The Crazy Woman's facebook ghost writer wants us to be afraid. Very afraid:Horrible decision, absolutely horrible. It is devastating for so many of us to hear that the Obama Administration decided that the 9/11 terrorist mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be given a criminal trial in New York. This is an atrocious decision.
Mohammed and his terrorist co-conspirators are responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans. Thousands of American families have suffered through the loss of loved ones because of the disgusting attacks launched against the United States, and now this trial venue adds insult to injury, in addition to compromising our efforts in the War on Terror. Heaven forbid our allies see this decision as a reason to become less likely to support our efforts in the future.
Criminal defense attorneys will now enter into delaying tactics and other methods in the hope of securing some kind of win for their “clients.” The trial will afford Mohammed the opportunity to grandstand and make use of his time in front of the world media to rally his disgusting terrorist cohorts. It will also be an insult to the victims of 9/11, as Mohammed will no doubt use the opportunity to spew his hateful rhetoric in the same neighborhood in which he ruthlessly cut down the lives of so many Americans.
It is crucially important that Americans be made aware that the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks may walk away from this trial without receiving just punishment because of a “hung jury” or from any variety of court room technicalities. If we are stuck with this terrible Obama Administration decision, I, like most Americans, hope that Mohammed and his co-conspirators are convicted. Hang ‘em high.
I wholeheartedly support the survivors and the families of the victims in their appeal to the president regarding this matter. You can read more about it here.
- Sarah Palin
ABC News has posted an article by Jake Tapper that is rather non-committal about what Palin's ghost writer is trying to do here. Some of his article's commenters aren't, though:
from Vengeance is Mine:
Why does Sarah Palin hate the U.S. judicial system? Does she have no faith in our system of government? If so, she should move to another country! Maybe Russia, since she can see it from her home state!
from Lisa:
Sarah Palin fails Due Process 101.
I say this as a Republican and a police officer.
from Jemma:
Personally, I find Mayor Bloomberg's opinion to hold more weight. As he rightly points out, it is "fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site where so many New Yorkers were murdered. We have hosted terrorism trials before, including the trial of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the 1993 Trade Center bombing." And I love that he gives a shout out to the brave and amazing NYPD.
from Scarletti:
Another good read is Glenn Greenwald's blog: "The Right's Textbook 'Surrender to Terrorists'"
As he points out 'the Right's reaction to yesterday's announcement -- we're too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country -- is the textbook definition of "surrendering to terrorists".... People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn't allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. '
Which brings me to Glenn Greenwald's article at Salon.com, titled The Right's textbook "surrender to terrorists"
He begins with "'We're too scared to have real trials in our country' is a level of cowardice unmatched in the world."
In the zany world of the GOP, the neo-Cons and the neo-Libs, when a band of terrorists spend about $300,000.00 in an operation to smash airplanes into huge and symbolic buildings, killing thousands, the best response is to spend a trillion dollars, kill a million people or so in the wrong country, displace three or four million more people there, destabilize half the Muslim world, and make about 150 million new enemies.
The way we have fought the war on terror has been as if Osama bin Laden was running it. We have fought very stupidly most of the time, very inefficiently and have allowed our politicians and their accomplices to shred the U.S. Constitution.
Greenwald wrote his essay before Palin's ghost writer posted the facebook entry. But he links to a host of other right-wing figures who are out there this weekend, drumming up fears:
This is literally true: the Right's reaction to yesterday's announcement -- we're too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country -- is the textbook definition of "surrendering to terrorists." It's the same fear they've been spewing for years. As always, the Right's tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it's hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.
People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn't allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country's 2004 train bombings. The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London. Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali. India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents. In Argentina, the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.
