Bloodthirsty Liberal

If the 9/11 terrorists (and murderers of Daniel Pearl, don’t forget) want to spend their last days on earth acting out a farce more absurd than Noises Off, don’t they have that right? Say, in lieu of a last meal (which they’ll never finish digesting anyway).

You don’t have to be a mind reader to figure out the propaganda strategy of September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other terrorists who were arraigned Saturday in a 13-hour spectacle in Guantanamo Bay. The idea is to use the open military trial to promote jihad and discredit American institutions, including the military system of justice.

The point to keep in mind is that this would have happened no matter the trial venue, civilian or military. The critics who have never liked military tribunals and accused them of being a form of railroad justice are now blaming them for being so unruly that they give terrorists a chance to act out. Well, which is it?

The real fault lies with the terrorists, who hope to put American justice on trial instead of themselves. The defendants refused even to look at Judge James Pohl, much less to answer questions or wear headsets to hear the simultaneous translation into Arabic. There were unscheduled prayers and a paper airplane. Ramzi bin Al Shibh commented in English that “Maybe they will kill us and say we have committed suicide.”

Sad to say, they were helped by some of the military defense lawyers, who know they can make a name for themselves by putting the Bush Administration’s detention policies on trial. KSM attorney David Nevin said in a press conference that “The government wants to kill Mr. Mohammed. They want to extinguish the last eyewitness to his torture so he can never speak again.” Sure, 9/11 was one giant cover-up.

The terrorists deserve a zealous defense under our adversarial trial system, but the lawyers’ efforts to defend their clients not by any evidence of their innocence but through political attacks on the procedural detail of military tribunals does a disservice to the victims and to their military peers.

The decision by Cheryl Bormann, the lawyer for Osama bin Laden bodyguard Walid bin Attash, to come to court in a black hijab and abaya and urge other female prosecutors to do the same was beyond any reasonable definition of what’s necessary and proper for women working in a U.S. military courtroom.

The professional female lawyers and members of the U.S. military should cover themselves, she said, so that the suspects wouldn’t be in “fear of committing a sin under their faith.”

To hell with that. I say the lawyers should be required to wear stilettos, sequined hot pants, and nothing on top but a push-up bra. And that’s just the guys!

This is America, baby, love it or leave it. To some of us, the Statue of Liberty is just a big dominatrix: “You’re tired! You’re poor! You’re nothing but a huddled mass yearning to breath free, you pathetic excuse for an American.” Crack! (You can’t truly appreciate liberty unless you’ve been in bondage, I always say.)

It’s not like the Gitmo Five haven’t seen their share of infidel flesh. Didn’t Mohammed (that name again!) Atta and his crew hit every titty bar and strip club in the Northeast before carrying out their mass-murderous mission?

We know that President Obama’s preferred method of dealing with America’s enemies is to terminate them with extreme prejudice—preferably by Predator drone, Navy SEALs a close second—and we salute him for that. (If a couple of wedding parties are mistaken for jihadist book groups and “accidentally” vaporized, just put your hat over heart and say you’re powerful sorry.)

If deprived the pleasure of a Hellfire missile or two in the head, however, Obama would settle for a show trial from out of the Cultural Revolution in lower Manhattan. But this? KSM middle-fingering us without consequence? That’s gotta be eating up Obama inside. We all know that in any other country, he’d get 70% of the vote—but in America and within Al Qaeda, he has to endure these indignities.

Me, on the other hand, I love it. The Gitmo Five can drop trou (or robe) and defecate in the middle of the courtroom for all I care. KSM can grope the female lawyers in their hijabs and say “How ’bout abaya drink?” He may make a farce out of the proceedings, but after his scrupulously fair military tribunal, we’ll get the last laugh at the firing squad.

Just swallow the popcorn before laughing. No choking on the concessions.

Khalid Sheikh Jacobi (or O’Donnell, you decide) gets his day in court: hilarity ensues:

Silence from accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others resulted in delays during their arraignment Saturday in Guantanamo Bay.

A hearing before a military judge that could have lasted minutes instead stretched into hours.

It is Mohammed and four others’ first appearance in a military courtroom since being charged a month ago.

Along with Mohammed, the others are Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.

…

The silence from the defendants — some ignored the judge and others appeared to be reading — slowed the proceedings to a crawl.

One of the defendants was brought in, in restraints, after refusing to come to court. The restraints were later removed.

The judge, Col. James Pohl, needed the five to confirm their desires to be represented by the attorneys who accompanied them. Because no one answered, Pohl had to go one-by-one and appoint military lawyers for them.

Earlier, the silence caused an issue with the court translations.

Mohammed’s lawyer said that his client “will decline to communicate with the court.”

Because they wouldn’t speak, the judge could not confirm that the defendants could hear the translation of the proceedings. Time elapsed while they set up loudspeakers in the court to carry the translations. Some lawyers objected to this solution, too, and translation remained a problem at the outset of the hearing.
Pohl said he would enter a not guilty plea on Mohammed’s behalf if he refused to enter a plea.

