By Johnny
I’m just going to mention this. A great, somewhat confusing piece in today’s New York Times. I wont summarize it, but I will point out that in discussing how a Department of Defense website program went off the rails into “Jason Bourne”-territory, the paper had to make the following admission: From December 2008 to mid-June [...]
By Johnny
I’m wary to discount what appears to be a popularly held belief in Pakistan: that Aafia Siddiqui was turned over to American officials in 2003 by Pakistani authorities. Siddiqui’s family, particularly her sister, have made this claim for some time. Though, the American press has largely ignored. After, Sec. Clinton’s visit last week, the issue [...]
By Johnny
A bit of confusion in the Aafia Siddiqui case. Last week, if you’ll recall, Siddiqui appeared to terminate two of her lawyers. In her handwritten note to the judge, she didn’t clarify whether she was working with her other remaining attorneys or if she was invoking the right to represent herself. Dawn Cardi, one of [...]
By Johnny
A week or so back, Rahm Emmanuel, also a New Trier and Sarah Lawrence alum, described President Obama’s decision on Afghanistan policy as “more complex” than the question of troop levels. The decision, he says, is dependent on whether “there’s an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that the U.S. troops would create and [...]
By Johnny
On Sunday morning, I, like many Americans, opened my Sunday paper to read the frustrating story about the unlearned lessons of the Battle of Wanat, which left nine Americans dead and more than two dozen injured in July of 2008. That attack presented the psychologically stunning possibility that an American base could be overrun in [...]
By Johnny
Finally an arrest in the little terror case that could. If you picked up the paper today, you read that Najibullah Zazi, along with his father, Mohammed and an Astoria imam named Ahmad Wais Afzali were arrested on charges of “making a false statement in a matter involving international and domestic terrorism.” I guess you [...]
By Johnny
The U.S. Attorney here in New York filed responses to a handful of motions in the Dr. Aafia Siddiqui case yesterday. Much of the memorandum concerns procedural and jurisdictional issues–as well as the ongoing issue of Dr. Siddiqui facing strip searches at the Metropolitan Detention Center each time she meets with her lawyers–but the government’s [...]
By Johnny
Spent some time reading a recent order in the strange case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. A federal judge declared her competent to stand trial. Dr. Siddiqui, briefly, is a Pakistani citizen and graduate of MIT (biology) and Brandeis (neuroscience) who has been indicted in the Southern District of New York on charges of attempting to [...]