while most of the country is scratching their heads trying to figure out the twisted rationale behind the obama administration's decision to forego a military tribunal and try the architect of 9/11 in federal court in new york, to me it was merely another example of how tragically in-over-his-head our young and untried president is.
and as further elements of the story emerge--such as how khalid sheikh mohammed was willing to plead guilty and accept the death penalty without trial at guantanamo--it just gets crazier and crazier.
if you haven't seen the following clip in which senate judiciary committee member lindsay graham (never one of my favorites--until now anyway) questions eric holder on the wisdom of this decision, you need to. the good senator starts out easy, lulls our attorney general into a sense of complacency, sets him up--and then, around 1:50, moves in for the kill.
patrick leahy comes in afterwards and attempts to mitigate the fiasco by blathering about guantanamo for a couple minutes, but the damage is done.
as the foregoing makes painfully clear, holder is not only outta his league, he and his boss haven't even made a half-ass effort at thinking this decision through--not only in terms of the instant case, but as to the precedent it would set should, for instance, osama bin laden be caught. this would be funny as hell if it wasn't so deadly serious.
a couple other senators had some good questions, too:
senator herb kohl (a democrat, btw):
In the worst case scenario and the trial does not result in conviction,
what would be your next steps?
eric holder:
Failure is not an option.
sen. chuck grassley takes a go:
I don’t see how you can say that failure is not an option when you’ve got juries in this country.
holder:
If -- if there were the possibility that a trial were not successful, that would not mean that the person would be released into our country.
wait a minute--what happened to the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven? wouldn't pre-trial statements like this by the prosecution be considered wildly prejudicial? i'll bet KSM's attorneys will think so.
and what all about all the evidence gathered via waterboarding and absent the administration of miranda--isn't that all fruit from a very poisoned tree?
and it's not just holder--his boss the president said something similar to NBC when asked about those who might find KSM's receiving the rights of a US citizen offensive:
I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.
really, mr. president? a foregone conclusion already?
holder even got his own "i'm the decider" moment.
senator john kyl:
You have repeatedly said that your decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Article III courts is because that is where you have the best chance to prosecute… How could you be more likely to get a conviction in federal court when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has already asked to plead guilty before military commission and be executed?
holder:
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not making this decision. The attorney general of the United States is making this decision.
yeah, and thanks for that one, eric.
why are they doing this? while i have my own theories, here are the reasons the obama administration is spouting in defense of this most boneheaded of decisions:
1. they wanna show the world how "open" and "transparent" our justice system is.
yeah, and all their "he's gonna go down for sure, and if he doesn't, we'll just re-arrest him on other charges so that he never goes free" statements do nothing but reinforce that idea.
2. they wanna show the world that we're "not afraid" to try him in a civilian court.
of course we're not--as long as we have tens of millions of dollars' worth of police and military personnel and firepower paralyzing the city of new york for weeks in order to provide "security" while this farce runs its course.
and the clear message to the world? well, think about it: can you imagine any one westerner whose presence in even the humblest, most backward middle-eastern country could stir up this much shit? yet here we are, the mightiest nation on earth, preparing to call out half the army to protect us in our own country against possible fallout from KSM's fan base when we "try" him.
my prediction is, this show trial will prove to be the greatest propaganda tool radical islam has ever had--even at my most creative, i can't imagine a better way to give aid and comfort to the enemy.
oh, and one other question, mr. failure-is-not-an-option: what is your politically-correct, diversity-loving ass gonna do about the muslims in the jury pool who swear with shifty eyes that they can be impartial?
this is gonna be rich.
3 comments:
I am not sure that I would hold up the feckless Senate Republicans as any sort of role model. Their blind opposition to anything that the Obama Administration does on health care, military tribunals, or even bowing to the Emperor of Japan, is political opportunism at its most repugnant.
The problem is that, and I do think I know guttermorality pretty well, this post is a perfect example of the darkly cynical world view so deeply held by guttermorality (held, I might add, in suspended animation with guttermorality's equally heart felt beliefs on moralistic do-goodism).
Yes, it is fun to have a George Bush world view of let's kick some Arab terrorist ass. And, this swagger can be appealing at least some of the time.
But it does not make a foreign policy.
The larger point that guttermorality misses -- as does Linsey Graham and the rest of the Republican chest thumpers (Graham, of course, serving with distinction as a JAG lawyer, unlike Cheney, Limbaugh, and a bunch of chicken hawks) is that to prosecute terrorism as a "war" without boundaries with torture and renditions leads to more and more recruits for terrorism.
This is about how we are going to run this country and the rule of law. There is no battlefield with terrorism. As such, the war model does not apply.
The Cheney model was a complete disaster.
What Eric Holder is trying to grasp at is a different way of countering terrorist threats. You may think it makes no sense to prosecute KSM in New York from a point of view related only to KSM. But it makes a lot more sense to do so in the larger framework of trying to win hearts and minds in countries GWB made America even less popular than it was.
noblesavage: i wasn't holding up the republicans as a role model; i was, however, applauding a few of them for doing something that rarely happens within the halls of congress: namely, asking exactly the sorta questions that i would, given the chance.
and i'm sick and tired of this intellectually-lazy nonsense of throwing up the other side as worse when someone criticizes your side, as if those are the only two options available--i mean, in case you haven't noticed, i've never exactly been a big defender of the bushies here.
and further, if some of your recent comments are any indication, i wonder how well you really do know me--first you try to paint me as a libertarian, and, now, as a republican, when i am neither of those things. my views are actually fairly nuanced, a fact that i think you've missed.
and as much as the obama administration would love to dumb down terrorism to mere criminal "extremism" (which is what i really think this is all about), this is gonna blow up in their (and, sadly our) faces.
are we gonna televise these trials, rob? are we gonna let these guys testify at length, led by their sympathetic lawyers, to a worldwide audience? will we let al jazeera correspondents into the press pool?
and if we don't, won't that be seen by just the people we're trying so hard to impress as cowardly?
and in terms of "winning hearts and minds" of the middle east with our high-flown rule of law, please--don't make me laugh. this sorta shit is seen as nothing but a sign of weakness in that part of the world. i mean, did you and every other bleeding-heart in this country learn nothing from watching clinton and albright chase around after arafat for eight years kissing his ass and giving him everything he wanted, all to no avail?
this is nothing but pure idiocy of the highest order.
Like I said, this view corresponds to your darkly cynical worldview.
I did not say you were a GWB adherent, but more of a Cheney protege on this particular issue.
What is your alternative?
Let me guess: You think these persons (all of them) should be locked up and out of site in Cuba forever. Right?
You think we need to torture these detainees to get whatever information they might have out of them. Right?
You also think that the only foreign policy that makes sense is projecting strength and resolve and act unilaterally if no one will agree to America's terms. Right?
These are the positions of the Bush Administration.
I will admit that I am wrong sometimes, but so far you have not told me how you would do things differently from what Bush did on these three issues.
You have a lot more Texan in you than you will 'fess up to.
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