Two of the defendants, Bin ‘Attash and Binalshibh, started praying in the court.

The defendants’ silence was finally broken hours into the hearing by Binalshibh, who shouted in heavily accented English: “You may not see us anymore,” he said. “They are going to kill us.”

The outburst was short and the judge proceeded with the arraignment.

During recesses, the defendants talked amongst each other and seemed relaxed. They passed around a copy of The Economist magazine.

Mohammed wore a white turban; his long beard was colored red by henna.

From another account:

Yemeni defendant Ramzi Binalshibh knelt on the gray-carpeted courtroom floor and prayed as a row of burly guards in camouflage uniforms kept a close watch but did not interfere. Later he stood and shouted, and seemed to be saying that the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was being held at Guantanamo.

He said tricks were being played on the defendants inside the prison camp and that “maybe they are going to kill us at the camp … and say that we are committing suicide.”

Yemeni defendant Walid bin Attash refused to come into the court and was strapped into a restraining chair and wheeled in by the guards. His prosthetic leg was brought in later.

Ha! That could come from a stage direction from Ionesco or maybe Joe Orton.

But I can’t decide which image makes me laugh harder: the peg leg being brought in later; the praying and then braying about Muammar Qaddafi; the badass terrorists reading the house organ of the establishment, The Economist; or KSM’s hennaed beard. Carol’s right: that’s definitely more Rosie O’Donnell than Lou Jacobi. So’s his attitude and behavior.

It just goes to show you how wrong Holder and Obama were to want to hold a civilian show trial. Besides the obscenity against the American justice system such a kangaroo court would have been, we would have missed this epic farce. It’s going to run for years.

Now I know why Eric Holder has been slow and reluctant to respond to repeated Congressional inquiries into Fast and Furious: he’s had a lot on his mind!

[BTW, am I the only one struck by the similarity between Lou Sheikh Mohammed and Khalid Jacobi?]

The self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four accused co-conspirators will appear in public for the first time in more than three years Saturday, when U.S. officials start a second attempt at what is likely to be a drawn out legal battle that could lead to the men’s executions.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants are to be arraigned at a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on charges that include that include 2,976 counts of murder, one for each person killed in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

In the past, during the failed first effort to prosecute them at the U.S. base in Cuba, Mohammed has mocked the tribunal and said he and his co-defendants would plead guilty and welcome execution. But there were signs that at least some of the defense teams were preparing for lengthy fight, planning challenges of the military tribunals and the secrecy that shrouds the case.

The arraignment is “only the beginning of a trial that will take years to complete, followed by years of appellate review,” attorney James Connell, who represents defendant Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, told reporters gathered at the base to observe the hearing.

“I can’t imagine any scenario where this thing gets wrapped up in six months,” Connell said.

Doesn’t it seem like only yesterday that our youthful, dewy-eyed crusader against crime (I mean international terrorism), Barack Obama, and his youthful ward (and chief law enforcement officer) Eric (The Red) Holder were promising a swift and decisive conviction of KSM in a civilian show trial? In New York City, no less? I feel old just remembering. I guess we’ve all grown up a lot since then.

PS: My apologies to any members of the Jacobi family offended by the above comparison.

KSM anyone?

Though I could have seen Osama in a spin-off TV show: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Contestants have to prove themselves worthy in various jihadist exploits. If they fail, they’re “fired” (one shot, above the left eye).

Who wants to walk down memory lane with me?

Last one into the Hot Tub Time Machine is a rotten Uighur!

In a meeting with the press in China, President Obama said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be “convicted” and had “the death penalty applied to him” . . . and then said he wasn’t “pre-judging” the case. He made the second statement after it was pointed out to him — by NBC’s Chuck Todd — that the first statement would be taken as the president’s interfering in the trial process. Obama said that wasn’t his intention.

KSM would be convicted and put to death, but Obama didn’t intend to interfere in the “trial process”.

Uh-huh.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa: “I don’t think you can say that failure to convict is not an option, when we have juries in this country.”

Attorney General Eric Holder: I have thought about that possibility. Congress has passed legislation that would not allow the release of these individuals in this country. If there is not a successful conclusion to this trial, that would not mean that this person would be released into this country…

A person acquitted of a crime might still not be freed because Eric Holder said so.

Okay.

I first reported this in November, 2009.

But they weren’t done:

“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to meet justice and he’s going to meet his maker,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told John King on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning.

“He’s likely to be executed for the heinous crimes he committed,” he added.

That was February 2010, two and a half months after they were supposed to get the message that you can’t prejudice a “trial process” this way.

Of all Obama’s abuses of office, this get my vote for the most heinous. And it took them well over a year to get past it. Evil.

What ever you do, don’t call him Khalid “Fair Shake” Mohammed:

Attorney General Eric Holder today will announce that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in a military commission, CBS News has learned.

A source says the commission will be held at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Trying Mohammed in a civilian court and closing the Guantanamo prison were once some of the Obama administration’s top priorities, but political realities have hamstrung both goals.

Holder previously recommended that Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 plotters be tried in New York City, but he scrapped that plan in the wake of public consternation.

