Concerning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, this is what the president said the other day, "I don't think it [the New York trial] would be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him." Attorney General Holder said this: "Failure is not an option. These are cases that have to be won. I don't expect that we'll have a contrary result." New York Governor David Paterson claims that the White House warned him six months ago that the trial would happen, yet it was never announced then and has been made to seem to be a recent decision by the AG, not the president.
These are actions that insult the intelligence and make the public ever more distrustful of the administration. Both the commander-in-chief and the government’s highest Justice official have pre-judged a person headed to court, something that even fifth-graders are taught that the Constitution forbids. A person hailed before a criminal proceeding and a jury of his peers is deemed innocent until PROVEN guilty. Obama taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago and presumably is as smart as a fifth-grader.
So...what’s at work here? Khalid and the other jihad terrorists have been held by military, not civil (police) forces, at least most of the time, since their capture, i.e., under the direct command of the commander-in-chief, not the attorney general. This means that the decision to move them from POW status to criminal status was made/exercised by Obama, not Holder. Their point concerning the ultimate outcome is moot since they have no idea what the outcome will be. One has only to hearken back to O.J. Simpson (1994) to see what can happen in a civilian court trying a criminal case. In Simpson’s civil trial, however and using essentially the same evidence, he was found to be guilty as sin, i.e., responsible for making restitution to the aggrieved but, of course, remaining scot-free.
Years ago, the Congress could have acted to set up a system, probably a sort of military tribunal, to handle the terrorists and satisfy the courts but couldn’t bring itself to do that even though it could pass a $787 billion stimulus bill overnight this year without even reading it. The same was true for cap-and-trade. The “gang of five” was taken into custody years ago and has been interrogated more than just thoroughly, but it’s highly doubtful that any have been apprised of their Miranda-rights, an absolute necessity with regard to a criminal trial in a civilian court. And...not one word any of these guys has said can even be used in this show-trial. All they have to do – or their attorneys – is scream TORTURE and they’re home-free. Confessions or any information obtained under duress are not allowed. The technicalities to cause acquittal are obvious, even though torture has not yet been defined.
Unloading the responsibility for trial-related security upon the New York police, the president has forfeited the guaranteed security with respect to the citizenry that is and could remain in place in Gitmo, which by lease from Cuba is as much a part of the United States as Puerto Rico. Now, every jihad terrorist in this country will be figuring a way to strap on his “explosive belt” and head for the federal building where the trial will be held, as well as all other targets in the Big Apple. The cost in Gitmo would remain just as it’s been for eight years, but the cost to New York will be astronomical even if the feds help pay. The trials could last for months, years – who knows?
So...none of this makes sense, which leads back to the matter of WHY. A good guess has to do with the administration’s ongoing but virtually unnoticed (if it’s in place yet) effort to somehow disembowel the CIA and, to a lesser extent, probably other intelligence agencies, as well. Despite Obama’s firm promise at least as far back as April that no CIA agents would be prosecuted for their actions as they understood the law, all that has changed, although he and Holder are probably more interested in trying to hang somebody – anybody – in the Bush administration over the alleged torture issue. Actually, everyone doing anything vis-a-vis terrorism in the Bush years is at risk.
The problem for O and H is that the public will not be aware of these efforts accruing to yet another broken promise since the work involved will of necessity be carried out in the shadows. Not so with respect to an opportunity to air things in a public forum such as a high-profile trial! It seems obvious that the trials, with respect to establishing guilt/innocence/sentences/whatever, are only secondarily important to the prime objective, namely, the exposing of the Bush administration for doing harsh things in order to slow the rate of terrorism-acts, especially regarding this country.
The supreme irony lies in the fact that Barack Hussein Obama would water-board Eric Holder or do much worse (and vice versa) if to do so would effect the protection of family. One wonders if there are enough red-blooded men left in Congress to call these guys out. Obviously, no, at least not now, but maybe that can change when it finally sinks in that these trials are more political than anything else.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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