Comments (27)

1. 

   Bordo says November 18, 2010 at 9:15 am

   Am I the only one who’s starting to think they may be doing this kind of shit on purpose?
2. 

   Carin says November 18, 2010 at 9:24 am

   Excellent point from the article.

   If you are going to try these men in civilian courts with rules designed to rein in law enforcement officials, not soldiers in battle who must operate under different circumstances, you should be prepared to take the consequences of releasing them to do more acts of murder and terrorism if you lose. If you are unwilling to take that very substantial gamble with national security, try them in military courts, which have more appropriately fashioned rules to make sure that evidence is sound and obtained in a manner more suited to the circumstances than those designed to deal with, say, armed robbery.
3. 

   scooter says November 18, 2010 at 9:28 am

   I thought the president guaranteed that these guys would be convicted. Maybe I was too scared to understand him properly, or something.
4. 

   Bob Reed says November 18, 2010 at 9:28 am

   Great.Job.Holder.You whining scold…

   He and Obama, who if you recall are always the smartest guys in any room, were told continuously by credible critics that using the civilian justice system to try wartime criminals would not end happily; and the proclaimed all such critics to be h8yers that were onkly motivated by partisan politics.

   They put all their cred, admittedly not much, behind this premise and failed miserably…

   So now some friggin’ terrorist, who admitted to killing hundreds of people, will serve less than 20 years in the klink, if sentancing guidlines are followed and his time already served is considered, as is usual and customary.

   Well congratulations to Kaptain Kickazz and the AG “Scolder”, who by bitterly clinging to their ideology have put the US in a terrible position.

   I mean, can they really release this guy after his sentance is served? I think not, unless you want to guarantee he strikes again; or at minimum becomes a much heralded recruiting agent.

   And say we don’t? Then this whole exercise was a sham, and reminiscent of the “Show Trials” in the former Soviet Union.
5. 

   Bob Reed says November 18, 2010 at 9:30 am

   I thought the president guaranteed that these guys would be convicted.

   Another promise that reached it’s expiration date scooter…They all do eventually.
6. 

   geoffb says November 18, 2010 at 9:37 am

   Andy McCarthy, Cassandra.
   

   I imagine this must infuriate people — it still infuriates me after 25 years in the biz. Here you have Ghailani: he has confessed to the bombings; he continued to be a top al Qaeda operative (even a bin Laden bodyguard) for years afterwards, until his capture in 2004; and he not only bought the TNT used in Dar es Salaam, but identified whom he got it from — a witness who corroborates his confession and is prepared to testify. Yet, because of a court ruling and DOJ concerns about opening up the interrogation can of worms, defense lawyers know the jury will learn none of this information. So what happens? Ghailani’s lawyer opens the case by telling jurors that, in 1998, his client was a babe in the woods who was never a member of al Qaeda, never “agreed or signed on to” bin Laden’s edicts to kill Americans; and, in his naivete, was duped by a friend into buying a truck he had no idea would be used by terrorists to bomb an embassy. The lawyer looked the jury in the eye and said, Ghailani “is not simply presumed innocent. He is innocent.”
7. 

   sdferr says November 18, 2010 at 9:48 am

   Sen Sessions has a few questions for AG Eric Holder sitting before the Judiciary committee, just after Holder had annunciated the decision to try KSM and others in Federal Court in NYC, posted on YouTube Nov 18, 2009.

   Holder clearly demonstrates he has no rationale for his decision, though he claims there was “not a political component to [his] decision”.

   Sen Kyl drives home the point in further questioning in the same session.
8. 

   Bob Reed says November 18, 2010 at 9:48 am

   If it as McCarthy recounted in geoffb’s link, than Ghalani’s attorney should be disbarred as well, for using the security concerns of the Feds to as cover to essentially lie to the jury.

   The antics of guys like him, and the O.J. dream team, give attorneys a bad name.
9. 

   Squid says November 18, 2010 at 9:57 am

   The antics of guys like him, and the O.J. dream team, give attorneys a bad name.

   It’s like they say: 90% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

   Pop quiz: Most members of Congress were members of what “profession” before being elected?
10. 

    alppuccino says November 18, 2010 at 9:59 am

    The antics of guys like him, and the O.J. dream team, give attorneys a bad name.

