The Pendulum Swings yet again....

After identifying a bug in Google groups which sometimes gloms the
first short line of a reply into quote material, even after showing it
correctly in the preview, I note that an anonymous spammer using the
tag s...@xxxxxxxx wrote:

The written apology reads:

"The United States of America apologizes to Mr. Brandon Mayfield and
his family for the suffering caused by the FBI's misidentification of
Mr. Mayfield's fingerprint and the resulting investigation of Mr.
Mayfield, including his arrest as a material witness in connection with
the 2004 Madrid train bombings and the execution of search warrants and
other court orders in the Mayfield family home and in Mr. Mayfield's
law office."

He and his family later sued the U.S. government for damages.

"We lived in 1984," Mayfield told reporters Wednesday. "I'm talking
about the George Orwell, frightening brave new world in which Big
Brother is constantly watching you." (Watch Mayfield discuss the case
Video)

"I, myself, have dark memories of stifling paranoia, of being
monitored, followed, watched, tracked," he said, choking back emotion.

"I've been surveilled, followed, targeted primarily because I've been
an outspoken critic of this administration and doing my job to defend
others who can't defend themselves, to give them their day in court,
and mostly for being a Muslim."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From wikipedia:

"Mayfield was born in Coos Bay, Oregon, but grew up in Halstead,
Kansas. He served in the US Army Reserve from 1985 to 1989;
he later served as an officer with the Army in Bitburg, Germany
from 1992 to 1994. He met his wife Mona, an Egyptian national
and the daughter of a college professor, on a blind date in 1987,
and converted to Islam following his marriage to her shortly
afterwards. While he was a regular worshiper at the Beaverton
mosque, his colleagues were unaware of his religious beliefs.
The imam of the mosque has described Mayfield as 'very patriotic'."

"He studied law at Washburn University and Lewis and Clark
College, receiving his law degree from Washburn in 1999, and
practicing family law in Newport, before moving to the Portland
area. Mayfield performed work for the Modest Means Program
of the Oregon State Bar, which matches attorneys who are
willing to work at reduced rates with low-income clients. In
2003 he offered legal aid to Jeffrey Leon Battle, one of the
Portland Seven, a group of people that was convicted of trying
to travel to Afghanistan to help the Taliban. Battle at the time
was involved in a child custody case."

So, we've returned to the impossible standard whereby we are engaged in
a life and death struggle with fanatics of a certain religion, and,
individuals like Brandon Mayfield who exhibit a certain number of
traits that might suggest they merit some special investigative
attention, including (1) converting to said religion (2) marrying a
national of a country known to be a source of fanatics carrying out
attacks in the name of said religion (3) having defended an individual
convicted of attempting to aid and abet said fanatics, should be
treated with the same interest as a Baptist spinster from Alabama, on
the theory that, in a war involving the confluence of religious and
anti-American fanaticism, we must not "profile" anybody carrying one or
more indicators of involvement in such spheres, but instead passively
wait for them to kill us, and have our survivors, if any, investigate
them afterward.

FOaD.

It's too bad the Spanish initially misidentified Mayard's fingerprint;
that was a setback to the defense of the US. Other than that, I _hope_
the FBI is investigating guys like this; though of course, if they are
pressured into stopping, we can always have another report showing how
they dropped the ball in the wake of the next serious attack, if
anybody is left to wring their hands after. If Mayard is an innocent
and patriotic American, as he seems to claim, he would perhaps stop
whining publically, and admit "Gee... I _do_ kind of look like the kind
of guy who might be involved in this sort of thing, don't I".

It would have been criminally negligent for the FBI not to have him
watched. They were, at least briefly, doing their job.

.

Relevant Pages

  • The Pendulum Swings
    ... Mayfield, including his arrest as a material witness in connection with ... "He studied law at Washburn University and Lewis and Clark ... a life and death struggle with fanatics of a certain religion, and, ...
    (sci.physics)
  • The Pendulum swings
    ... Mayfield, including his arrest as a material witness in connection with ... "He studied law at Washburn University and Lewis and Clark ... a life and death struggle with fanatics of a certain religion, and, ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: The Pendulum swings
    ... Mayfield, including his arrest as a material witness in connection with ... "He studied law at Washburn University and Lewis and Clark ... a life and death struggle with fanatics of a certain religion, and, ...
    (sci.physics)