Media is trying to link latest traitor with Second Amendment issues.

[Diggler]

Looks like the media is trying to link the latest Islamic convert turncoat to the right to bear arms. Seems he wrote several letters to the editor supporting RKBA, and they think this is relevant to him allegedly attempting to supply info to al-Queda.

Letters to the editor from Ryan Anderson

During his time in Pullman, Ryan Anderson had three published letters to The Spokesman-Review. In them, he warned against allowing the government to take away personal freedoms, chiefly the right to own firearms. Those letters are reprinted below.




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This war could cost us our freedoms


Some compare our current situation with World War II. However, other than some very basic similarities, there is no comparison.


There are no hordes of enemy tanks and fighter planes. There will be no massive drives against organized, well-equipped, well-defined enemy armies.


Our evil mastermind is a monster of our own creation, much the same as the Columbine shooters. This needs to be a war of hearts and minds, where in order to win we have to defeat ignorance and hatred with information and cooperation. The retribution that is necessary needs to be quick, surgical and effective.


A war in Afghanistan will bleed us dry as it did the Soviets and the British before them.


I fear war for another reason, that being that the elements in our own society who would rob us of our individual liberties and freedoms can use the auspices of national security to steal them. Already in the past century we have given up an alarming amount of individual liberty to feel safe.


No amount of gun control, press restriction or racial or religious profiling will save us from a body count like that of Sept. 11. But if you get a chance to read some of the bills due to go before Congress, some people obviously aren't going to let that stop them from continuing their crusade to save us from ourselves.


Think before calling for indiscriminate war because it may end up being an indiscriminate war on us all.


Ryan G. Anderson

Pullman, Wash.


Published Oct. 5, 2001




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Militia means irregulars - citizens


Walter Becker (Letters, April 22) tries to offer proof that the Second Amendment only applies to the militia, but his reasoning is faulty.


What does he think the militia is? The National Guard? I think not; it's closer to being a standing army than was most of the Royal Army that invaded the then-rebellious 13 colonies!


A militia by definition is an irregular force. It usually includes all able-bodied citizens between the ages of 17 and 45. In simplest terms, a militia is a group of armed citizens who have banded together temporarily to defend their homes and community.


If we went with Becker's interpretation, the Second Amendment would grant a standing army and a police force the right to maintain weapons, a right that has no need to be declared in a document such as the Bill of Rights, even in the 1770s.


I am in favor of intelligent gun control. Should the United States adopt a system along the lines of Switzerland's, I could not be happier. To shooters and collectors like me, it would mean more well-maintained ranges, inexpensive ammunition and, best of all, one free weapon issued to every responsible citizen. But it's not going to happen. Why? Because too many people out there don't mean gun control, they mean total annihilation of private firearms ownership. Until gun control advocates start respecting shooters, we will have no choice but to fight you, tooth and nail, every chance we get.


Ryan G. Anderson

Pullman


Published April 27, 1998




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Firearms not the problem


Once again our eyes and ears are inundated with yet another tragedy, this time in Arkansas, involving the cold-blooded murder of our children by our children.


Although I feel appalled by the carnage, I think I'm even more worried by the response of the citizens of this country. Rather than blaming themselves for allowing their children access to bloody video-games and graphically violent television programs, they choose to blame the easy culprits: firearms.


Our problem these days is that we want to generalize situations and fix problems with a cookie-cutter solution. I don't have all the answers, but I do have some. The solution to the gun issue is to have gun-control spearheaded by level-headed and responsible shooters, people who know and are directly affected by such regulations. Anything else will just be temporary, and doomed to both failure and tragedy.


I fear that my voice, however, is but a calm whisper in a room of angry shouts. Today I am a young soldier, sworn to protect and defend this country, but if tomorrow I find that this nation is no longer the one based upon the freedom I was taught to love, I'll have little choice but to go where I can live in freedom. When you people out there who would give up liberty for safety, stand up to be counted, you'll not find me among you, because you deserve neither. Free men can possess arms, slaves cannot.


Ryan G. Anderson

Pullman


Published April 9, 1998

 

[tyme]

Great. Just what we need.

 

[SodaPop]

Can I volunteer for the firing squad?


He sounds like the type of person that really just needed a girlfriend.

 

[atek3]

shame about the whole "spying for the enemy thing"
those letters are well written and intelligent.

atek3

 

[CleverNickname]

If you go over to ar15.com, there's a big thread discussiing how he was a (fairly) regular poster over there.

 

[SodaPop]

Great.

 

[Bill Hook]

He sounds like the type of person that really just needed a girlfriend.

Read some of the links in the other thread about him. He tried, but I guess his desire to become an al-Qaeda death-cultist, among many other things didn't help.

