“This Has To Happen.”
Julie Sweeney Roth at the Boston Herald:
I’m numb to it, but I don’t want the world to be numb. It’s going to be more tough years, but what drives you is this has to happen. I hope they punish the right people, then we’ll see what more they have to say.
I’d have something to say (to the terrorists), but I’d really have to think about it. I’d absolutely say, ‘You have your beliefs and I have mine, but that doesn’t give you the right to do what you did.
What God gave you the right? What kind of God tells you or expects you to do that kind of thing? It doesn’t give them a right to take an innocent life. Brian could have been a Muslim.
I think about Brian every day. It’s such a surreal feeling losing him so suddenly. It’s still not real. But anger doesn’t consume me. I can’t be bitter while raising two beautiful children (by her new husband).
I still have the message Brian left me (on her answering machine on 9/11 when they lived in Marlboro). He thought of me and his parents that day. I have it, but I don’t need to play it a lot.
(Brian’s cell phone message to his wife from Flight 175 was: “Hey Jules, it’s Brian. I’m on a plane and it’s hijacked and it doesn’t look good. I just wanted to let you know that I love you, and I hope to see you again. If I don’t, please have fun in life and live your life the best you can. Know that I love you, and no matter what, I’ll see you again.”)
All things happen for a reason, but it’s a hard place to be. I discovered the strength I had, though, it was the only way I could move forward.
I can’t say, ‘How dare you did this!’ There are lessons to be learned, like telling your spouse, mother, kids ‘I love you’ every day. I’ve survived. I thank God I knew Brian.
I hope they (the terrorists) are really held accountable. They took someone so amazing off this earth.
Herald main, trial analysis, campaign impact. Sweeney file photo by Herald photog Matthew West, whose father Peter, a Cantor Fitzgerald broker, was killed in the World Trade Center.
Washington Post here suggests “torture” might not be a problem:
The Bush administration announced yesterday that it intends to bring capital murder charges against half a dozen men allegedly linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, based partly on information the men disclosed to FBI and military questioners without the use of coercive interrogation tactics.
The admissions made by the men — who were given food whenever they were hungry as well as Starbucks coffee at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — played a key role in the government’s decision to proceed with the prosecutions, military and law enforcement officials said.
FBI and military interrogators who began work with the suspects in late 2006 called themselves the “Clean Team” and set as their goal the collection of virtually the same information the CIA had obtained from five of the six through duress at secret prisons.
To ensure that the data would not be tainted by allegations of torture or illegal coercion, the FBI and military team won the suspects’ trust over the past 16 months by using time-tested rapport-building techniques, the officials said.
They gave them food when they were hungry? What kind of operation are they running down there? Khlaid Sheikh Mohammed was dunkd while in CIA custody, but apparently they put up a Chinese wall between those black site operations and these at the hate Crusader Gulag at Guantanamo.
Officials said most of the detainees talked to FBI and military interrogators, some for days, others for months, while one or two rebuffed them. The men were read rights similar to a standard U.S. Miranda warning, and officials designed the program to get to the information the CIA already had gleaned by using waterboarding, which simulates drowning, and other techniques such as sleep deprivation, forced standing and the use of extreme temperatures.
“They went in and said that they’d love to talk to them, that they knew what the men had been through, and that none of that stuff was going to be done to them,” said one official familiar with the program who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of its secrecy. “It was made very clear to them that they were in a very different environment, that they were not with the CIA anymore. There was an extensive period of making sure they understood it had to be voluntary on their part.”
Almost sounds like they’re concerned about their rights. There is that faction of the American public that considers the United States government to be the criminal organization in this picture. They’re never going to satisfy them, but they will in all likeihood have to deal with nuisance suits on the mass murderers’ behalf.
Not a lot out in the blogosphere, which is a mystery.
LGF notes the big question, repeated repeatedly in yesterday’s press conference: When did you stop torturing your terror suspects?
Jawa says, while you’re at it, how about some USS Cole charges?
Volokh Conspiracy has something about memory-erasing drugs, which don’t sound particularly necessary this a.m.
Related but different. WSJ on the Clinton terrorism pardons. By Debra Burlingame, attorney, World Trade Center Memorial Foundation director, sister of slain American Flt. 77 pilot Charles Burlingame. She hasn’t forgotten, and suggests there might be good reasons for remembering.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:05 am on Tuesday, February 12, 2008
5 Responses to ““This Has To Happen.””
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February 12th, 2008 at 9:44 am
[...] A 9/11 widow reacts to the indictment of the Gitmo 6. Jules Crittenden has the details. [...]
February 12th, 2008 at 10:47 am
I can’t propose to know how you feel and what you went through. But I can say that if these murderers are not given their rightful punishment then America has been betrayed by the judicial system once again.
There is no hatred in my heart, but there is a rationalization that these murderers would gladly commit these same crimes again given the chance to do so. To put them in a Supermax like environment for the remainder of their lives would be done at the expense of the American taxpayer, thus adding insult to injury.
As hard as it is to say, there are some times where execution is the only logical alternative. True justice is never easy to administer.
Thank you for your article. God Bless you and your family.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Give them a fair trial. Hang them. Cremate the bodies. Mix the ashes with bacon grease and drop the mixture in the middle of the Pacific.
February 12th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
This is another show trial, like the trials of Saddam’s and his cronies.
I guess some people call the procedure “justice”, but I call it theater.
By their own admissions, these guys proudly claim and defend their acts of murder and their plotting and cleverness to bring those acts to fruition.
Of course, there is ample evidence against them, from their own mouths, and the cases against them are strong.
I will avoid watching and paying any attention to the particulars or the years of lame a**ed “appeals” that will follow on their behalf. These guys themselves might try to hang themselves by their lily white Guantanamo bedsheets (unless some elected President shuts the place down, as the viable candidates all seem to favor) to simply escape the torture and ridiculousness of the “proceedings”.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Death is entirely appropriate in this case. No doubt Islamic groups will demonstrate, and make threats, and burn buildings, perhaps even kill people in revenge (after all, if mere cartoons can set them off…), but even if these monsters were given prison sentences, the same thing would happen. And it would go on much longer, until they were released or forgotten (and jihadis never “forget” anything). We have nothing to lose by executing them and something to gain: tarnish the romantic notion of the martyr. There’s no glory in being executed by the infidel.