The FBI released a statement yesterday from the Eastern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s Office which announced the indictment of a terrorist still in custody in Canada for murdering five US troops in Iraq;
Today, a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, N.Y., returned an indictment charging Faruq Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa, 38, aka “Faruk Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa,” “Sayfildin Tahir Sharif” and “Tahir Sharif Sayfildin,” with aiding in the murder of five American soldiers in a suicide-bomb attack in Iraq in April 2009.
Specifically, he is charged with the murders of Staff Sergeant Gary L. Woods, 24, of Lebanon Junction, Ky.; Sergeant First Class Bryan E. Hall, 32, of Elk Grove, Calif.; Sergeant Edward W. Forrest Jr., 25, of St. Louis; Corporal Jason G. Pautsch, 20, of Davenport, Iowa; and Army Private First Class Bryce E. Gaultier, 22, from Cyprus, Calif.
The indictment also charges the defendant with conspiring to kill Americans abroad and providing material support to that terrorist conspiracy to kill Americans abroad.
Of course, terrorist hugger, Glen Greenwald has a problem with semantics as mitigation;
Few things better illustrate the utter meaninglessness of the word Terrorism than applying it to a citizen of an invaded country for fighting back against the invading army and aiming at purely military targets (this is far from the first time that Iraqis and others who accused of fighting back against the invading U.S. military have been formally deemed to be Terrorists for having done so). To the extent the word means anything operationally, it is: he who effectively opposes the will of the U.S. and its allies.
Yes, because the indicted party was Iraqi, he has a right to kill Americans from the safety of Toronto and across the continents. Makes sense to me. And it’s all because “[t]here is no agreed-to definition of ‘terrorists,'” according to Greenwald in the comments. So we should just cut him loose, because according to Andrew McCarthy, in the National Review, civilian prosecution is the only way the Obama Administration will handle the case. The Bush Administration would have put the camel fucker in Guantanamo and forgot about him.
Hmm… I vaguely recall many years ago hearing about a wee group called the I.R.A., which according to Glen Greenwald, wouldn’t have been considered terrorists either?
When in your own borders fighting against a foreign invasion, you’re an insurgent, no matter who’s doing the invading. Once you leave those borders and conspire to kill in another nation, you easily become a terrorist.
Forgot to add: The FBI release didn’t state what group the men were affiliated with. If AQI, then the above statement can be amended.
So we have the Senate trying to pass a law making it “legal” to indefinitely detain US citizens if they’re suspected of terrorism, that Obama is saying he’ll veto apparently because it’s his right to do that and not the military’s while we have actual terrorists being treated as citizens.
There is just so much wrong with that.
CI you kinda fail to realize that the anti-coalition forces were not a homogenous group. In fact, their targets from about 2005-now are actually predominantly other sects Ethnicity, or religions. Americans were the focus of only a small number of operations.
Indeed, most of the ACF were not even Iraqi. about 80-90% of the ACF were foreigners, in the west mostly Saudis, Jordanians, and Egyptians. In the North like Mosul, they were mostly Syrian. In the lowlands around Baghdad, the ACF were actually Iraqi, but mostly trained or instigated by Iran.
What bothers me is that ten years later we as Americans are STILL skittish about “calling a spade a spade”. Couch it in “Islamaphobia” but fail to ask “is there a reason why we should fear the Muslim world?” And if the answer is in fact yes (it really should be) then how do we fight or mitigate that threat? But we refuse to ask these questions.
@Doc – I don’t fail to realize that at all, and I would say that your percentage estimate is wildly off; as well as the ironic homogeneous labeling you chose [which I know was merely one of the flavor of the week names for the opposition writ large]. When you and I were in Baghdad, the major opposition we were dealing with was Jaysh al-Mahdi, an almost entirely home grown organization [albeit with heavy IRGC influence and funding].
AQI attracted a majority of foreign fighters, with some joining the 1920 BDE and others, but the leadership of the Sunni groups were resolutely Iraqi. This holds true today, where AAH, KH, PDB and JRTN are the forces arrayed against us, and hold quite the majority of Iraqi membership.
I have no problem differentiating between insurgent and terrorist, but the lazy media and it’s lazy consumers certainly seem to.
I don’t fear the Muslim religion…I don’t even fear it’s radical adherents. The threat exists and should be neutralized, but it’s not the end of the world.
First, I don’t think the Canadians would have extradicted him if it meant being sent to Guantanamo.
Second, my God Greenwald is stupid. There is so much wrong with that second pargraph alone.
5# & 6# Hey Doc, the vast majority of the forces aligned against us in Iraq were Iraqis. Foreign entities like Iran and Hezbollah had influence and occassionally even took direct action, but they never were anywhere near a majority of those fighting us. Even Al Qaeda, which had a huge number of foreigners in its ranks, became almost entirely Iraqi, after being driven out of Al- Anbar in 06-07.