Dale... Its my impression that some Arabs being held are citizens and are being held on very vague charges. Calling someone a material witness covers a whole lot of ground and is not subject to judicial review. The Wall Street Journal has had some examples of ordinary citizens caught up in this dragnet.
My point is that the Federal Agencies will over react with their new found power and harm the image of Bush. It would make no difference if the President were Democratic or Republican, so don't take this as my usual Democratic rant.
My question would be if we don't hold Chinese, Irish, Mexican Korean, Brazilian persons in prison for passport violations, then why are we holding so many Arabs?
N.P.R. had a segment today about the 330,000 Arabs living in the Dearborn, Michigan area. The FBI wants to talk to 5000 of them. The FBI says it just wants some basic information...the Arabs almost all them US citizens...say, "Hell No"... Talking with the FBI and having an Arab name could be a ticket to free housing at some detention center. Like the roach motel..the exits are difficult to find.
The terrorists cells as identified by the FBI are quite small (probably no more than 10 to 15 persons at most). More persons than that could not keep anything a secret. The Russians during the cold war set up cells in many countries and tried to keep the number under 10, for security reasons. Some of the most devastating accomplishments of the Russians were carried out by just two or three people. (Read the history of the Rosenbegs that were executed for espionage ) Small cell, big damage.
In today's journal it said the FBI has 450,000 citizen leads to follow up. Are we going to become like the former East Germany where every neighbor spies on every other neighbor, and reports to the Stazi?
Its possible that your neighbor sees you working in the garage late at night and soon some police and some FBI persons show up to have you answer a lot of questions about where and with who you had lunch? This is not a good trend.
To me it was interesting that some Republicans and some Democrats ar starting to question the tactics of Federal agencies in this massive round-up.
Regards, Jerome |
