_GR_, 2001

[Musashi Miyamoto]

MD wrote (leaving out all context):

You seem ever troubled to distinguish actual from not, even when the
conjecture is your own.  Innocent of "an atrocious" hypothetical crime?  I'd
have to say yes to that.

To which I, HM, respond:

Is this a matter of you, MD, deliberately pretending to be obtuse, which I
have not found you to be in the past? Is winning, in this case a
disagreement, so important to you? Must be nice to be a believer. Are you
that certain of "the actual?" If I have learned anything from pomo, it is to
question certainty.

If you can accept that we, the USA and al-Qaeda, are dealing in beliefs,
then actual innocence isn't the point here. The evil one isn't innocent
until proven guilty before a jury of his peers. A unilateral star chamber
has found him guilty. I'm sure that you'd find that atrociously
insupportable if the shoe were on the other foot and one of our top guys was
found guilty (without trial) in another country that didn't present any
evidence of his guilt to us. I can't imagine the US turning someone over to
a (foreign?) country under such circumstances, can you? If not, then how do
we justify bombing a country (Afghanistan) beyond the zero for not turning
someone (bin Laden) over to us without our first presenting evidence of
guilt?

,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_

Keep Cool, but Care
Henry Mu

----- Original Message -----
MD was responding to this message from me, HM:

Hmmmm. Let me guess reason number one:

It's obvious that Dick is innocent.

----- Original Message -----

Which I wrote in response to his [MD's] message:

In a message dated 10/28/1 8:08:12 AM, you [HM, ed] wrote:

<<If Cuba, a country with whom we have less than cordial relations, asked
the
USA to extradite Dick Cheney to Cuba to stand trial for an atrocious crime,
what would we do? If we asked for evidence of Cheney's guilt, and Cuba tol
us
that there was overwhelming evidence against him that China, Vietnam, Libya
and Afghanistan have seen, but that for security reasons can't be shown to
US
officials or, of course, the public in general, how would we respond? Oops,
my bad! Cuba isn't a superpower.>>

You surely don't need me to enumerate for you the reasons this analogy is
spurious.