The Detroit Free Press has an interesting bit of pdf that contains the name of Ed Seitz, the State Department employee killed this morning at the Baghdad airport. It is the Government's response to the motion by the "Detroit Sleeper Cell" defendants for a new trial. But read the whole text, don't just seek down to the man's name, get a feel for his life and work, and for the details of the Wah on Terrah.
It gets better. Seitz offered "expert testimony" on sneaking a gun to an airliner. He offered "expert testimony" on the quality of government issued identification documents. He offered "expert testimony" on specific intent to harm Israel. He offered "expert testimony" on specific intent to "conduct an economic jihad against the United States". In each instance men were in jepordy of their lives, liberties, and property.
Department of State Special Agent Seitz interrogated John Clarke, an international man of terroristory organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) on February 19th, 2002. Mr. Clarke was in-route to a speaking engagement at Michigan State University, here is his write-up on his meeting with Seitz. Especially touching is the suggestion that Osama bin Laden is hiding in the mountainous Tora Bora region of Ontario, or working at a soup kitchen in Toronto.
Colin Powell waxes predictably on the virtues of a perjurer, but then again, he did doors campaigning for WMDs. In the topsy-turvy world of the embittered right, a man who could step out of the statist bureaucratic nightmare of Kafka's Castle, from a day of pulling the wings off of random civilians, and quote pages of Derrida and mock the intellectual timidity of "a single true narrative" and the fiction of "objective reality" while ... er ... improving on the evidence used to hang men, will be buried as a hero.
Posted by EBW at October 24, 2004 07:29 AM | TrackBackIt's also so familiar. A war based on lies half way around the world. Government agencies compiling dossiers on liberal groups and harrassing their members. The War in Iraq is like the War in Vietnam, only on crack.
Posted by: Bernie Simon at October 24, 2004 12:22 PMEd was a personal friend of mine. And your point is?
Posted by: M Brynaert at October 26, 2004 10:30 PMThat he knowingly participated in the fabrication of evidence in the "Detroit Sleeper Cell" case. That he "experted" where his only real credential was his status. That he thought OBL's current whereabouts was something John Clarke could share with him over coffee. Things he may not have shared with, and did not inflict upon, his friends.
I'm sure you can find some agreeable venue where your friend's life work in public service is protected from criticism.
Friends don't let friends drink and drive. That phrase puts personal bond and social duty in seven words. What did you do to let Ed know he was weaving from the straight and narrow? Did you ever fight with him for the car keys, did you knock him down and take away his key to the courtroom where he might in regime-drunkenness harm someone for looking Arab?
"And your point is?" is so lame. I'm still angry a Portland man left his wife, child, hell, even his friends and neighbors to go join a WMD snipe hunt and come home in pieces in a transit tube. He was dumb, just a pair of boots, but he didn't make a career out of fabricating evidence.
Posted by: Eric at October 27, 2004 06:58 AM