The Silver Lining in the NYC Terrorist Trials

From my Marine buddy, Del:

OK, here's the thing- if I were Mr. Obama's chief supporter, I would have said to him "Leave the trials of the WTC conspirators with the military tribunals, that system is already set up and people are ready for it to run, and it's enormously simpler and less open to manipulation than any civil trial will be. Those guys are super terrorists by their own admission, they are part of the army of Jihad that deliberately targeted innocent civilians the same way Hitler had the Luftwaffe target London. They say they are soldiers, fine, take them at their word and have them tried by soldiers. And by staying out of it, you let the system set up under Bush go ahead, which means if things go badly it's not your fault, if things go OK then it happened on your watch and you're still OK."


So now the rationale from Mr. Holder is that since they killed civilians, they have to be tried by civilians? Really? Soldiers who kill civilians are courtmartialed, terrorists and guerilla killers have always been tried by military courts, to act like these guys are just serial killers on a huge scale and entitled to all the rights of civil trials is a major departure from common practice.

And the defense attorneys now have so many advantages that the trial being a super 3-ring circus is a total lock. First, how do you qualify jurors in NYC? Question to prospective juror from defense atty- "Mr. Smith, were living on or present in NYC when the unfortunate event of the fall of the WTC took place?" "Yes, sir, I was" "Your Honor, we have to exclude this juror on the basis of almost certain bias"

Second, there is the matter of the aggressive interrogations, which can and will be played up in the courtroom like the crescendo of a Wagnerian opera. Thirdly, there's the demand by the defense to know all the details of how the guys were caught, which means giving up very sensitive and secret information on intelligence methods, informants, the technologies used, etc, which it is way against the interest of this country to divulge.

And let's remember that the trial of Zacharias Moussawi was a circus that took over 3 years start to finish, and cost millions, and these trials will make his look simple. And for every year of the crazy process, the chances of some attack on the trial by crazies go up. Or the chances that some crew of killers takes over a tour bus of US citizens somewhere, and says either these guys are let go or they saw the heads off the Americans one by one on camera.

I see nothing but bad news in this decision, and I bet it will come down as a very bad decision by Obama and Holder, one that will be on the news as long as the trials go on. That cannot be good for the Administration, and when the 2012 election comes around, it'll be pounded into the ground as a major point against them. Arrogance and stupidity just roll along nicely from these guys.

So it's a very bad decision for America, but the only silver lining in that cloud is that it will be a bad decision that gets noticed, and in the end, will be part of certain parties shooting themselves in the foot.

--Del