Category Error

Powerline asks, Whither KSM?

We have incessantly insisted that the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his 9/11 co-conspirators held at Guantanamo should not take place in federal court in New York. If they are to be tried at all, the trial should be held before a military commission at Guantanamo.

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Like picking a new site for the Guantanamo detainees, this is an exercise in stupidity. We don’t need a more convenient federal courtroom; we need a venue that recognizes the status of the defendants as enemy combatants. Gitmo is it.

What we have here is a category error. The perpetrators of 9/11 are not criminals; they are unlawful combatants and enemies of the United States of America. They do not belong in an American courtroom shielded by the protections accorded American citizens under the Constitution of the United States.

The Obama administration seeks to end the war against Islamist terrorism by closing its eyes. No more war against terrorism in word. No more Gitmo in deed. No more military commissions. The higher wisdom operative in the Obama administration takes its cue from the late John Lennon, who proclaimed “WAR IS OVER! (IF YOU WANT IT).” It wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now.

President Obama can click his heels all he wants; he won’t find himself on 9/10/2001.

KSM may get military tribunal at Gitmo after all

Oh, I will laugh myself silly if this is the outcome after all the hysterical posturing from the left:

Walk a climbdown this would be if they do it. In the aftermath of the White House’s decision to seek alternative sites for trials of the 9/11 plotters, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, a senior administration official said Friday it is possible the suspects could be tried under military charges at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility . The official stressed this is not the preferred option, but said using military commissions at Guantanamo for these high-visibility trials is “part of the range of options” the adminstration is “looking at in light of the fact some in Congress are planning to prevent the trials from occurring in New York City.”

More here – Heh: KSM may get military tribunal at Gitmo after all.

Do they sell popcorn, and is it halal?

Whenever I think of actress Lily Tomlin now, I think of her animal-rights plea in 2008 : “The word, ‘zoo,’ is sort of elephant-speak for Guantanamo. They’re really, they are suffering and being tortured.”

More hilarity here: Lily Tomlin’s Radical Recommendations

Is it over yet?

Depressing, but true SOTU reax from Powerline:

Obama stuck to his guns when it came to the signature items of his first year in office, and stuck to his butter when it came to national security. Without directly addressing his elimination of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program, his promise to close Guantanamo, his responsibility for bringing KSM to trial in federal court in New York and the Christmas day bomber to trial in Detroit, he chastised those who would dare criticize his handling of terrorism, declaring that “all of us love this country” and warning his Republican critics to “put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough.”

It is not a schoolyard taunt, however, to say he’s gonna get us killed. And when he threatens (or promises) “growing consequences” to Iran, he makes it unnaturally difficult to stifle schoolyard taunts.