House of Eratosthenes

…Khalid Sheik Mohammed, has been given by the Obama administration a civilian trial in New York. Just as the memory fades, 9/11 has been granted a second life — and KSM, a second act: “9/11, The Director’s Cut,” narration by KSM.
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So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) “do not get convicted,” asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. “Failure is not an option,” replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn’t the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.
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It’s not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, to a military tribunal.

By what logic? In his congressional testimony Wednesday, Holder was utterly incoherent in trying to explain. In his Nov. 13 news conference, he seemed to be saying that if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, you get a civilian trial; a military target like the Cole, and you get a military tribunal.

What a perverse moral calculus. Which is the war crime — an attack on defenseless civilians or an attack on a military target such as a warship, an accepted act of war which the U.S. itself has engaged in countless times?

By what possible moral reasoning, then, does KSM, who perpetrates the obvious and egregious war crime, receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom, while he who attacked a warship is relegated to a military tribunal?

A grateful hat tip to Neo-Neocon, who had already made my “short stack” with a wonderful post she had up yesterday…which could be even more devastating…

Ask the 1993 WTC prosecutor what he thinks

So, if the Left’s best argument for trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the civilian justice system is that we’ve done so well getting terrorists convicted there before, why is Andy McCarthy, the prosecutor of the case they cite the most—the 1993 WTC bombing—so dead set against it?

He’ll tell you himself:

For what it’s worth, I think the team I led in the Blind Sheikh case did an excellent job, and we also convicted everybody. But that is not the measure of success. It’s not whether the government wins the litigation; it’s whether the national security of the United States has been harmed more by having the trial than it would have been harmed by handling the detainees in a different manner.

Further, if we are going to have military commissions at all (and Holder says we will continue to have them), it makes no sense to transfer the worst war criminals to the civilian system. Doing so tells the enemy that they will get more rights if they mass-murder civilians.

The question is not whether the prosecutors are able, whether they’ll do a spectacular job, and whether they’ll get these guys…The issue is: What damage will we sustain by doing things this way, and is there a way we could do them without sustaining that much damage.

The One and his minions have seriously miscalculated on this. The best we can hope for is they’ll “reconsider.” Second best is a wave of “throw the bastards out” in 2010 and a one-term Prez in 2012 if they persist with this travesty. I want both, actually, but I’d settle for Door Number One.
- bpenni | 11/20/2009 @ 09:18
I’ll still don’t get what the difference is between the scum that gets vaporized by a Tomahawk while driving around Pakistan and these scumbags…besides they are captured. I’m not sure what the answer is; that the vaporized don’t deserve ANY rights because we haven’t been able to catch them but once caught they somehow deserve the same constitutional rights as me and you? Huh? WTF, kind’a dumb ass liberal logic is that?

Vaporize versus water boarding, which one would I choose…hmmmm, yea that’s a hard one let me get back to ya’.

“By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.”

This is but one example of why this is a complete travesty. Also, the defense lawyers will take Holder’s and Pres. Obama’s similar statement of convicting them before the trial, and will ask in their opening statements for a all charges to be dropped on the basis that the defendants cannot get a fair trial (As heard on TV last night). Before anyone thinks “that won’t happen” did you imagine this whole episode ever happening?

The variables for a hung jury or even for an innocent verdict are numerous, to say nothing of the irreparable damage to our intelligence gathering capabilities, or the propaganda opportunity for the Jihadi scum on trial…but I forgot, it was Bush who “made more terrorists”. This will damage this country more than we realize today. People twenty years from now will look back on this like we look back on Somalia or Lebanon in ’83 or Iran in ’79 or…it seems we can’t help but to destroy ourselves. Our enemy is but one half the problem. Not a coherent, logically blueprint for victory but a slow, miserable death of a once great experiment in representative government.
- tim | 11/20/2009 @ 11:19
I just want to know why the USA is even fucking around with people like this. They aren’t citizens of this nation or subject to our laws in any way. They’re enemy soldiers who were caught engaging in acts of war against the United States, and they don’t even represent any signatory to the Geneva Conventions. They should have been put to death as soon as the military had extracted any actionable intelligence.
- cylarz | 11/21/2009 @ 00:39

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Friday, November 20th, 2009