they'd like to throw out checks and balances out of pure vengeance, making all Americans more susceptible to a totalitarian system, that when a government calls you a terrorist, you have no rights even to defend yourself.

[CynicalObserver]

31. The western criminal and civil justice system

was never designed to cope with suicide-mass murderers operating out of religious motives with survival not included in their goals. Western culture, as far as I know, has almost no experience with this internally, certainly not in the industrial age on any scale.

This is a war by militant islamists on our open culture, way of life, society, values. If the west's response is to have a civil court criminal trial on the ones that fail, allowing the successful attackers to do untold economic and social hard to the society, while making sure to search granny more throroughly, then the west has already lost, and will only keep tightening the noose and scrutiny on its own subjects in the name of fairness or not profiling.

The alternate response also reduces civil liberties and tightens the noose in other ways. Either way, the west is becoming and will continue to become a less free world in many aspects in response to the very real threat unarmed religious fanatics from islam present.

[Mz Pip]

17. We use our system of justice

to try people who are not citizens all the time. Why stop now?

[Mari333]

30. people would stop trying to bomb us if we stop terrorizing other people's countries

we have been terrorists ourselves (military industry) for so long we freak out now when someone gets mad at what we are doing.
of course the man should have a trial.