h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

from the above link
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Strength of the evidence:

There is no direct evidence in the public domain linking Osama Bin Laden to the 11 September attacks. At best the evidence is circumstantial.

Of this, perhaps the strongest leads are the alleged financial transfers between an al-Qaeda operative and the man alleged to have led the hijackers. Other evidence - the intercepts, Mohammed Atta's link to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the ties of other hijackers to al-Qaeda - is even less firm.

Thanks! Compelling reasoning...but no actual hard evidence.

Interesting.

Lucinda

Are you saying that the amount of published and unpublished (the US has a large secert agency that does monitors transmissions - they failed to stop WTC but they can go over evidence) is not enough to turn Osama over for trial?

I am not a Barrister but if you are, perhaps you can tell me if the public information is enough for an indictment?

Perhaps the world court if not in the US?

Dear God, Lucinda, I had no idea!! You must be in the secret service, the CIA, or the FBI to know all the evidence and therefore make a judgement on it. That's amazing! I didn't know we had somebody with classified info on this forum!!!

You people are pathetic.

The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". What do you suppose that means? It' means that the federal government should not be messing around with religion. It's essentially saying that the state and church should be seperate.

I really don't care if the President says, "God bless America." I'm quite fond of the song God Bless America. In spite of being a devout athiest, some of my favorite saying evoke God. That doesn't mean I believe in any of that stuff. I really don't think that a lot of professed Christians really believe in it either.

The Christian God and Allah are basically the same entity. They're all people of the book. I don't think we're alienanting anyone when the Chirstians invoke God.

We have a variety of laws that don't require an act within our boarders for them to be crimes triable in the United States. We have jurisdiction to try Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants even if they've never set foot on our soil.

I think it's contemtable that European nations would harbor a murderer.

>> "We can't just look at an organization and say they're terrorists."

>>Don't look now, but isn't that exactly what you just did with regards to cutting off terrorist funding...

There's got to be some point at which there's a burden of proof before a court in this whole thing. The Constitution is pretty clear in this matter.

>>It's mainly circumstantial and hearsay, as far as I can tell.

Circumstantial evidence is enough to convict. Hearsay is acceptable in court right up until the trial, and sometimes even then its acceptable.

Whether or not the outcome of this war should be decided on international law or religious dogma doesn't remove from the fact that a war is now being fought across the world brought about by the opposing belief systems of a few.

It amazes me that as a species we have the capacity to see with our own eyes, a universe something approaching 15 billion years old, conservative estimates saying 100 billion light years across, containing mysteries which we will likely never understand, and 90% of which we can't even see. And yet we're so hung up on not being able to admit how scary it all is, we kill each other over differing *literal* perceptions of who's the daddy, all of which start with "don't kill people".

Dear Goens001,

Gradient asked for evidence, I provided some. I also commented that the evidence I was providing was mainly circumstantial and hearsay. As it clearly states in BOTH the places I provided links to that there is evidence that is confidential, and this may or may not be more compelling.

I also quoted from the first of the sites, saying "There is no direct evidence **IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN** linking Osama Bin Laden to the 11 September attacks."

It is traditional to read what people actually write before flaming them, but maybe I'm just old-fashioned like that. We'll chalk it up to the perils of a text-only medium, shall we?

-Xanthia

Listener - I can't really comment on the alleged unpublished evidence. The Pakistan government says that what they've seen is sufficient to press charges. On the other hand, the government would lose a lot if it said otherwise - the main criticism in Pakistan is that the decision to support the US was made before the evidence was seen.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1579000/1579047.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1577000/1577836.stm

I'm not a barrister, so the legalities are above me. I do know that the public domain evidence is not enough to convince me personally. I also know that the claims of various politicians that they've seen rock-solid evidence do not convince me one bit. It is standard operating procedure to massively lie to voters during wartime - they did it in the Gulf War, they did it in both World Wars, they did it in the Falklands War - why would they stop now?

> "I think it's contemtable that European nations would harbor a murderer."

I think it's contemptable that the USA would murder criminals. Time was when England had a death penalty for stealing sheep, but thankfully we've moved on from those days...

Perhaps we could agree that the issue of the death penalty arises highly charged emotions on both sides of the debate, and leave it for another time?

> "We have jurisdiction to try Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants even if they've never set foot on our soil."

And so does the UK, and indeed all countries who've lost citizens or money as a result of the attacks, no? I'm sure that whichever country captures Bin Laden will face a flood of extradition requists from countries eager to bring the guy to justice.

