[Marxism] "You're guilty even after you're proven innocent"

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

You don't have to look to Al-Qaeda or former supporters of Hussein or 
even consistent nationalists to figure out where the opposition to the 
U.S. occupation is coming from. All you have to do is draw logical 
conclusions from what happened to an American Naval Reservist who 
supports the Iraq war.

This also points up the weakness of an all-volunteer army—the absence 
of common sense.

Those of us who have been in the armed services (peacetime in my case) 
will understand when I say that I would much rather put my life in the 
hands of draftees than volunteers. And I am not writing just about 
"ducking and covering," I mean that even were I in combat, I would 
trust the common sense of the draftee over the gung-ho of the 
volunteer. This goes double for Marines, who in the main are so 
stupidly patriotic and idealistic (I mean both in a good and bad sense) 
that they don't know their ass from their elbow.

Brian Shannon
______________

U.S. Says It Will Release American Held in Iraq
By TIM GOLDEN

WASHINGTON, July 9 - Military officials have agreed to free Cyrus Kar, 
an aspiring American filmmaker who has been imprisoned without charge 
for nearly two months at a United States military detention center in 
Iraq, lawyers and relatives of Mr. Kar said Saturday.

The news of the planned release came as government lawyers prepared for 
a hearing on Monday afternoon in federal district court in Washington, 
where they had been ordered to show cause for his continued detention.

Last week, after his lawyers sued the government for his release 
through a petition for habeas corpus, Defense Department officials said 
Mr. Kar, 44, had been detained on May 17 with his Iranian cameraman, 
Farshid Faraji, on suspicion of involvement with the Iraqi insurgency.

The two men, who relatives said were in Iraq working on a historical 
documentary, were arrested after a search of a taxi they had taken from 
a Baghdad hotel turned up dozens of washing-machine timers of a type 
sometimes used by Iraqi insurgents to make improvised explosive 
devices, the officials said.

Spokesmen for the Defense Department and the United States military 
forces in Iraq said Saturday that they could not confirm that Mr. Kar's 
and Mr. Faraji's release was imminent. But his relatives said a 
consular official at the United States Embassy in Baghdad had 
telephoned them Saturday to tell them that the two would be freed 
within two days, and his lawyers said the embassy official later told 
them the same thing.

In an e-mail message sent to Mr. Kar's aunt this evening and forwarded 
to a reporter, the embassy official, Sarah Francia, said, "We expect 
that he may be released very soon." Reached by telephone in Baghdad, 
Ms. Francia said, "I told them that it was expected possibly," but then 
added that she could not publicly discuss the case.

"I'm thrilled that Cyrus and Farshid will be released soon, but the 
question is why it didn't happen 50 days ago," said the lead lawyer for 
Mr. Kar, Mark D. Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union of 
Southern California. "It shouldn't take a lawsuit to free an innocent 
man whose only crime was to get in the wrong cab."

Mr. Kar's relatives said they understood why he might have been 
questioned or even detained. But they could not fathom why Mr. Kar - a 
veteran of the United States Navy and the Naval reserves who supported 
the war in Iraq - was held almost incommunicado by the military and 
continued to be held for weeks after an F.B.I. agent had told the 
family that he had been cleared.

"I know they have to protect themselves, but I am really hurt," said 
Mr. Kar's aunt, Parvin Modarress. "This was very unfair. From the very 
beginning, they knew he was innocent. According to the F.B.I. he came 
out of a hotel and got into a taxi. How could they have known what was 
in the taxi?"

FULL AT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/10/politics/10release.html

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