Antiwar.com Blog

So maybe al Qaeda exploited US jihad support prior to Sept 11, 2001, but since then the government has been kicking the terrorists’ butts. Right?

Maybe not.

According to a new Syracuse University study, in the 2 years after the Sept 11 attacks the Justice Department resolved 2681 terrorism-related cases referred by investigators. Of these:

– 1,554 were thrown out without charges being filed. Of the remaining 1127 cases:

– 234 were dismissed. Of the remaining 893 cases:

– 14 resulted in not guilty verdicts. Of the remaining 879 cases:

– 506 resulted in no prison sentence. Of the remaining 373 cases:

– 260 were sentenced to the time they had already spent in jail, and were released. Of the remaining 113 cases:

– 23 were sentenced to 5 or more years — as compared with 24 sentenced to 5 or more years in the two years before the 9/11 attacks.

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“Terrorism cases fizzling out in US courts: study,” LA Times:

“…[W]hile 184 people have been convicted of crimes deemed to involve ‘international terrorism,’ defendants were sentenced to a median prison term of just 14 days.”

Heartily recommends Aleksandar Jokic’s “Iraq Is No Vietnam, But It May Be Poland” from “Today’s Spotlight.” Is Andrew really so ignorant of our critique of neoconservatism as to think that the Lenin comparison is new? If so, I suggest he start with Chad Nagle’s “The New Leninism” from February of this year. There may be hope for him yet.

A couple of questions as the White House rebukes John Kerry for using the f-word in Rolling Stone:

*How short is Andrew Card’s memory?

*Is Kerry worse than Kerrey?

The indefatigable Jim Henley has a laugh at the new gee whiz WMD claims.

The Hague Inquisition convicted Bosnian Serb General Stanislav Galic Friday, of “command responsibility” in the siege of Sarajevo. According to BBC, Galic was found guilty of “murder” (?) and “infliction of terror,” and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
I lived in Sarajevo during the war, in the Muslim-held part of the city, and experienced first-hand many of the attacks for which Galic is accused. I agree that their objective was to terrorize civilians, and thus put pressure on their government (Izetbegovic) to negotiate a peace. But how is this different from “bombs for peace” pursued by NATO?
Remember, these are people who decided NATO didn’t commit any war crimes in 1999 simply because NATO told them so. The only difference between terrorizing civilians and targeting infrastructure in Sarajevo (1992-95) and Serbia (1999) is that the former was done by the Bosnian Serbs (declared a priori evil) and the latter by NATO (forces of goodness, by own definition). There’s the old double standard again. Continue reading “ICTY’s new hypocrisy”

Antiwar.com’s Blog has been nominated for the WizBang Weblog Awards.

Half of the categories are denoted by evolutionary state. We are in the category of Best Crawly Amphibians Ecosystem Level Blog, which is the lower end of the evolutionary scale (not an insult, we are new).

People can vote multiple times in each category, but no more than one vote per 12 hours.

Update: We are now in second place.

For what it’s worth, check it out and vote for us.

I also urge a vote for Joshua Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo in the Best Liberal Blog category, and in the Best Overall Blog category.