It's only America's Right that is too scared of the Terrorists -- or which exploits the fears of their followers -- to insist that no regular trials can be held and that "the safety and security of the American people" mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials. As usual, it's the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of "strength" and "courage" to hide what they really are. Then again, this is the same political movement whose "leaders" -- people like John Cornyn and Pat Roberts -- cowardly insisted that we must ignore the Constitution in order to stay alive: the exact antithesis of the core value on which the nation was founded. Given that, it's hardly surprising that they exude a level of fear of Terrorists that is unmatched virtually anywhere in the world. It is, however, noteworthy that the position they advocate -- it's too scary to have normal trials in our country of Terrorists -- is as pure a surrender to the Terrorists as it gets.
image - Angry Crazy Woman by DZ
20 comments:
From the left-wing Washington Post.... "By all accounts, the spotlight during what would be the biggest terrorism trial in U.S. history would provide Mohammed, a man of no small ego, with the kind of attention he craves. A showman, he has reveled in a number of appearances at Guantanamo Bay, tossing self-aggrandizing broadsides from his perch at the front of a courtroom and then retreating into self-satisfied smiles.
“I know him well, and if he gets his way in federal court, it will be a circus,” said Charles D. “Cully” Stimson, who was deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs in the Bush administration. “The court will have to rein in his speechifying and keep the focus on his criminal behavior.”…
Under Mohammed’s original plan for Sept. 11, 10 aircraft were to be hijacked. He was to have been aboard the only one not to crash, and after killing the male passengers he was to deliver a speech condemning U.S. support for Israel, as well as the Philippines and governments in the Arab world.
The 9/11 Commission Report notes: “This vision gives a better glimpse of his true ambitions. This is theater, a spectacle of destruction with KSM as the self-cast star — the superterrorist.”
Hot Air blog...."Did Obama actually have the brass balls to warn people about turning the Fort Hood trial into “political theater” the morning after he granted Khaled Sheikh Mohammed a jihadist megaphone in New York City?"
"As you hear the solemn rhetoric pour forth about how this is a glorious victory for due process and the Bill of Rights, bear in mind my point from the Mukasey post. There’s no way they’re letting KSM go. It doesn’t matter what the verdict is or what the judge decides; for reasons of pure national and political survival, Obama and Holder will find a way to reimprison this scum if the trial somehow ends up in acquittal. Which means this is actually the opposite of due process. It’s a stacked deck, right from the get go. So why even bother playing cards?"
Powerline blog...."Put yourself in the place of a would-be terrorist: If you want to garner maximum publicity; if you want to make yourself into a world-famous martyr; if you want an endless platform for disseminating jihadist propaganda; if you want to be treated with kid gloves at all times; what should you do? That's right: you should organize an attack on American soil that kills thousands. You'll be rewarded with top-flight legal representation at taxpayer expense and a forum in which to advance the cause of jihad.
Like so many things the Obama administration does, this creates exactly the wrong incentives and needlessly puts American lives in danger."
So, in the ongoing war by Islamic fascists against America, Obama decides to give terrorists a media platform to address the world and create more hatred for Americans. This is not about justice, this is about trying to humiliate Bush and the CIA by putting the American people in danger. Obama and his Leftist followers want America in the dock. The scum who beheaded Daniel Pearl are now being given the same rights as American citizens and at taxpayer's expense. And, of course, Leftist lawyers are lining up to fill their coffers and to drag America through the mud.
Once again Palin instinctively catches the mood of the vast majority of the American people. Obama catches the mood of the American-hating Leftist elites and the Islamic Jihadists .
You didn't read the post, did you?
Verbose,
durruti seldom does.
As we watch the debate over the Islamic terrorist trials flow by, note that the federal trial court prosecution of the American right-wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh was well-controlled and resulted in an outpouring of relief and a sense of justice from the families of the bombing victims.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have agreed with Phil's posting and analysis. Our times today are similar to 1933, in the dark hours of the Great Depression, with clouds gathering overseas, at FDR's first inauguration:
"I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days."
"In the zany world of the GOP, the neo-Cons and the neo-Libs, when a band of terrorists spend about $300,000.00 in an operation to smash airplanes into huge and symbolic buildings, killing thousands, the best response is to spend a trillion dollars, kill a million people or so in the wrong country,"
As opposed to the zany world of the America-hating Left where assorted neo-Marxists and islamo-fascist sympathizers blame America for islam's 1400 year war against the infidel. Where any response would be a grovelling apology for America's very existence, where America would sit back and let Israel be destroyed , where terrorists would be treated like shoplifters and allowed to act as though slaughtering Americans was better then denying terrorists their "human rights" . Where mass murderers would be gently questioned, slapped on the wrist and set free. Where biological warfare on the American people would be greeted by "what did we do to anger them ?". Where dead Americans would be portrayed as "little Eichmans" and those who cut through the necks of screaming captives would be called "freedom fighters". We've seen how low Obama grovels before foreign monarchs but how low does the Left want us to abase ourselves before Islamic fundamentalism ?
