So, Glenn, you're saying that it should be legally protected for someone to immigrate to a Western nation, and then recruit other immigrants from that country to go fight against "the West" in a war?

I didn't comment on whether it should be legal or not. I said that whatever "terrorism" is, fighting against invading armies isn't it.

The Italians were conducting a legal investigation to determine if Nasr had broken laws at the time the U.S. kidnapped him. If he had been breaking any laws, he could have been prosecuted in what is called a "court" under what we call "law." But because of the kidnapping that you obviously support, that wasn't possible, so don't pretend you care about legalities.

I wonder how those "warriors" whom he would have recruited would have fought once in Iraq or Afghanistan? Blowing up public markets? Burning down schools that teach girls?

Or, even worse, maybe they would have dropped bombs on those schools and buildings and markets and boasted that it was all about "shock and awe."

Or maybe they would have kidnapped people off the street and tortured them!

No telling what these Islamic terrorist monsters are capable of.

There were two passages in your post which bothered me, the one above cited by IIuLTiMaFoRSaNII, and the one appearing to justify armed uprising against the Egyptian government of an unspecified nature. I rolled them around in my head and figured that you weren't justifying recruiting people to take up arms against your country in this case, just saying it didn't constitute terrorism prima facie, and that the same could be said of starting an armed uprising in Egypt.

But your above rebuttal now makes me wonder if I got it right. You actually are, it seems above, justifying acts of terrorist violence on grounds that they are somehow less offensive than Air Force bombings that hit civilian targets? Even though the example given by IIuLTiMaFoRSaNII was of civilian targets?

I'm not agreeing with IIuLTiMaFoRSaNII, but (s)he did flag one of two very strange passages in your post. Please clarify.

Which intelligence agency should we assume Ledeen is working for?

An "off the shelf, self-sustaining, stand alone, entity that could perform certain activities on behalf of the United States".

American pundits? At which one? Chor bazaar?

The ones at MDC Brooklyn also include setting up a video camera on a tripod to record the search, "in case there are allegations of improper handling".

This has been going on for over a year now with her. She actually at some point expressed fondness for Carswell, TX (federal detention center for female criminally insane, known colloquially in Texas as the "House of Horrors" because of guard sexual abuse of the inmates) just because she wasn't searched there. It isn't necessary (she has had long periods where just meeting with her attorneys in the prison had a full cavity search as a pre-requisite), it's because she's a "terrorist" until proven innocent, aged several years, shipped to Vanuatu, and tied to a stake, burned, and had the ashes buried in a salt dome under Antarctica, the new burden of proof for Americans who want to be "safe".

The news coverage is abysmal. The New York Times, a hometown paper to the District Court of S.D.N.Y., had nothing (it may eventually cover her in the metro blog, where the focus will be on speculations about her anti-semitism), but had a couple of pages devoted to a mob and graft trial in Chongqing, China. What the Times did cover about Pakistan was conspiracy theories circulating in Peshawar due to denial about the Meena Bazaar bombing. Not much about the offensive in SWA, which has displaced, by some accounts (ICRC is complaining that it lacks access as recently as last weekend) 250,000.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/national/aid-workers-worried-for-civilians-in-war-zone-419

The International News (Pakistan) has something about the fighting and public reaction (it's more hawkish than Dawn, less than The Times. http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=206524

It's sharply divided, there is a sizable group which believes offensive won't work, or that it's America's war, and a smaller group that believes, as Sabrina Tavernise was writing, that Meena Bazaar was all the work of India and the Mossad, or maybe the Americans, secretly backing the TTP (Taliban). The government is contributing to that, alleging Indian involvement. The Dawn article on the Gilani Research Foundation poll is here:

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/national/most-pakistanis-back-war-against-militants-poll-419

So the only woman ever to hit the FBI's top ten terrorist list goes to court in New York, 250,000 IDPs are created in Pakistan by a military offensive involving 30,000 Army troops and 10,000-20,000 Taliban/Uzbeks/al Qaeda fighters, and no interest, except in survivor's denial in one of the more horrific bombings in recent memory, which also isn't interesting, either.

I should mark this comment as OT, but somehow from California, New York's mayoral race seems a little...OT anyway.

The focus on the lifting of the ban was also the focus overseas. It's one of the amendments to the Ryan White Act, I guess because the ban itself was put into the act by Jesse Helms originally. It was front page news in the Bangkok Post for instance (the paper choice on the plane).