DIMBULB DICK :

Spotlight John (Richard Cohen, July 18, 2002, The Washington Post)

I couldn't care less that John Walker Lindh, agreeing to a plea bargain, is going to get 20 years in jail for fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan. He's just a screwed-up young man, that's for sure, but the jails are full of such types and, mostly, I feel no sympathy for them. I have only one regret in this case. Lindh's attorneys should have bargained for John Ashcroft's resignation as attorney general.

Such a demand would have been unprecedented, but Lindh and his lawyers held some pretty good cards. They might have insisted on a jury trial, at which it would have become clear that Lindh was not a monster terrorist, connected in some vague way with the death of CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann, but just a jerk who happened to be in the neighborhood when Spann was killed.

Happened to be in the neighborhood? That neighborhood just happens to be thousands of miles away and the guy traveled there to fight with a bunch of anti-American filth. There he fought with them against forces allied with America. Then, while his fellows plotted an attack on their captors, including two Americans, he did nothing to warn his own countrymen of what was happening.
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 18, 2002 4:36 PM