"the federal trial court prosecution of the American right-wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh was well-controlled and resulted in an outpouring of relief and a sense of justice from the families of the bombing victims"
Unlike the huge numbers of Jihadists, McVeigh was virtually acting alone. There weren't sleeper cells of McVeigh supporters eager to carry on his work, there weren't millions of McVeigh supporters around the world eagerly looking forward to McVeigh's days in court.There weren't dozens of Leftist lawyers desperate to drag America through the mud during McVeigh's trial. There weren't tens of thousands of radical Leftists trying to portray McVeigh as a victim and not a stone cold killer. There wasn't a liberal mainstream media impatient to see the defenders of America on trial as opposed to McVeigh.
This trial is going to be a freakshow with unarmed combatants in a war against America being given the same rights as US citizens. If only the Left would be honest and tell us why they really want this trial.....it isn't because of due process because Obama has already admitted that the terrorists won't be set free even if found not guilty.....this is for the Left to finally nail 9/11 as not an act of Islamic extremism but about oppressed muslims speaking truth to power against the bullying USA. Anyone reading Bin Laden's speeches cannot fail to see he uses the same arguments against America as does the radical Left.
"Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have agreed with Phil's posting and analysis."
Oh please, some of us have just had breakfast.
I find it "ironical" as Bush would say, that Palin is making any comment on American law and it's judicial system.
After Troopergate and all of her ethics complaints, she obviously has no regard for the law, as it is obvious, she thinks it beneath her.
Palin holds the same reverence for the judicial system.
We know that Palin has no regard for subpoenas, after her husband ignored his in the Troopergate investigation whilst other witnesses were encouraged to ignore their subpoenas too.
Durruti.....You may have "just had your breakfast"...........but you forgot your meds.......please
As a legal matter President Obama could very well also have tried these five detainees before military tribunals, as five others are, and is likely to face a storm of criticism for it.
His critics do have strong points in opposition.
Some crucial evidence likely came about under unusual circumstances, to say the least, such as through waterboarding, classified informants or foreign sources.
There may be a greater likelihood of conviction in a military trial. In addition, holding the trial in New York, blocks from the World Trade Center, poses important security concerns, as well as issues for jury selection.
A civilian trial is likely to be longer, more complicated, and scrutinized than a more shrouded military one.
Lastly, could a public trial provide opportunities for grandstanding by defendants and their supporters.
The president’s supporters have arguments of their own.
Federal courts have tried and convicted dangerous extremist defendants like Jose Padilla and Zacarious Moussaoui.
Furthermore, at a recent Rand conference federal judges who have presided over terrorism trials forcefully contended that civilian courts are fully competent to try such cases—including ones that involve classified information.
Despite his waterboarding, Khalid Shiekh Mohammad’s demeanor and statements are likely to provide prosecutors with damning evidence if they can introduce it.
While prosecutors have decent, but not flawless, cases in either civilian or military courts, the President may be looking beyond the difficulties of the immediate trials.
For him the ability to showcase our justice system in a case involving one of the world’s most reviled accused terrorists represents an important opportunity to define America before history and the world.
That well may be one weapon we haven’t fully harnessed against al Qaeda in a parallel battle, not of bullets and bombs, but of ideals.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-levin-jd/civilian-trials-for-terro_b_356703.html
"That well may be one weapon we haven’t fully harnessed against al Qaeda in a parallel battle, not of bullets and bombs, but of ideals."
Yes, that must be it. Once all those Jihadists and their millions of supporters around the world see the American legal system in action they'll stop all their plans against the USA and become Buddhists. You really have no idea what America is up against do you ? The Left have spent so long cossetted in their little dream world of believing that the only evil in the world comes from their fellow Americans that they have completely disconnected from reality. What ideals exactly do you think will win the battle against 7th Century Religious Absolutists who hate women's rights, gay rights, democracy, the separation of church and state, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of expression and freedom of thought ? Your ignorance is second only to your lame attempt at humor.
From PowerLine Blog...
