Assassin!

This is coolbert:

Good program on television last night about the assassination of President Lincoln and the hunt for the assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

Some interesting points were brought up during this program. To include:

* Union troops in the field, occupation forces in the southern states, were not told FOR DAYS later that the President had been assassinated. The fear was that units would spontaneously take out retribution on the southern populace. Revenge of an unseemly and unwanted nature DID NOT OCCUR, but the concern on the part of the authorities WAS there.

* About two hundred people WERE killed in the aftermath of the assassination. Incidents involving individuals who praised the killing of Lincoln, those not showing proper remorse, mobs attacking and summarily executing those felt to harbor Confederate sympathies, etc.

Compare that figure [200] with the half-dozen to dozen persons killed in the aftermath of 9/11. Individual over-zealous Americans taking out their anger on unfortunates thought to be Muslim. Including as I recall, a Sikh, wearing a turban, and hardly a Muslim.

* The arrest, trial, conviction, and execution of the Lincoln Assassination conspirators [and it was a conspiracy] was carried out by military tribunal - - "with all due speed", as they say!! During confinement, the conspirators were locked away in a naval ironclad, hooded with pads over their ears, shackled and chained, under circumstances of extreme privation, even for those accused of conspiracy, murder, rebellious insurrection.

"The eight suspects were tried by a military tribunal . . . the use of a military tribunal [was justified] on grounds that included the military nature of the conspiracy and the existence of martial law in the District of Columbia . . . [the] rules . . . required only a simple majority of the officer jury for a guilty verdict and a two-thirds majority for a death sentence."

The entire process of manhunt, arrest, trial, execution taking about three months total!!

[Hey ya'll! How much does this sound like Gitmo and those tribunals that have been suspended? Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures!!]

AND THAT THE PRESIDENT AT THAT EXACT MOMENT ACTED IN THE CAPACITY OF COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE ARMED FORCES WHILE THOSE FORCES WERE ACTUALLY IN THE FIELD ENGAGED IN COMBAT OPERATIONS!

coolbert.