    Hey! Some of my best friends are attorneys. Some even live in my county, I think.
11. 

    angler says November 18, 2010 at 10:00 am

    My god, he’s worse than Reno.
12. 

    alppuccino says November 18, 2010 at 10:04 am

    But more to the point, I don’t think this is part of plot to intentionally weaken America. I prefer to think of it (borrowing Frotus’s analogy) as 2 retarded kids finding keys to a car and somehow starting it up, and running over everything in sight, while being so severely retarded that they don’t even realize that the car is actually moving.
13. 

    Ernst Schreiber says November 18, 2010 at 10:06 am

    It’s only a lie if you can “prove it,” Bob.
14. 

    sdferr says November 18, 2010 at 10:07 am

    In the same session of the Judiciary Committee shown above, Princess Lindsay has a bit of sport with AG Holder on the question of Mirandizing Osama bin Laden.
15. 

    Bob Reed says November 18, 2010 at 10:10 am

    Dan unloads on “Scolder” here ( http://tiny.cc/scolder ). It’s definitely worth looking at.
16. 

    A fine scotch says November 18, 2010 at 10:13 am

    Heckuva job, Ricky.

    Imagine the howls from the left if Ashcroft or Gonzales only got 1 of 280 charges…
17. 

    Bob Reed says November 18, 2010 at 10:14 am

    Do you mean “prove it” in the evidentiary sense Ernst, or in the sense that Jack Palance used it in Shane ( http://tiny.cc/proveit )?
18. 

    Ernst Schreiber says November 18, 2010 at 10:15 am

    Remember kiddies, military tribunals make us look bad. Killing terrorist “suspects” from 20,000 feet with remotely triggered hellfire missles carried by oversized kids’ toys? That doesn’t make us look like anything, even when there’s collateral damage. No network news cameras, you see.
19. 

    Ernst Schreiber says November 18, 2010 at 10:24 am

    More in the evidentiary sense Bob, but also in the the truth is a lie/a lie is the truth …if the judge/jury/3rd partys says so, objectively way that for some reason comes up in discussion around here from time to time.

    That’s a great showdown in Shane. The only other dialog as prelude to killin’ that’s close is Open Range

    “You the one that killed our friend?”
    “That’s right. I shot the boy too and I enjoyed it.”
20. 

    Matt says November 18, 2010 at 11:03 am

    Holder is focusing on more important things, like not prosecuting black racists like the black panthers.
21. 

    cranky-d says November 18, 2010 at 11:13 am

    Matt has apparently forgotten that black folks, by definition, cannot be racist. It’s back to the re-education camp for him.
22. 

    rnabs says November 18, 2010 at 11:24 am

    Yeah, some troll recently dropped by to let us know that, too, cranky. I remember being shocked that that tact is still being used by, well anyone.
23. 

    Spiny Norman says November 18, 2010 at 11:52 am

    Interesting.
    

    NEW YORK — The first Guantanamo detainee to face a civilian trial was acquitted Wednesday of most charges he helped unleash death and destruction on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 – an opening salvo in al-Qaida’s campaign to kill Americans.

    A federal jury convicted Ahmed Ghailani of one count of conspiracy and acquitted him of all other counts, including murder and murder conspiracy, in the embassy bombings. The anonymous federal jury deliberated over seven days, with a juror writing a note to the judge saying she felt threatened by other jurors.

    One sane woman seeing through the defense council’s bullshit appears to have an been unwelcome distraction…
24. 

    Spiny Norman says November 18, 2010 at 12:20 pm

    The defense’s claim that “Foopie” Ghailani never intended to harm anyone (!), just blow up the building, then the same could legitimately be said about Timothy McVeigh, or even Mohammed Atta for that matter.

    And the broccoli stalks on the jury believed it…
25. 

    LTC John says November 18, 2010 at 3:51 pm

    Spiny, I can only imagine who they seated on that jury…
26. 

    mathew1421 says November 18, 2010 at 7:20 pm

    The New York Times suggests this may fuel new debate about where these people should be tried. No detail, large or small, gets by those guys!
27. 

    Joe says November 18, 2010 at 7:29 pm

    A guy in his late forties who is acting like he is playing T ball.