"Not so sure anybody could have foreseen this happening".So said Heidi the airy CNN news reader regarding KSM's plea to be martyred at his hearing in Guantanamo today.
Gee, why the shock? Surely CNN wasn't disappointed they decided to grandstand about dying for the cause in front of the international cameras while simultaneously accusing the Bush administration of torture to boot. It's called jihad. It's called making the most out of the situation on their way off the end of the gang plank.
To desire acquittal would only mean they didn't want credit for pulling off the greatest attack on the great satan ever. These are men who value honor. They know they'll be found guilty. To let justice play out via an infidel court system that values secular law would only diminish the fight in both Iraq and Afghanistan while leaving them to rot in a cell beside cousin Ramzi and Shoeless Rich. The only takeaways left are scoring propaganda points and perhaps watering down future interrogation methods by whining about torture. After all, they're still at war.
And maybe that's why the CNN anchor was stunned. Perhaps like others she's programmed to believe the war was a failure and Bush is the real enemy. Seeing the cold-blooded jihadis responsible for 9/11 all lathered up about dying for the cause was just far too disruptive to the paradigm.
ON A RELATED NOTE 6/6/08
The New York Times and by extension the Huffington Post through Glenn Greenwald are trying to pin a flip-flop on McCain for his views on the warrantless wiretapping (TSP) based on this article. The Times, in an attempt to be fair and balanced, uses none other than Andrew McCarthy to bolster their charges. But for some reason they didn't mention this part of McCarthy's open letter to McCain:
I’ve only got one other question for the McCain campaign — more of a plea than a query: Why isn’t Sen. McCain leading on this crucial national-security issue?Indeed, but the insinuation here is that McCain was only pandering. Yet Mac, unlike Obama, voted against limiting presidential powers to go after terrorists and voted, unlike Obama, to not penalize telcoms for their support after 9/11 in preventing the next attack. These votes occurred during the primary season, where he needed right wing support. By saying he's now tacking even further right by failing to criticize the TSP when everyone knows moderates will make or break the election seems an odd premise.
This is a home-run waiting to happen. The Democrats, deeply in the thrall of the trial lawyers and Leftists who would prefer to see America vulnerable, are opposing commonsense legislation. Even the awful post-Watergate Congress, in its hostility to executive power, understood that foreign intelligence collection should not be managed by federal judges. Yet, the House Democrats’ position holds that if terrorists in Baghdad kidnap a U.S. Marine, we need to get a federal judge’s permission to authorize eavesdropping as those terrorists contact their confederates in Sadr City … or Tehran.
That’s lunacy. But it’s the Obama position. And it is classically symbolic of how the Democrats’ likely standard-bearer views our national security. McCain should be hammering him on this daily.
4 comments:
One (retired) federal judge opines that this case is ripe for Supreme Court reversal because the tribunal system does not provide an independent trial judiciary. I’m not sure I agree that the constitution of the commission is a basis for appeal. The Military Commissions Act limits appeal to matters of law (rather than matters of fact), but I suppose the SCOTUS can review the case if they so choose. In my opinion, this would be a disaster because jihadist planners have instructed their minions to escape western justice by relying on liberal clauses of the U. S. Constitution.
The accused now desire to become martyrs; I have no problem with that. If we were truly interested in justice, we’d crucify these bastards and make sure that CNN gave it extensive coverage. Alas, a tribunal wouldn’t be necessary if these people simply disappeared somewhere between the coast of Africa and the island of Cuba on their way to Gitmo.
Alas, a tribunal wouldn’t be necessary if these people simply disappeared somewhere between the coast of Africa and the island of Cuba on their way to Gitmo.
Think back to right after 9/11. We located Mohammed Atef, one of the big planners of the attack, in the desert of Afghan and turned him into dust with a hellfire. No trials, no rights, no appeal to the SCOTUS, just dead. Yet if we had captured him, different story.
//No trials, no rights, no appeal to the SCOTUS, just dead. Yet if we had captured him, different story.//
This is why I think it was so important for Zarqawi to be eliminated from the system, before he could even get there.
This is why I think it was so important for Zarqawi to be eliminated from the system, before he could even get there.
It's interesting that according to lore the Iraqis supposedly picked up Zarqawi once, then let him go. If true perhaps we wanted him to go out that way, too. A more powerful sentence, if you will.
Post a Comment