Walker not to be charged with treason

treeman,

I really don't think it played a part here, I'm just saying I can understand why someone would believe that.

 

....and the hits just keep on coming. I swear, since all this happened I've lost so damn much respect for some of the people on this board. Not like that matters or anything.

I can't believe the racial insinuations. Go play your race cards elsewhere.

 

I think its sick how some people jump all over any chance they can get to declare racism.

You know us white folks. We just love killing minorities.

Please.

 

To be a traitor, I believe you should be American first.

Walker is Taliban, not American.

Treat him like Taliban.

That is all.

 

Treason, from CNN:

Oh yeah and if he were a brown man, an American of arab decent....WHOooooSH! Cmon, thats a pretty obvious situation. He'd be more f*cked than he is now. there would be riots, hate crimes, all that...instead he has big brown American puppy dog eyes. His daddy will get him a good lawyer etc...

Article III, Section 3:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

("Attainder of treason" referred to a practice in Europe at the time of impoverishing, ostracizing and banishing a traitor's family and descendants.)

Aaron Burr
Aaron Burr -- third vice president of the United States, 1801-05, planned a Mexican "empire," 1807.

Sidelined politically and embittered after he killed archrival Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804, Burr conspired with Gen. James Wilkinson to invade Mexico and establish an empire.

Wilkinson turned him in, and Burr was tried for treason in 1807, based on an accusation that his empire was to include parts of the western United States. Chief Justice John Marshall, who acquitted Burr, said that to prove treason, "war must actually be levied against the United States ... conspiracy (to levy war) is not treason."

Thomas W. Dorr
Thomas W. Dorr -- Rhode Island rebel, 1841-42.
Dorr is the only man to be convicted of treason against a state, Rhode Island. He led an uprising against Gov. Samuel King because the state was still adhering to its pre-Revolutionary constitution, and had not enfranchised non-property owners or established a bill of rights. His supporters elected him governor in 1842 in an extralegal convention, and for a while Rhode Island had two administrations. King had him tried and sentenced to life imprisonment for treason in 1844. The same year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the conviction against claims that one could not commit treason against a state. Dorr was pardoned in 1845, and his reforms were soon adopted.

Max Haupt
Max Haupt -- Father of a saboteur, 1942.
Haupt was the father of Herbert Haupt, one of eight Nazi saboteurs convicted by a military tribunal in 1942, and one of six executed. The elder Haupt was charged in 1943 with treason for "giving aid and comfort" to the enemy because he had harbored his son in his Chicago apartment, bought him a car and found him a job, knowing that he planned sabotage.

Max Haupt didn't dispute the facts -- it was he who had volunteered the information to the FBI in a fruitless attempt to show that his son was manipulated by others. Instead, the father argued that he had committed the "commonplace, insignificant and colorless" acts of a father. A jury convicted Haupt in 1944, but recommended mercy; he was spared death, and was sentenced to life.

Upholding the conviction in 1947, Supreme Court Judge Robert Jackson said: "It is argued that Haupt merely had the misfortune to sire a traitor ... the jury apparently concluded that the son had the misfortune of being a chip off the old block."

Tomoya Kawakita
Tomoya Kawakita, the tormentor who came home, World War II.
Kawakita, born in California, went to Japan in 1939 when he was 18 to visit his grandfather. He stayed, never renouncing his U.S. citizenship. He was employed as an interpreter with a Japanese nickel company. He was never conscripted, but Japanese authorities used him as an interpreter in a prisoner of war camp.

He readily joined in the abuse of American prisoners, "going beyond any conceivable duty of an interpreter," according to the U.S. Supreme Court. He beat some, pushed another into a cesspool and forced the obviously ill into hard labor.

After the war, he re-registered as a U.S. citizen and returned home. His former victims, who knew him as "Meatball," spotted him and turned him in, and he was sentenced to death for treason in 1952.

President Eisenhower commuted his sentence to life in 1953.

 

So all of you people saying that if Walker wasn't a white guy, that he'd be in deep ****, are you guys saying that this is a bogus excuse by the government?

That if suddenly Walker was not white, they'd have enough evidence to convict him of treason?

