I was shocked to learn of yet another case of Kafka-esque abuse of an individual by the US government from Roberts's article. Anyway, after reading of Siddiqui's trial, I got to thinking about the absurdity of the charges against Ms. Siddiqui. If someone is abducted - even by the supposedly morally unimpeachable US military - there is no legal or moral duty to not exercise self-defense. So, assuming that Siddiqui had fired on the soldier, there is nothing illegal or immoral about this action. As an abductee, she had every reason to fight back. To translate the legal issue into terms that a lobotomized statist American might have a chance of comprehending, Ms. Siddiqui could have been in the custody of the Mafia, dressed up as and claiming to be US soldiers. Not that this really matters to the legal issue at hand, as even if Ms. Siddiqui knew full-well that she was a captive of the US military, that, in itself, comes with no legal obligation on her part to treat her detainment as anything other than simple abduction absent legal review in which she is represented to orthodox legal standards. So, the trial was a mockery right from the very first charges - even if she had done what was alleged (self-defense from nameless, authority-less abductors), it would not have been a crime. And, to top it all off, Ms. Siddiqui is transparently innocent of even these trumped up charges.
I'm starting to get really, seriously scared. The level of perversion of the Western (especially US and UK) legal systems is unprecedented since at least World War II. I'm starting to think of all those Germans who naively stuck around, ignoring the impending ascendancy of the Third Reich, believing that the system "would work". What if it won't work?
Clayton -