SLAP ON THE WRIST: John Walker
Lindh gets twenty years prison time in a plea bargain agreement. This traitor commits the ultimate act of treason — taking up arms with a foreign power against his own country — and may have played a role in the death of an American special operations officer, and he only gets twenty years? Unless the government's case was fabricated, there was no reason to plea bargain. Why plea bargain a case in which the defendant is so obviously guilty? This makes no sense. Perhaps the prosecutors are too damned lazy to put forth the effort to secure justice for the American people; after all, most bureaucrats aren't exactly renowned for breaking a sweat on the job.
The disposition of the Lindh case is more than unfortunate. It's a message to those who would betray their country that the risk is minimal; had Lindh been involved in drug trafficking, he would've received a stiffer penalty. President Bush is ably prosecuting the war on terrorism; his Justice Department, however, more than dropped the ball in prosecuting the highest profile criminal case to come out of that war. Juan Padilla, the American who was arrested for dabbling in the particulars of building a dirty bomb, was turned over to the Pentagon where he will face a military tribunal. Why wasn't the same done with Lindh?
