Chris Wiegand commented below on my “Response to Post Standard Editorial”, and states:

“I agree that Dr. Dhafir wasn’t a terrorist, but he was certainly a crook; he diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars that should have gone to charity into his pocket. The jury found him guilty of 59 out of 60 counts after lengthy deliberations. I’ve never seen any insinuation in the press or in letters to the editor that members of the jury were dupes.
When will you begin to think that maybe a common thief isn’t worth all of the effort or support on your part and get on with your life?”

My response:

Having sat through the 17-week trial as a person who had no prior knowledge of Dr. Dhafir, I have to disagree with you most emphatically. The evidence presented in court led me to believe that Dr. Dhafir is a man of the utmost compassion and integrity. Tragically he is just one of the many victims of the War on Terror.
I am concerned for Dr. Dhafir; this is an injustice of colossal proportions. But my overriding concern is for what is happening to the rule of law in this country, and the effects of this on the Constitution and how that in turn is affecting the democratic process – a process that so many Americans have been proud of for so long.
This is what my effort and support are for.

If you have ever wondered how the Germans let the Holocaust happen, I say to you “look around you now”, and I say “look in the mirror”. What happened in Germany did not happen overnight. Things changed very slowly. I ask you to think on this question:

Who is responsible for the deaths of the Jewish children who were sent on transport from Westerbork Concentration camp in the Netherlands, to Auschwitz?

Was it the Dutch police who were taking orders from the Germans?
Was it the kind people who helped the children board the train?
Was it the train engineer and the train guards?
Was it Dr. Mengele who selected some children for experiments, while letting others go straight to the gas chambers?
Was it the prisoners who were forced to work getting the people into (and the bodies out of) the gas chambers?
Was it the German officer who put the deadly gas through the hole in the roof?
Or was it German people who believed what their government did and didn’t tell them?

Who?