Johnny Taliban is still breathing

US father appeals for Taliban son
... Reviled by many Americans as a traitor, Lindh agreed to a plea deal in which he was spared a possible life prison sentence and all terrorism charges against him were dropped. In exchange, he pleaded guilty to two charges of aiding the Taliban and carrying explosives. Now in federal prison in southern California, John Walker Lindh is appealing to George Bush, the US president, to commute his sentence. Frank Lindh said he was proud of his son. "He was extremely unpopular in the United States and probably still is because of the way his case was portrayed by the government and by the media," he said. "People will come to realize that what happened in his case was wrong, that the torture was wrong."

I am with Mr Frank Lindh. What has happened in this case is a horrible travesty of justice. The torture of John Walker Lindh is unconscionable. He should never have been tortured (if he was), and he shouldn't serve a day in jail. ... Upon his capture in Afghanistan, Johnny Taliban should have been immediately tried for treason and sedition in a military tribunal, convicted, and hanged from a lightpost in Times Square until his traitorous, shameful spirit was extinguished from his body. This guy was literally fighting with our enemy, and the most he can get is 20 years in jail because he plead guilty? He wasn't saying nasty things about our troops in newspapers, he wasn't hoping for the defeat of coalition forces, he was LITERALLY captured armed in combat on the side of the terrorist regime of the Taliban. The fact that his head is still attached to his neck is indefensible to me, and is one of the worst failures of the Bush administration.