I’m taking bets on the next flip-flop revers-a-roo by Eric “The Red” Holder. I think it’s going to be his repudiation of the “my people” comment regarding the New Black Panthers. A long shot, I know, but you have to risk a lot to make a lot.

But [bleep] Mumia, man. Justice for the murderer of Daniel Pearl! Free the mastermind of 9/11! Who’s with me?

Cindy? Medea? Michael?

Anyone?

PS: Spot the difference!

Trick question: there is no difference!

Nothing but the best legal counsel for my man Khalid. Too bad Johnny Cochrane is dead: “If the blade is dull, you must annul.”

A recently completed report regarding the murder of Jewish-American journalist Daniel Pearl reveals that September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed personally executed Pearl in Pakistan nine years ago, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

The former al-Qaeda senior official said in a closed military hearing in 2007 that he personally murdered the Wall Street Journal reporter, but US authorities questioned his credibility over lack of evidence and as he was known to claim responsibility for many killings.

The new report, which analyzed the video documenting Pearl’s murder, shows that the hand of the unseen man who killed Pearl is that of Mohammed, who is currently being kept at the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The report also indicates that Mohammed told the FBI that a senior al-Qaeda operative advised him to take control of Pearl from his original kidnappers.

The special report was prepared by faculty members and students at Georgetown University using advanced technological means.

Okay, so KSM hasn’t exactly copped to it. But given his supposed aversion to waterboarding, I don’t think that would be a problem. I’d pour the water myself, only I’d use a fire hose.

Hey, I want Belushi to rot in jail as much as anyone—but only after he’s been railroaded in a kangaroo court!

He has that right (and so do I):

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, will probably remain in military detention without trial for the foreseeable future, according to Obama administration officials.

The administration has concluded that it cannot put Mohammed on trial in federal court because of the opposition of lawmakers in Congress and in New York. There is also little internal support for resurrecting a military prosecution at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The latter option would alienate liberal supporters.

Military tribunals have a long-standing tradition in American justice. One would be ideal for this case.

But President No-ballma won’t exercise his authority to conduct one, so KSB languishes in jail.

Again, I can’t complain—but as the saying goes, it’s not the destination, but the journey.

If I were to sculpt a symbolic representation of the Obama Administration, it would look something like this:

Except they would be taking the colors out:

President Obama’s advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.

The president’s advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York and demands, mainly from Republicans, that Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators remain under military jurisdiction, officials said. While Obama has favored trying some terrorism suspects in civilian courts as a symbol of U.S. commitment to the rule of law, critics have said military tribunals are the appropriate venue for those accused of attacking the United States.

I like that blaming of Republicans. Nobody thought civilian trials were a good idea, nobody no to the left of Eric The Red Holder. Even wet, wobbly liberals of my acquaintance stopped in mid sentence with a far away look in their eyes when I asked them how and why, legally or morally, American Constitutional rights applied to people with no attachment to this country other than trying to blow it up.

What a colonial mindset! Where is the respect for their native cultures and institutions—like wood chippers and electrodes to their testicles?

And how does this administration look itself in the mirror when they see George Bush’s annoying smirk smirking back at them?

In other words, what was that all about?

Let me put this as succinctly as I can:

To elaborate:

Dick Cheney is not the most popular of politicians, but when he offered a harsh assessment of the Obama Administration’s approach to terrorism last May, his criticism stung—so much that the President gave a speech the same day that was widely seen as a direct response. Though neither man would admit it, eight months later political and security realities are forcing Mr. Obama’s antiterror policies ever-closer to the former Vice President’s.

In fact, the President’s changes in antiterror policy have never been as dramatic as he or his critics have advertised. His supporters on the left have repeatedly howled when the Justice Department quietly went to court and offered the same legal arguments the Bush Administration made, among them that the President has the power to detain enemy combatants indefinitely without charge. He has also ramped up drone strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Pakistan.

However, the Administration has tried to break from its predecessors on several big antiterror issues, and it is on those that it is suffering the humiliation of having to walk back from its own righteous declarations. This is Dick Cheney’s revenge.

And as he is probably too busy shooting defenseless little furry creatures (deer, not hippies—although now that you mention it…), let me respond in his stead.

Ahem.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Boy, it sure must suck to have to adopt the policies of someone you find the most evil entity to walk the earth since Rasputin last pulled the wings off a fly.

It would be like me having to admit Al Gore was right. As if.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gitmo, KSM’s trial—the administration has thrown its policies into reverse so many times, they’ve stripped the gears.

As long as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were responsible for keeping Americans safe, Democrats could pander to the U.S. and European left’s anti-antiterror views at little political cost. But now that they are responsible, American voters are able to see what the left really has in mind, and they are saying loud and clear that they prefer the Cheney method.

Mr. Holder has nonetheless begun a campaign to defend his decisions on Abdulmutallab and KSM, telling the New Yorker last week that “I don’t apologize for what I’ve done” and that trying KSM in a civilian court will be “the defining event of my time as Attorney General.”

That’s about the only thing he’s said I agree with.