John Walker Lindh’s early release is ‘absolutely outrageous’ because he is ‘a traitor,’ lawmaker says
Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., made the comments on "Fox & Friends" a day before John Walker Lindh is expected to emerge from a federal prison in Indiana. Waltz, who also served as a counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, says “it’s bad enough that [Lindh] was only given 20 years” after being found guilty of joining and supporting the Taliban.
“He shouldn’t be on parole at all,” Waltz told ‘Fox & Friends’. “He should be in prison for life, he’s a traitor.”
Lindh, who is currently behind bars in Terre Haute, Indiana, is set to be discharged Thursday, several years before he would complete the prescribed 20-year prison sentence. The former Islamist fighter and enemy combatant, named “Detainee 001 in the war on terror,” was arrested in 2001, just months after the Sept. 11 attacks and the start of the war in Afghanistan, along with a group of Taliban fighters who were captured by U.S. forces.
Lindh should not be allowed out now or in the furture. He is a committed terrorist and wishes nothing but harm to American citizens anywhere and any time.
“He shouldn’t be on parole at all,” Waltz told ‘Fox & Friends’. “He should be in prison for life, he’s a traitor.”
Lindh, who is currently behind bars in Terre Haute, Indiana, is set to be discharged Thursday, several years before he would complete the prescribed 20-year prison sentence. The former Islamist fighter and enemy combatant, named “Detainee 001 in the war on terror,” was arrested in 2001, just months after the Sept. 11 attacks and the start of the war in Afghanistan, along with a group of Taliban fighters who were captured by U.S. forces.
Lindh should not be allowed out now or in the furture. He is a committed terrorist and wishes nothing but harm to American citizens anywhere and any time.
Given all that, I don't understand what he did that was worse than anyone who joins a criminal gang, such as a group of bank robbers, and never directly hurts anyone. That's a serious crime, but it plays into the criminals' hands to aggrandize it as being equivalent to directly perpetrating mass murder.
I think you're right, though, given the world and law as it actually is rather than my unusual notions about it.