" 1. Obama confuses the commission of crimes with acts of war. The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon constituted acts of war.
2. Obama cloaks KSM et al. with all the constitutional protections to which American citizens are entitled under the United States Constitution.
3. Obama affords KSM et al. a public forum for the waging of their war by other means.
4. Those who apprehended and detained KSM et al. treated them as enemy combatants from whom valuable intelligence was sought and received. Trying them in federal court creates otherwise unnecessary issues regarding the admissibility of this evidence and provides them another avenue of attack on those defending the United states against them.
5. The treatment of evidence in connection with the trial raises a serious threat that national security will be compromised.
6. The trial of KSM et al. in New York by itself raises severe security risks.
Given the availability of military commissions to try KSM et al., one asks why Obama has chosen to bring them to trial in federal court in New York....
No consideration of justice, history or tradition weighs in favor of treating KSM et al. as criminal defendants. Against the predictable negative risks and negative consequences, advocates of Obama's decision offer airy considerations of public relations. It is hard to take any professed rationale of a civilian trial seriously.
Judging Obama's treatment of KSM et al. by its predictable effects rather than its apparent intentions, one arrives at a harsh conclusion. If Obama sought to subvert fundamental American institutions or to confuse the understanding of the American people -- upon both of which America's future depends -- he would proceed as announced.
..The Obama administration views KSM et al. as its allies (my paraphrase) in its war against the Bush administration. Obama expects them to make their treatment by the Bush administration, real and imagined, the centerpiece of their defense, with the possible result that Bush, Cheney, and others may be indicted as war criminals by European countries or international courts, thereby satisfying the far left of the Democratic Party, which Obama represents. "
Acts of War are actions by nations, not by individuals. If 9/11 is to be considered an "act of war," the nations that supported the hijackers - Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, would be the actors.
Hundreds of terrorists have successfully been tried in the U.S. courts, and there is nothing exceptional about these figures that makes them somehow larger than life.
No, Darutti, your views are not just wrong-headed, they are also to be condemned, along with your manner of presentation. Americans will not be ruled by your fear-mongering and your extremist views. Your manner of speech is fundamentally disrespectful to productive and civil members of our community whom I know, and who are my neigbors, and in that disrepect lies your fundamental ignorance.
The only thing that truly threatens our democracy and our rights are extremists like you who would have us abandon our basic values and rights, causing rot from the inside to our way of life. So, spew away as you see fit and as is your right, but on the whole, I believe our community condemns your kind of extremism, rejects the fear you are peddling, and will have no part of it.
"Acts of War are actions by nations, not by individuals. If 9/11 is to be considered an "act of war," the nations that supported the hijackers - Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, would be the actors."
You haven't really caught up with the whole idea of asymmetrical warfare yet, have you ? This isn't the 1860s. Are the US troops in Afghanistan at war or just checking driver's permits ?
Pularbear, how telling that your idea of extremism is anything that threatens your redundant liberal view of treating terrorists like naughty schoolboys. In your "enlighted" view of the world, those who wish to murder Americans and turn this nation into an islamic caliphate are misguided victims who must be appeased.....and yet you see the majority of us who recognize these people for what they actually are and wish to defeat them as the extremists. How sad that your opinion of America has become so distorted by Leftist propaganda that you treat your enemies as friends and your fellow countrymen as enemies.
Psst.....I know a certain someone who needs a glass belly-button because with their head so far up their ass they need something to see out of.
Oh, sorry Durruti, didn't know you were in the room...........
Martha, thanks for showing us all what Leftists do when they can't argue with facts...they resort to puerile insults. And if you're going to do that , at least make the insults witty or original.
Meanwhile , here's another reason why the Jihadists shouldn't be treated as US citizens...
"The cost of cloaking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al. with the constitutional protections afforded American citizens comes at a steep price. John Yoo spelled it out in painful detail in the Wall Street Journal yesterday: "Trying KSM in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda and the hostile nations that will view the U.S. intelligence methods and sources that such a trial will reveal."
The price specified by Yoo is not speculative. Following the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the perpetrators were prosecuted in the same court that will host KSM. Citing then-prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, Yoo makes this point as well:
During the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (aka the "blind Sheikh"), standard criminal trial rules required the government to turn over to the defendants a list of 200 possible co-conspirators.
