Back to September 10th
Tags: terrorism.
Click here to get Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority by Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan.
Yep:
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who as a judge presided over a trial stemming from the first attack on the World Trade Center, on Friday warned that the Obama administration’s decision to bring Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York, along with three other terrorist detainees, to stand trial in a civilian court, reflected a pre-9/11 mindset that viewed terrorism as a simple criminal matter.
Speaking at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention, Mukasey described the move, as “a decision I consider not only unwise, but based on a refusal to face the fact that what we are involved with here is a war with people who follow a religiously-based ideology that calls on them to kill us, and to return instead to the mindset that prevailed before Sept. 11 that acts like the first World Trade Center bombing, the attacks on our embassies in Africa and other such acts can and should be treated as conventional crimes and tried in conventional courts.”
Describing a pattern of decisions made since the the Obama administration pledged in January to close Guantanamo Bay prison within a year, Mukasey said that, “What’s followed has seemed in many instances to be a system in which policy is fashioned to fit and proceed rhetoric rather than being thought out in advance with arguments then formulated in support of it.”
Rush was theorizing yesterday that, perhaps, this was all just a sop to the left so that they can – in discovery – find “evidence” against Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to get them indicted by the ICC or some other foreign court. Such cannot be discounted – but in my view its ok if we just figure that this was the triumph of ideology over common sense. Leftist ideology says that the worse the criminal, the more should be accorded him in order to be “fair” because a really horrible criminal is someone who has just been that much worse victimized by society. If KSM really did mastermind 9/11 (and do pay attention to Holder’s use of the word “alleged” in his statement), then it probably stems from his childhood…or just about anything of than radical Islam or KSM’s own moral failings.
But our desire here is justice, and a trial is not necessarily justice (see the OJ verdict). Especially in today’s world where all too many attorneys are relentlessly dishonest, trials are mostly about suppressing the truth and avoiding justice at all costs. Justice dictates that KSM and the rest never be at liberty, again. I know that many want them executed, but I’m not in favor of the death penalty, even for such as KSM. But he must be forever prevented from harming others – and this means confinement and if there’s even an outside chance he would walk in a civil trial, then such a trial must not happen. If he behaves in prison we can grant him many privileges – but the only way he should get out is in a box.
Its a hard thing to do – but KSM is a hard man who came up second in his chosen game. No one put a gun to his head and forced him to become a terrorist – he did it because he wanted to, and there’s an end on it, for him. To bring him to America and put him on trial in our courts is (a) stupid because law doesn’t cover things like this and (b) counter productive because it just allows evil greater scope for propaganda.
We are certainly back in to a pre-9/11 mindset – lets hope it doesn’t end with more planes being crashed in to buildings.
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6 Responses to “Back to September 10th”
Caucus of Corruption
So what is your solution, keep him locked up indefinitely without a trial?
The supreme court has already rejected Bush’s military tribunals, and Bush himself had stated he was on the path to closing Guantanamo and giving the detainees trials.
The severity of the crime has no bearing on the right to a trial. Look, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is guilty. He will be put away for the rest of his life whether he is given a trial or not.
(BTW, “Sep 10th mentality” type of talk is a crutch that doesn’t work in late 2009, at least outside the wingnutosphere)
I just wanted to post this link:
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/199594.php
It is about David Headley the man from Chicago who helped plan the Mumbai Massacre. By the way, Headley along with his terrorist partner ran an immigration service.
So what is your solution, keep him locked up indefinitely without a trial?
Take em oput HANG em and bury them with a dead pig.
winnow,
Keep them locked up as long as the war lasts and if they are guilty of crimes against humanity, try them before military tribunals.
If Obama wanted to do that, all he’d have to do is declassify the evidence. Remember, this isn’t an investigation, it’s a trial. Additionally, the prosecutors are only going to be using evidence that is completely untainted, which will limit (but not eliminate) the defense’s opportunities to even raise the subject.
As the Attorney General, Holder is required to refer to the accused as “accused” until such time as they have been convicted. It’s standard, and well known, legal terminology.
There’s not. Before he was captured, KSM (along with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the other accused) cooperated with Al Jazeera to make one of the most remarkable documentaries of all time. All the prosecutor needs to do is play it for the jury and their fate will be sealed. As it happens, there is a poorly labeled copy on YouTube that has English subtitles; I’ll link to both Part One and Part Two since you probably don’t know how to say either one in Arabic.
Is this a joke? Of course it does.
Actually, prosecuting him as a common criminal debases him and both de-glorifies and de-legitimizes the “jihad”. Treating him in the manner directed by law also does much to restore our international image, and trying him in New York will keep the horrific nature of his crime in the minds of any impressionable young potential jihadists who follow the trial. In any event, the process of radicalization does not work by viewing courtroom outbursts on TV. Instead, it is far more intensive, and involves things like semi-obsessively viewing combat footage and propaganda videos, or living together with a bunch of radicals or people undergoing the radicalization process, or a friend or family member dying as part of a relevant conflict. You’ll note that we were able to try Zacharias Moussaoui without creating a bunch of new radicals. The only people who listened to him and didn’t think he was crazy were already on their way to radicalization. Likewise, we were able to try Göring without converting a whole bunch of people to Nazism even though he tried to do exactly that, because we used the propaganda platform as well and utterly obliterated his claims about the nobility of Nazi Germany by showing the court a film outlining exactly what took place during the Holocaust.
More like a post-1945 mindset. We treat beasts with dignity, and therefore strip it from them.
It will be what it is designed to be, a show trial that would make Stalin proud. There won’t be just one defendant—the entire adminstration of the last eight years will be hauled out for the slavering mobs to attack. It will be a lengthy circus, a sham of a trial orchestrated to mimic justice but really a payback to the rabidly radical Left who have been baying at the gates for a chance to go after Bush in some kind of court, somewhere.
Millions or billions of dollars, a rabid international media circus, an already- bankrupt city and state on the hook for security and trial infrastructure, an already-burdened city saddled with the rabble of exteme leftism that always accompanies things like the WTO and G-8, the potential threat to national security–who cares?
A simple military tribunal for a war crime, held by the same rules that have governed our military tribunals for a couple of centuries, for the same reasons military tribunals are held to different standards than civil criminal trials, would accomplish justice.
But it wouldn’t accomplish the real goal, which is to diminish America in every way possible while attacking the Right in every way possible.