--

> "There's got to be some point at which there's a burden of proof before a court in this whole thing"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1595000/1595740.stm
> "The UK government has announced new measures to freeze assets they **SUSPECT** are being used by terrorist organisations"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1560000/1560942.stm
> "The United States has moved to cut off the flow of money to Osama Bin Laden, his al-Qaeda network and other groups it **SUSPECTS** of involvement in terrorism"

Nothing's come before a court yet, and I've seen no indications that they will. Meanwhile, the USA list of 'financially most wanted' can be added to at any time with no legal proceedings whatsoever. But have no fear: it's not like either government would abuse its powers to silence dissidents... they've not done that for, oh, about five years?

--

IRA funding from some citizens of the USA:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1563000/1563119.stm

It is interesting to read that some Americans believe that the law of the USA has precedence over other countries law. This helps explain why the American Supreme Court decided it's opinion of who won the election last November overrode the rights of the vote-casting public.

At least Dubya has something in common with his new friend, the President of Pakistan. The Pakistan President was appointed by an army which overpowered the law while Dubya was appointed through the efforts of an army of lawyers.

"Curmudgeon or Fool?"

Fool.

"It is interesting to read that some Americans believe that the law of the USA has precedence over other countries law. This helps explain why the American Supreme Court decided it's opinion of who won the election last November overrode the rights of the vote-casting public."

Ok I'll try to explain, and I'll use small words so you can understand. We have a thing in the US called the electoral college. This means that whoever has the majority of the vote in any given state gets all of the electoral votes form that state. We do that so that more populace states, like california, don't override the votes of other less populated states, like rhode island. The popular vote is used in the case of a tie. Bush won the electoral votes in Florida, but some people said that the ballot was confusing, and because of this some counties had to recount the votes. This all got started because Al Gore was flabergasted when he found out that liberal Florida wasn't voting for him. The people's accounts who say the ballot was "hard to read" are questionable at best: during the whole ordeal many elementary school teachers tried out an experiment. They gave their fifth graders a ballot that was identical to the one in Florida and told them all to vote for Al Gore. All of the votes were counted and Al Gore was the unanimous winner. When told to do the same thing for Bush and Buchanan, the results were the same. If fifth graders can understand it, then the people of Florida should be able to also. By the way, Al Gore didn't even win his own state, for crying out loud.

"At least Dubya has something in common with his new friend, the President of Pakistan. The Pakistan President was appointed by an army which overpowered the law while Dubya was appointed through the efforts of an army of lawyers."

First of all, his name is George W. Bush, and second of all don't you think Al Gore had his own team of lawyers? If Al Gore would have "won" the election, the result would have been much more contraversial, since nothing suggested that he got more votes. They recounted them like 4 times or something, and every time it came out in "Dubya's" favor. What was he supposed to do? Go, "ok, even though i won, I'll give it to you anyway since your constituents are too stupid to read a ballot."

ps why do you care?

"The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". What do you suppose that means? It' means that the federal government should not be messing around with religion. It's essentially saying that the state and church should be seperate."


Article [I.]
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The first amendment is talking about freedom of speech. The reason the British came here in the first place is so that they could be free from religous persecution. Should President Bush forfeit that right? He has the exact same rights as all Americans. The first amendment says Congress shall make no LAW...is he making a law? And what does it say about "prohibiting the free exercise thereof"? What's your beef?

George W Bush simply 'declared' himself President, despite the fact that he won fewer votes overfall than Al Gore, and there were gross irregularities in the way that Florida's voting was conducted (such the stopping and questioning of black people on the way to the polling station, given that the vast majority of them vote Democrat anyway).

It's unlikely he has a democratic mandate to be President. If he confines himself to prosecuting this war then he probably DOES have a mandate. The real test of his authority to govern(which he'd already started to fail dismally) will come in peacetime. Blair will present a hefty bill for his help in this conflict, and don't expect it not to have 'Kyoto' written all over it.

Here's something I wrote at the time

When the US presidential election became deadlocked for weeks, I naively imagined that the shock of this might become a defining moment in the nation's constitutional history. Here was the world's last superpower, the mightiest capitalist economy, the most technologically advanced society on Earth, and it was discovering that its ideological self-image as the Great Democracy was a delusion. Dubious vote counts, shonky machinery, an absence of neutral referees ... obviously a major malfunction.

But I had underestimated the power of manufactured consent. As the smoke from a thousand lawyers' bills began to clear, the American media - which during the campaign itself had raked in a major share of the cool $US3 billion that was spent by the candidates - began to chant in unison that it was now time to "move on". The bitter divisions of the election aftermath, it was decided by the kind of pundit-bores who clutter the likes of CNN and NBC, should be put aside. The president-elect should grasp the moment to build consensus, "heal the wounds", achieve "closure" and all the rest of those anodyne therapy-speak terms that Americans seem to love so much. Republican speaker of the house Dennis Hastert may as well have been scripting it when he said, "The wounds that have come from the passions of partisanship must begin to heal for the good of the country."

