Crossing The Line

Now let me get this straight. Attorney General Holder, playing Sancho Panza to Obama's Don Quixote, is going to transfer the terrorist leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-confessed master-mind of 9/11 and the murderer of journalist Daniel Pearl, from Guatanamo to New York City for trial in a civilian court and accord him all the protections of U.S. law. This is a joke, right? Well, no it's not although you may be forgiven for thinking so. What is wrong with having the trial in Guantanamo? It is remote, it is highly secure, it endangers no one, and it has its own well equipped and expensive court room with a bullet proof dock for the protection of the prisoners. In short, it is perfect. New York on the other hand is well, in America. The jail where the terrorists will be held is a few blocks from the court. It, together with the court, all the employees of the courthouse, all of the extra security personnel and the citizens of New York, will be in real, constant, lethal, and unnecessary danger during the trial. This is one of the most irresponsible decisions taken by Obama and along with reading captured terrorists Miranda rights, deciding to close Guantanamo and transport terrorists to U.S. soil for trial and imprisonment, divulging CIA interrogation methods, and the intended prosecution of our intelligence officers, crosses the line and amounts to the reckless endangerment of American citizens and the city which suffered the greatest loses of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Doing the opposite of what should be done has become a disturbing pattern in the Obama administration.

What exactly is the point of taking such an extraordinary risk while incurring such an enormous and unnecessary expense, $78 million to be precise? It is, of course, the unshakable belief of the left-wing liberals and their fellow travellers that terrorist attacks are matters which come under the jurisdiction of law enforcement and not the U.S. military. This awful miscalculation is what led to the 9/11 attacks in the first place. The terrorists who committed the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 were tried and convicted in a civilian court. The minute terrorists are provided with lawyers they become useless as a source of intelligence. During the trial our intelligence means and methods were compromised by motions of discovery filed by lawyers for the accused. The same feast of information will now be available to defense lawyers if these killers are tried in a civilian court. How this strengthens our national security escapes me but by playing politics with the legal system it shows the administration's left wing supporters at home and abroad that Obama is not President Bush, more is the pity. The lengthy proceedings are likely to devolve into an opportuntity for Islamic propaganda and grandstanding of the most disgusting kind. They will provide a forum for public relations that would be unavailable to the terrorists if they were tried before a military tribunal. If these two anxious clerks, Obama and Holder, are determined to accord unlawful combatants full constitutional protections, something that has never been done in our entire history, then this could take place at Guantanamo without exposing the entire city of New York to the real possibility of another terrorist attack.

When objections to these proceedings were raised both Obama and Holder noted how impressed the international community would be to see American justice at work and how pleased the American public would be when the terrorists were finally convicted and duly sentenced. It did not occur to either of them that such predictions about the trial's outcome, a clairvoyance that so far the administration has not been able to display with regard to the economy, were highly prejudicial and gave the whole matter an air of opera bouffe unlikely to impress the so-called international community with the concept that American justice is blind. Furthermore, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his al-Qaeda pals already proudly declared their guilt and asked to be executed over a year ago. Justice delayed is indeed justice denied. There is something dreadfully wrong when our highest officials are more interested in the rights of terrorists than they are in protecting the American public. The legal process has become politicized. We are not being well served. Eric Holder should be dismissed from office, Barack Obama should be impeached, and KSM and his conspirators should be executed.

This pathetic episode is not only an affront to the families of all those who were murdered on 9/11 but also another clear indication that Barack Obama has no interest in waging the war on terror in an effective way let alone actually winning it, but we understood that months ago when he decided to call it a "global overseas contingency". America will be in mortal peril until this political pantaloon is removed from office. We cannot depend on his leadership to keep us safe but we can rely on the dedication of our military, our intelligence services, and those of us who, to paraphrase Voltaire, look forward to the day when the last Islamic terrorist is strangled with the bowels of the last mullah.