John Boehner:
The Obama Administration’s irresponsible decision to prosecute the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in New York City puts the interests of liberal special interest groups before the safety and security of the American people. The possibility that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-conspirators could be found ‘not guilty’ due to some legal technicality just blocks from Ground Zero should give every American pause. emphasis added
I think technically those are War Crimes - but even so, it doesn't matter and I'll tell you why.
You can find lots of evidence of Wingbag heads exploding all over - like brain matter spattered at a crime scene...
Sarah Palin (1/2 Term Governor/Blogger/Bookhawker)
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. [...]
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. [...]
Not much with the "Equal Justice Under the Law" and "Due Process" is she? Technically the only time KSM will probably speak would be on the witness stand - where he can be thoroughly cross examined and his hateful rhetoric balanced with some fracking facts. Something Sarah The Unemployed Pundit wouldn't know anything about.
Then you have the Ex-Super Mayor, Former U.S. Prosecutor and Associate Attorney General Rudy (Noun, Verb & 9-11) Giuliani who - of course - thinks giving KSM a criminal trial is a grave mistake, even though he used to think it was a great idea to put Zacarious Moussaoui on trial.
Someone tell Cavuto that a building that has collapsed doesn't cast a shadow anymore - nitwit.
Ghuliani Now:
GIULIANI: [O]ur criminal justice system is geared to let guilty people go free if there's any doubt. That's the way it is -- that better to have nine guilty go free than one innocent person convicted. Very different situation when you're at war. So when we see all of these procedural problems that are going to be created over the months and years that this could take with these terrorists sitting here, I think we're going to realize that this was a terrible, terrible mistake. [Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, 11/13/09]
Ghuliani Then:
Giuliani reportedly praised Moussaoui's 2006 trial as evidence "we can give people a fair trial." After Moussaoui's trial resulted in a sentence of life in prison without parole, Giuliani reportedly praised the legal process as demonstrating "that we can give people a fair trial, that we are exactly what we say we are. We are a nation of law." He added that Moussaoui will "be a symbol of American justice." He also reportedly said he was "in awe of our system." [New York Daily News, 5/4/2006]
It's not as though this atavistic fear of the Justice System on their part is completely without merit - Torture has already been the reason for Gitmo Prosecutors to DROP CHARGES against a Terrorism Suspect.
But here's why, in this case, none of this hand wringing and Depends Binge-ing really matters:
Besides having a complete and total lack-of-faith in our criminal justice system these guys are all operating under the Liz Cheney Theory of Terror-Fighting, that the key information gained from people such as KSM were done using "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques".
For a quick Refresher Please Review my previous post on the Top Ten Tortuous Lies of Liz Cheney.
On one hand they say these methods were "Perfectly Legal" and "Effective" - but on the other hand they are clearly afraid that if these techniques are revealed in an open U.S. Court of Law any and all evidence gathered using these methods are likely to be excluded as fruits of a poison tree by the court.
The problem is that all of the critical information gained linking them to 9-11 after the capture of key al Qaeda members such as Zubaydah and KSM - were gathered Before Harsh Methods were Deployed as has been documented by FBI Interrogator Ali Soufan.
One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.
It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.
We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.
There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.
This Agent Soufan reiterated during his Senate Testimony
There have been several reports that KSM openly bragged about his involvement with 9-11 when he was captured. Even Pete (We found the WMD!) Hoekstra says so.
On Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement this morning to bring Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and five other high-value 9/11 hijackers to the United States, the American people need to ask: Why is this necessary?
KSM has already confessed to being not only the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, but also to planning multiple additional attacks on Americans. He is already being held in the best possible security at Guantanamo Bay, and he has already been charged for his crimes in a military commission process where he faces the death penalty.
And here's the question that these small Republican Minds can't seem to ask - if KSM confessed, and he did so before being water-boarded - Why the FRACK WAS HE WATERBOARDED in the first place?
One could argue that it was to get the location of Bin Laden, but as we can all see - the result of that effort was a ALL FAIL. Again, KSM has during Military Tribunal proceedings admitted that he Lied under Torture. ("I Make Up Stories")
The other reason that these methods were used, was to get some information - besides their involvement in 9-11 and the location of bin Laden - that the Bush Administration was desperate to have. That information was - HOW WAS SADDAM LINKED TO THE ATTACK!
Sorry for the background whine during this video:
The Vice President specifically asked for detainees in Iraq to be Water-Boarded in order to show links between Saddam and 9-11 - but CIA inspector Charles Duelfer refused since he was already getting plenty of good information from the man, and ultimately Duelfer found that Saddam had no links to al Qeada, no links to 9-11 and NO WMD!
But then Bush already knew this..
Habbush, the former head of Iraqi Intelligence had already Defected before the War began and he had told us, and Bush was personally briefed on this, that Saddam had Secretly destroyed his WMD stockpiles in 1992.
Instead of listening to Habbush's information, or the declaration that Saddam had supplied to the UN, Bush paid him off to write a Forgery that framed Saddam for 9-11.
On page 371 of "The Way of the World," Suskind describes the White House’s concoction of a forged letter purportedly from the hand of Habbush to Saddam Hussein to justify the United States’ decision to go to war.
Suskind writes: "The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq — thus showing, finally, that there was an operation link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, something the Vice President's office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade."
He continues: "A handwritten letter, with Habbush's name on it, would be fashioned by CIA and then hand-carried by a CIA agent to Baghdad for dissemination."
The reason that the Torture will not matter in the upcoming 9-11 trial is because they aren't prosecuting Saddam Hussein. They already had the information they need to convict KSM (and presumably others) before "enhanced techniques" were used - and all the allegedly "good information" they received went nowhere.
Straight down a rat-hole.
None of that stuff is relevant to the case at hand, and none of it is likely to be introduced in determining whether these five individuals do or do not have culpability for the attacks of September 11th. The Wingnuts are still going to be afraid, and frankly they have good reason to be afraid ultimately that all of this information will eventually come out and become fully understood by the American people and the world.
Eventually the person who deserves to be on trial for these actions, including the false excuses for the Iraq War - is George W. Bush.
But that isn't the trail before us today... maybe eventually, but not today.
Vyan