And so it comes to pass that the man who lost the popular vote, who escaped with Florida's electoral college votes only with the help of an unevenly divided Supreme Court, and who has shown precious little of what we might call global leadership potential, becomes the 43rd President of the US. Given the power and influence that his country wields, particularly in the form of its military (annual cost about $US350 billion, or half the total budget) and its Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan (whose finger on the button of US interest rates keeps the rest of the world's markets in thrall), it is arguable that we should all be eligible to vote for the next inhabitant of the White House. And given the way this one has made it across the threshold, we might now feel very uneasy.

Astonishingly, there is no uniform federal election code in the US. In Florida, no one with a felony record is allowed to vote - about half a million people. There is anecdotal evidence emerging in many Southern states, including Florida, of black citizens being prevented from voting for absurd or phoney reasons. Florida's governor, who played a key role in the legal manoeuvring after the vote, is Bush's brother. The Supreme Court judge who wrote the majority opinion for Bush had two sons working in the law firm that also represented Bush. The wife of another pro-Bush judge worked in the Washington think-tank preparing profiles of candidates for the Bash cabinet. No admissions of possible conflicts of interest, no offers to step aside.

As at least one commentator has pointed out, far less evidence of unsafe electoral practice has been used by the United States when it has wished to criticise the regimes or policies of other countries, or when it has actually invaded those countries. Congress, the Senate, the White House and the mass media would have had absolutely no difficulty in portraying the equivalent electoral fiasco in a banana republic as "rigged". Furthermore, more than half of those eligible in the US don't oven bother to vote now, and the antiquated 18th-century electoral college system provides a further filter between the popular will and the outcome. All of this is being portrayed right now as the "robustness" of American democracy, which is strong and noble enough to withstand the temporary challenge of a hung result.

How appropriate, then, that Bush's inauguration has been the most heavily guarded in history, due to the expected protests against the legitimacy of his presidency (memories of Seattle have the national security apparatus on high alert). The kilometres of chainlink fence that ring the Lincoln Memorial and the security checkpoints along Pennsylvania Avenue may work on the rabble, but one hopes that the truth itself will be harder to exclude.

The same kind of flawed reasoning preserves the First Past the Post system in the UK. This being the reason, of course, why the Tories have been in power for the greatest proportion of the last century and, why as nation, we have moved on so little.

Excellent points, Loonytunes, I was gobsmacked when Dubya was declared 'electorated' myself.

in my eyes USA does not have a legitimate president.

But this crisis has given his actions the most emphatic mandate he could have wished for. When it's over, he's back to imposing hardcore right-wing policies on a deeply divided nation without a matching hardcore mandate. Rather like the Taleban, in fact. So expect this war on terrorism to go beyond its current bounds.

I think ur right Felonious Monk.

And that´s really scary.

It is very AMAZING to me that so many people outside the US or who have never visited the US, voted in a US election are experts on the electoral college, presidency and the American psyche!!. I would never jump to such judgements about another countries systems as long as it works for them. There are historical reasons for most of the systems out there.

The US has a bit different system than most countries becasue of the electoral college which is designed to provide undue influence by smaller population states. (otherwise presidents would campaign only in large population centers - the vast majority of the US which are small to mid sized states issues would get drowned out by states like NY and Ca ) It has always been known by every schoolchild studing citizenship that it theortically possible for a president to win an election without winning the popular vote

The US is not one large homogenous country. It is not that big of a surprise that states have quite a bit of autonomy in their laws. We come together in national events but most elections are very local. the same system was used for both and it showed that national standards are needed for polling equipment.

I did not vote for Bush but I still thought it was time to move on becasue no matter who won the other would have called foul. They would have had a case for it as well. It is sometimes better to ut your losses and move on and say wait to next election. The US Congress is where the real power for change lies. They are the ones that can really change things via laws or not and I felt they would be a major roadblock to Bush getting too wild in his right wings agendas. The president in the US is one that can bring national focus on issues but they cannot pass laws themselves. The power of the presidency is felt most in a national crisis. The WTC terrorist did more to bring people in the US together than they are aware.

WTC changed many things in the US. Bush is now popular where he was certain to be a one term footnote in history. His politics seemed to have changed and even his relationship to the average person on the street, his view of international issues have change. We shall see if that is long lasting.