Convicted terrorist, IMK member, radical Islamist, and terrorist camp visitor Yassin Aref has a friend in Fred LeBrun, the combed-over lefty columnist at Albany's Times-Union newspaper. Fred's Friday column is an exemplar of lefty delusions, unmitigated arrogance, dime-store psychoanalysis, and a willful disregard for the facts. The best part of the article is the fact that Fred writes it with all the conviction of someone who truly believes what he's writing.
Fred begins by equating a single law enforcement effort with a McCarthy-era "witch hunt" and WWII-era Japanese internment camps (I couldn't make this up):
Someday we'll look back on the present national paranoia over terrorism and the excesses done in its name with the same national embarrassment that Americans feel for Sen. Joe McCarthy's communist witch hunts of the 1950s and our appalling treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Our lefty genius continues:
Someday.
Apparently, this someday won't come soon enough to rescue poor Yassin and Mohammed from being sentenced for the crimes for which they were fairly tried and reasonably convicted by a jury of their peers. However, this isn't good enough for Fred, who sees something unfair in a sting operation even though sting operations have been an integral part of organized crime and other law enforcement investigations for decades:
But not anytime soon, and certainly not before Yassin M. Aref, the former imam at an Albany mosque, and Mohammed M. Hossain, a pizza shop owner, are sentenced on Feb. 12.
A federal jury convicted the pair of a varying number of counts in an FBI money laundering sting operation with terrorist overtones involving a phony missile launcher. They each face 25 years in jail.
"Terrorist overtones." Not the real thing. Just a plot to assassinate a Pakistani diplomat in New York, but that really has nothing to do with terrorism.
There are motions before the court to throw out the conviction, but since the judge tipped his pro-prosecution hand during the trial, they will come to naught. And the inevitable appeal will stutter along. But given the dismal times for due process in our vaunted system of justice, the chances of reason, of common sense, prevailing over hysteria and hellbent ideology are slim.
A year-long undercover operation, followed by a methodical and professional prosecution, including two seasoned, professional defense attorneys and a professionally management court-room trial are here described as the practice of hysteria over reason. The implication here is that Aref and Hossain are victims of our hysterical response to, you know, all this terrorism stuff. Which our genius tells us doesn't really exist.
History will see these two as victims. Not innocents, but victims. Of this I am utterly convinced. Small comfort for them, or their families. They have 10 children between, all under the age of 13.
Oh, I see, it's about the children. Well, I guess someone has to think about the children. Apparently, the fathers weren't thinking about them when they agreed to launder money for a would-be assassin. Aref certainly wasn't thinking about the children when he visited the terrorist training camps in Iraq. They were making ricin in some of those camps. What was he thinking? He certainly didn't consult with his friend Fred.
This case should never have seen a courtroom. Because once the mesmerizing ingredients were brought into a trial -- the convoluted and selective translations, a glib informant avoiding 15 years in jail and the exploitation of our fears and anxieties over global terrorism by prosecutors, -- the results were predictable.
Fred's lefty disdain for his fellow Albanites is in full bloom here. He tells us the case should never have come to trial, because the evidence would obviously "mesmerized" the jury. Apparently Albany is a community of knuckledraggers, unable to discern good evidence from bad. They need the likes of Fred to be the arbiter of all things fair and right in the world. And what would Fred decree? He would say that Aref and Hossain should have never been arrested in the first place, because it wasn't about their agreement to launder money for a would-be assassin. It was really a government conspiracy to exploit "our fears and anxieties."
The trial had remarkably little to do with Aref and Hossain. This was not our federal court system's finest hour, or the FBI's, either.
He's right. The trial had nothing to with the two defendants. Prosecutors were looking for an existential conclusion to their efforts
From the beginning, the feds knew better. Up front, the Justice Department in Washington admitted that this case was not all that strong or the defendants all that dangerous.
Pure lefty fantasy.
But the FBI put a lot of resources and a lot of money, time and ego into a complicated sting that took months and months and leaps of faith to swallow. So the feds wanted a couple of scalps for all their efforts. They got them.
Oh, yeah. Because the FBI's counterterrorism has nothing else to do but satisfy their egos by wrongfully convicting a pizza shop owner in Albany. Fred, you're a genius. I would have never thought about that. Silly me, I thought it was because they were willing to provide material support for a terrorist act on US soil. Oh, I forgot. There is no terrorist threat to the US. That's just the fruit of our collective hysteria that only you and your lefty friends can recognize.
What's this? Fred senses an inconsistency in his theory.
But that still begs the question of why the feds pursued this prosecution with such zealousness, even after recognizing as they must have that Aref and Hossain never posed any threat to our national security.
Why, Fred?! Tell us!
It seems there was an ulterior motive, also reflective of our times. Sending a chilling message through the American immigrant Muslim community.
So you see, it had nothing to do with a life-risking, undercover operation. It had nothing to do with Aref and Hossain's willingness to support an act of terrorism on US soil. It had nothing to do with Aref's direct and substantiative connections to some of the world's most vile terrorist leaders. Or his lying about it. No. Fred figured it out. The FBI wanted to send a message!
--- I feel my sarcastic alter-ego surfacing --
He's right, you know. Our Albany genius has uncovered the truth! I've got to come clean now that he knows. When I worked at the FBI I participated in super-duper top secret meetings in a damp basement room of the J. Edgar Hoover Bldg. Under a single, dangling light bulb, analysts like me would take out our flasks of hard liquor, and FBI agents smoked cigars and we would randomly chose innocent American Muslims from the top-secret Innocent American Muslim Phonebook. We would then show the names to the New York money people who (as you know) control us. And they would tell us how we should proceed with the plan. You know, Fred, the plan. The plan has nothing to with stopping terrorism on US soil, it's about sending chilling messages to innocent American Muslims. Yeah, that's why I went through a months-long personal and professional background check and a fucking "character" polygraph, so I can sit around and send chilling messages to Muslims.
-- Sigh! --
Is this fool what passes for local commentary in New York's capital? I feel sorry for the people of Albany. Is there's no one else to kill a tree for?
Love your sarcastic alter-ego!
Posted by: Debbie | January 15, 2007 at 08:32 AM