 

[SMLE]

He used to be a regular on a Lee Enfield forum I post on. I even maintained a web page of pictures of some of the regulars and his was one of them. I only found out he'd been arrested when I started getting calls from reporters wanting to know if it was the same guy.

Stupid little git! I'd like to have a few minutes alone with him and a dull knife in my hand.

 

[Bill Hook]

a dull knife in my hand.

Dull knives are dangerous to the user. What you want is a razor sharp knife.

 

[HunterGatherer]

Dull knives are dangerous to the user. What you want is a razor sharp knife.

That's what I love about this place. All the great advice.

 

[SMLE]

Dull knives are dangerous to the user. What you want is a razor sharp knife.

I know enough to cut AWAY from myself. A sharp knife would be too quick, especially for a field circumcision.

 

[faustulus]

nothing i like better than the 'guilty till proven innocent' mentality.

see last quote in sig.

 

[c_yeager]

They were talking to the guy's buddies ont he local news over hear. Apparently he was big into mil-surps particularly world war two bolt actions. They had a picture of him with a really nice looking enfield. Shame about him being a traitor to our nation though. If true, i hope they hang him.

 

[MicroBalrog]

Was he already convicted?

 

[c_yeager]

And so it starts with our local paper.

Accused Guardsman 's online posts show zeal for guns, military

By Ray Rivera and Jennifer Sullivan
Seattle Times staff reporters

A National Guardsman accused of trying to supply military intelligence to the al-Qaida terrorist network once described himself as a "die-hard Christian" who spent months unsuccessfully trying to join a right-wing militia group.

"For God's sake," Ryan Anderson wrote in frustration in a 1996 Internet posting to a pro-militia chat room. "I am not an ATF agent or some Government (official) trying to arrest someone anyone ... I am a die-hard Christian, and I do believe in America, I believe a great deal of what I have been told the Militias are defending against, even if only ideologically."

Military and federal law-enforcement authorities believe that Spc. Anderson's desire to be part of a group may have led him from the lure of one political fringe — the right-wing patriot movement of rural America — to exploring Islamic extremism in Internet chat rooms and offering to help in the cause.

Anderson, a 26-year-old tank crewman in the 81st Armored Brigade, is in a military jail at Fort Lewis awaiting formal charges, which are expected to be handed down sometime next week. Military officials said he could face charges of attempting to aid the enemy, which carries a maximum penalty of death under military law.

He has been appointed a military lawyer, his family said.

The Lynnwood resident was arrested Thursday in a sting operation just days before his unit was scheduled to ship out to California for a final few weeks of training before deployment in Iraq.

A federal source said Anderson logged on to extremist Islamic chat rooms in recent months and tried to get in touch with al-Qaida. Another source said national security was never breached and that information Anderson allegedly offered an undercover officer was unclassified, "common knowledge" material.

Anderson's father, Bruce Anderson, stepmother, Jaclyn, and wife, Erin, declined interviews yesterday but issued a statement to The Associated Press saying the family "is stunned" by the arrest.

"As American citizens we will place our faith and trust in the United States Uniform Code of Military Justice to provide Ryan a fair trial before rendering any decision," they wrote. They also thanked friends for their support.

Pat Quast, his mother-in-law, said she saw Anderson last weekend when she attended a deployment ceremony for the 81st at the Tacoma Dome with her daughter. Anderson voiced fears about being killed in the war and sadness about leaving his 23-year-old wife behind, Quast said, but he "was proud of what he was doing."

Converted to Islam

In numerous postings in Internet chat rooms and in several letters to newspapers, Anderson displayed a zeal for guns and the military. More recently, he wrote of his conversion to Islam.

"My suggestion to anyone who thinks Islam is some kind of evil is to go spend some time with Muslims," he wrote in a November 2002 letter to the Everett Herald. "In my three years as an observant Muslim, I've encountered nothing but kindness, patience, courtesy and understanding from them. On the other hand, I have experienced bigotry, hatred, and mindless rage from so-called 'educated thinkers' here in the U.S."

Though the letter suggests that he converted to Islam in 1999, he called himself a Muslim convert as early as 1997 in an Internet posting, in which he asked for help searching for programs to study Islam in Egypt or Turkey.

At the Masjid Omar Al-Farooq mosque in Mountlake Terrace, some worshippers arriving for Friday afternoon prayers yesterday remembered Anderson attending services briefly about two years ago. They said the young man stood out among the largely Pakistani and Indian members.

"He looked American. I thought maybe he was a recent convert," said Khaled Zaki, 15, who recognized Anderson's picture on the news.

Zaki's father, Mohab, described mosque members as particularly peaceful and quiet. Gesturing to the two-story wooden building where men in crocheted skullcaps and prayer shawls entered, he said, "This is God's home. Anybody who comes here stands before God."