It's not like anyone's sympathizing for the guy, I doubt many white people are like, "Well you know, he's one of us, hell it's not that bad to be fighting with a group of people that supported thousands of Americans dying. Let's let bygones be bygones."

Please...

 

If he were only a taliban fighter, I would say treason would be much harder to say (though I would still call it that). But the fact is, he is also claiming to be a member of Al Qaeda...that organization DID DECLARE WAR AGAINST THE U.S. in 1998. So he, as a U.S. citizen, was part of an organization that declared war on the U.S. and subsequently attacked the U.S. It matters not that he was not one of the jackasses who slammed a plane against the side of a building.

As a lawyer, we often get very nitpicky about definitions. We advise our clients all the time that there is a legal reality and a practical reality, all the time. I don't think the Attorney General is real excited about giving any Taliban fighters a break by encouraging them to testify against Walker...and he'd need 2 of them to do it...This is another one of those situations where the legal reality is it is burdensome (and undesirable in this case) to carry out a case for treason...but that doesn't change the fact that, practically speaking, we all know he's a treasonous b*stard. I'm trying hard to forgive him on my own...but it's a bit difficult.

 

Must be a downer for the hardliner types that since the media is following the case that unlike the other Al Qaeda they can't just turn Walker over to the Northern Alliance, our proxy torturers, for what is called "interrogation". Makes it hard to arrange "accidents" in prison, too-- at least in the short run.

Another pain is that since Walker is a middle class American who joined Al Qaeda, it makes it difficult to maintain the myth that per se all members of Al Qaeda are subhuman and deserve to be assassinated without any legal process whatsoever just because they are members of the organization.

Since we can identify with Walker and can see that he was a nice person growing up and a miguided idealist who might change his opinions in the future, some might even be tempted to the heresy that this might also be true about some of the other young men who joined Al Qaeda even if they aren't from the US.

Once you get into that you might have to come to more nuanced conclusions as to what to do with all the diferent types of prisoners.

 

Revoke his citizenship and try him in a military tribunal. Or just assassinate his ass. Bush ok'd that in a reversal of the executive order from the Ford administration, right? Give the f***** a cigarette and a blindfold and a bullet in the head. Or put him in a cage with 10 or 20 NYPD/FDNY personnel. Walker deserves a little coal miners glove battle royale with cheese.

 

I can gurantee you he'll be segregated. And as for your faint hope of him having some type of "accident"; don't bet on it. Leastways not for a long time. He's too high profile..... Suicide is a possibility, but I have my doubts on it. That's against his religion, isn't it?

But your are correct in your assumption that he's f*cked, but probably not for life though. A name change...some plastic surgery and he might end up as your next door neighbor and you wouldn't have the slightest clue.

 

I think DaD hit on something important here....the United States hasn't officially declared war on Afghanistan. I think that not declaring a war formally was a huge mistake and will come back to bite the Bush admin. in the ass.

How? It is one thing to avenge an act of war against this country and another thing to play global police. Now a bad situation gets progressively worse as the United States finds itself involved in campaigns in countries where they suddenly have concrete reasons to harm ours.

I like Bush, voted for him and think he's (more or less) doing a good job in the White House. I think he's nuts if he believes that he can show up with the military everywhere there are terrorists.

 

We're not fighting Afghanistan. We are fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda, who did not belong there in the first place.

As for the rest of the nations, it depends on if they let us in and clean them out. Afghanistan let us in to take out their garbage.

 

this topic came up in my ap government class recently. .. and they were saying the war hasnt' been officially declared so they can't be charged with treason.... although i also thought there was like a limit to how long forces could fight in another country without congress declaring war..

 

treeman.. u are probably right... i thought i learned that they had to inform congress within 48 hours and something had to be declared within 60 days.. but they could get a 30 day extention to make it 90 or something like that.. wish i wouuldn't have turned by government book in the other day

 

Please allow me to ask a question:

Suppose "John Walker" was an American citizen of Middle Eastern or African descent (as opposed to European descent) and trained at Al Qaieda bases and fought against American soldiers along side the Taliban. Do you think the US government would charge him with treason and seek the death penalty?

I'm not trying to start a flame war with anyone. I just find it to be a very interesting thought in light of current circumstances and I want your opinions.