KSM civilian trial is a sham
The Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, KSM, civilian trial is not intended to be a legitimate trial. The originally intended military tribunal would have at least been fair and lawful. But fair and lawful is not what the KSM trial is about; instead, the trial is to keep those Obama supporters that want civilian trials quiet. The President is willing to pay too high a price for their silence.
President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder’s assurances of a conviction “make a mockery of due process,” according to James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web Today. Other critics have not been so kind.
How is this so? Isn’t Taranto over reacting? Aren’t all of the critics overreacting? “Make a mockery of due process” is an extremely strong statement. Taranto is accusing the President and Attorney General of shredding the most fundamental of our Constitutional rights, due process. How can he say this?
To answer these questions, let’s examine a hypothetical situation only to gain a different, perhaps unique perspective of the KSM situation.
Imagine for a moment that a U.S. citizen has been accused of committing a crime in Iran. That U.S. citizen has been arrested by Iranian police and will now face the Iranian justice system. Amidst debate over the justice and fairness of the trial both inside Iran and throughout the world, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says in a speech:
“What I told the prosecutors and what I will tell you and what I spoke to them about is that failure is not an option. Failure is not an option. This–these are cases that have to be won. I don’t expect that we will have a contrary result.”
What chance do you think our U.S. citizen has of receiving a fair trial in Iran based on that statement?
Your answer was probably something like, “Not much,” or “No chance at all.”
Now, let’s change the name of the speaker of those words to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. We can do this because the above statement was Holder’s exact words in response to questioning by Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis) during Holder’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Imagine the reaction of all of those people world-wide that view the U.S. as the great Satan. Think of all of the world’s anger after eight years of President Bush, and now we are going to hold a supposedly civilian trial on a case in which the President of the United States and the Attorney General are both guaranteeing convictions. Do those people that hate us, or don’t trust us, see the situation any differently than the way you saw the hypothetical situation of the U.S. citizen being held in Iran? Will the international community really believe KSM had a fair trial now that the President and the Attorney General have all but guaranteed convictions?
Wait. It actually gets worse.
Senator Kohl’s concern, the reason for the questioning that led to Holder’s statement, is that there really aren’t any guarantees on the outcome of a trial; or at least there is not supposed to be guarantees. No matter how strong the prosecution’s case, there is always the chance that a judge will dismiss the case on a technicality or a jury will find some part of the defense’s case compelling.
Holder clearly attempted to evade addressing that issue. Until later.
In a blog post appropriately titled, “It doesn’t really matter,” WSB Radio’s Washington correspondent Jaime Dupree wrote that later Holder did answer Kohl’s question.
If KSM and others like him are acquitted they would not be released. He would be declared an “enemy combatant” and could be held indefinitely.
And that is the KSM situation simplified. KSM is not getting a civil trial nor is he being given the Constitutional rights of a U.S. citizen. The whole civil trial thing is a sham to silence Obama’s supporters that are demanding civil trials and it’s all out there for the whole world to see and to judge.
Failure really is Not an option.
http://mindyourowndamnbusinesspolitics. ... is-a-sham/
