Eclipsed from the headlines by the ongoing carnage, there is an active
civil resistance in Iraq that opposes the occupation, the torture regime
it protects, and the jihadi and Ba'athist 'resistance' alike.
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Mon, 01/15/2007 - 00:14.
It seems the BBC got bigger things wrong than the spelling of "Ricardo." Writes Paul Wolf:
The BBC story is false. Nobody is accused of smuggling hundreds of tons of anything. The indictment charges several people with conspiracy to distribute and import into the US more than 5 kilograms of cocaine. After hearing the attorneys' opening arguments, it appears the evidence consists of intercepted phone calls in which defendants are talking about buying and selling hundreds of "things" - the words kilogram or cocaine are not used. This is why the government is calling an expert "language decoder" witness, to claim that they are talking about cocaine. In any event the numbers of "things" do not add up to more than a thousand or two, so even if they are kilograms of cocaine, it wouldn't be more than one or two tons.
The other falsehood in the story is that nobody is accused of smuggling. They are accused of conspiracy. This means that no drugs were seized - the defendants are accused of planning to smuggle drugs. The BBC reporter doesn't cite his source, but I would guess his story is based on information from either Colombian or US government officials. In these political trials, there is normally an accompanying trial by media, and it's the false public trial that's so unfair.
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A bigger error
It seems the BBC got bigger things wrong than the spelling of "Ricardo." Writes Paul Wolf:
The BBC story is false. Nobody is accused of smuggling hundreds of tons of anything. The indictment charges several people with conspiracy to distribute and import into the US more than 5 kilograms of cocaine. After hearing the attorneys' opening arguments, it appears the evidence consists of intercepted phone calls in which defendants are talking about buying and selling hundreds of "things" - the words kilogram or cocaine are not used. This is why the government is calling an expert "language decoder" witness, to claim that they are talking about cocaine. In any event the numbers of "things" do not add up to more than a thousand or two, so even if they are kilograms of cocaine, it wouldn't be more than one or two tons.
The other falsehood in the story is that nobody is accused of smuggling. They are accused of conspiracy. This means that no drugs were seized - the defendants are accused of planning to smuggle drugs. The BBC reporter doesn't cite his source, but I would guess his story is based on information from either Colombian or US government officials. In these political trials, there is normally an accompanying trial by media, and it's the false public trial that's so unfair.