Responding to reports that Anderson had visited a Tukwila mosque and tried to interest worshippers in learning to shoot rifles and guns, Zaki said, "This isn't a place to talk about guns. We wouldn't have listened to that."

'Quiet, polite' student

Anderson grew up in Everett and entered Washington State University in 1995, graduating with a history degree in 2002. He joined the National Guard later that summer, according to military sources.

WSU professor Marina Tolmacheva, who had Anderson in her course on Middle East history in 1996, recalled him as "indifferent ... not active in class discussions." He showed no taste for radical politics, she said, while noting the classes weren't overtly political.

"He took more than one class in the subject matter so must have had an interest in it, but I presume he would have done better had he been really interested," she said.

Steve Lincoln, a friend of Anderson's, told the campus newspaper, the Daily Evergreen, that "For him, military stuff was more than a hobby, but less than a fetish."

Another history professor, Fritz Blackwell, said Anderson had a "student's demeanor, quiet, polite and very interested in Introduction to South Asia."

"I would never have guessed," Blackwell said of the arrest.

Anderson had at least one run-in with police.

In May 1998, Anderson raised concerns when he carried a rifle with a bayonet past a grade school near his Everett home a day after a notorious school shooting in Springfield, Ore. Seeing a gun-toting man walking past the school, neighbors called police, who locked down the school.

He was arrested at gunpoint by Snohomish County sheriff's deputies but never charged. He told police he was simply walking to a friend's house to show off his rifle, which was unloaded.

Quast, Anderson's mother-in-law, said she hadn't known Anderson very long, but called him a "very caring person."

Quast said Anderson and her daughter met while they were students at WSU and married during a quick ceremony in April 2003 in Kentucky, where Anderson was undergoing military training.

"He treated Erin very special," she said by telephone from her home in Grant County. "He was just a good kid."

Quast said Anderson joined the military to earn money to return to college for graduate studies. He dreamed of being a pilot or a high-school history teacher, she said.

She didn't recall him ever speaking to her about politics or religion. His passion was guns. He liked to visit her rural home to go target shooting with her older son, she said.

She said she heard the news of his arrest Thursday afternoon, when Erin called her sobbing.

Quast said she doesn't know what to think about the allegations against Anderson. Even if his name is cleared, she fears he will never be able to stay in the military or even get a decent job.

"All of his dreams are gone now because his career in the service is over," she said.

Ray Rivera: 206-464-2926 or [email protected]; Jennifer Sullivan: 425-783-0604 or

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001857912_anderson14m.html

 

[MicroBalrog]

I repeat, was he already convicted?

 

[c_yeager]

I repeat, was he already convicted?

Are you trying to make some kind of "point"?

 

[MicroBalrog]

Yes, it would be immense fun if he is found not guilty.

 

[c_yeager]

Yes, it would be immense fun if he is found not guilty.

Seems like you already knew the answer to your question.

So, does wether he COMITTED the crime matter to you one way or the other? Or are you just interested in the verdict? OJ was found not guilty too.

Also i feel i should point out my original post.

If true , i hope they hang him.

Assumption of guilt?

 

[schadenfreude]

Maybe he was nuts..........and was on the internet trying to lure some muslims into a meeting. When they arrived he goes bat???? insane and snuffs em. He could be innocent you never know.


Doesn't anyone watch law and order?

When's the last time they hung someone for this>

 

[MicroBalrog]

Ok, what sense would it make for someone who defends freedom so eloquently to side with extremely anti-freedom people like Usama?

 

[c_yeager]

Perhaps his definition of "freedom" differed from what would be considered "normal"? Evil people usually dont KNOW that they are evil. Im sure the Hitlers of the world felt like they were fighting the "good fight" as well.

 

[MicroBalrog]

How do you concile RKBA with the Shariat? I mean, it's hard to punish a woman for not wearing a burka if she's carrying an MP-5, right?

Seriously, I see your point, but it still makes little sense.

 

[atek3]

Man go check out ARFCOM's thread about this guy. It was getting so "Kill all the moslems and let allah sort em out" I thought I was over at neo-con central, freerepublic.com

atek3

 

[c_yeager]

How do you concile RKBA with the Shariat?

I dont. Maybe HE does.

I mean, it's hard to punish a woman for not wearing a burka if she's carrying an MP-5, right?

I agree, in fact i think a whole lot of situations in the middle east would solve themselves if the right people we allowed to arm themselves.

Seriously, I see your point, but it still makes little sense.

I dont think we will ever fully understand what is going on in his head. Maybe he was arguing points on the RKBA purely for academic (rather than ideological) reasons. Maybe he changed his mind. And maybe he has a twisted view of reality in which he can justify his two apparently contradictory (to us at least) beliefs.