In essence, this list was a sketch of American intelligence on al Qaeda. According to Mr. McCarthy, who tried the case, it was delivered to bin Laden in Sudan on a silver platter within days of its production as a court exhibit.
Bin Laden, who was on the list, could immediately see who was compromised. He also could start figuring out how American intelligence had learned its information and anticipate what our future moves were likely to be."
I stand by my statement.
You live in such unreasonable fear, you do indeed need a glass bellybutton.
The terrorists have won with folks who think like you.
You have never been privy to any intelligence reports over these years, you have no idea of what what will be presented in court and what will be disallowed, etc., etc.
Whilst you fearfully peer at the world from your glass bellybutton, you leave your mouth at your arsehole, quoting fear mongers and belaying your own unsubstantiated fears.
If, if, if ,if.....the sky is falling, the sky is falling.
Durruti shouts at clouds..........
Martha, in a battle of wits I never fight with an unarmed woman. In this regard your lack of substantive comments and your lame attempts at insults leave me no alternative but to conclude that this one-sided battle is patently unfair to you. I shall thus leave you to continue shilling on behalf of the Jihadists.
Durruti.....You may read this, as you suck your thumb and cower in a corner, awaiting American Armageddon.
Assalaam Alaikum,
Martha
Bush administration used federal justice system to bring several terrorism suspects to justice
Zacarias Moussaoui tried, convicted, and imprisoned through federal justice system. Moussaoui was found guilty by a federal court jury for his role in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. As The New York Times reported, the jury voted "to send him to prison for the rest of his days rather than condemn him to death for the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001." Moussaoui is serving his sentence at the ADX Florence prison, commonly referred to as Supermax, in Florence, Colorado.
"Shoe bomber" Richard Reid is serving life sentence in Colorado. On January 31, 2003, as The New York Times reported, Richard Reid pleaded guilty in federal court "to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives concealed in his shoes" and "was sentenced today to life in prison." Reid had claimed "he was a member of Al Qaeda." Reid is serving his sentence at the Supermax facility in Florence.
John Walker Lindh serving sentence in Indiana. As CNN.com reported, on October 4, 2002, "Walker Lindh, the so-called 'Taliban American,' told U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III that he 'made a mistake by joining the Taliban' and 'had I realized then what I know now about the Taliban I would never have joined them,' " before being sentenced for his crimes. CNN.com reported that in July, Lindh pleaded "guilty to one count of supplying services to the Taliban and a criminal charge that he carried a rifle and two hand grenades while fighting on the Taliban's front lines in Afghanistan against the Northern Alliance." Lindh was once held at the Supermax facility and is now being held at the Federal Correctional Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana.
East African embassy bombing perpetrators were tried in U.S. and held at Supermax. As the National Security Network has noted, "Wahid el-Hage, Mohammed Sadiq Odeh, Mohammed Rashed al-Owhali, and Khalfan Khamis Mohammed are all serving in ADX Florence." The New York Times reported that the four men, who were "convicted of conspiring with Osama bin Laden in the 1998 bombings of two American Embassies in Africa," were "moved to the most secure federal prison in the United States." The men were indicted in 1998 under the Clinton administration and tried, convicted, and sentenced in 2001.
Hundreds of other terrorists are already imprisoned in the U.S.
There are already more than 350 terrorists in U.S. prisons; none has ever escaped. A May 29 Slate.com article reported that according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, "federal facilities on American soil currently house 216 international terrorists and 139 domestic terrorists. Some of these miscreants have been locked up here since the early 1990s. None of them has escaped. At the most secure prisons, nobody has ever escaped."
Former Navy lawyer: "There is no increased threat posed to the United States by bringing some of the detainees to the U.S. for trial." In an October 29 NPR interview, Charles Swift, an attorney who took the case of a Guantánamo detainee to the Supreme Court in 2006, said that "[a]nyone knowledgeable about al-Qaida operations will tell you that there is no increased threat posed to the United States by bringing some of the detainees to the U.S. for trial." Swift added that "[Suspected terrorists] Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla were held and, in Hamdi and al-Marri's case, eventually tried in the United States without any consequence."
http://mediamatters.org/research/200911130013
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