Disappointment or Silver Lining?

Only a week ago someone in the O admin leaked a story to the WaPo saying that Holder may not get around to trying KSM and his Gitmo cohorts til after 2012. There was lots of speculation on how Obama didn't want to alienate his Soros-backed base too much.

Strangely, the story was leaked just as the Ghailani trial was winding down in Manhattan. The accused African Embassy bombing facilitator was the first terrorist tried in federal court who had been held in an off-site CIA facility or at Gitmo, and it was no doubt a test-case for the Holder terrorist justice paradigm.

And the Ghailani verdict is in--not guilty on all but one conspiracy charge (not guilty of murder, essentially). The media is running wild with that headline. Of course that one charge holds a 20 to life sentencing possibility so the administration is claiming victory. But everyone knew he wasn't going free anyway.

So the question is how this might affect the KSM situation, since the judge tossed out the most damning evidence on Ghailani due to his detention outside the court system.

Fear not, Holder might say, because with KSM there's plenty of damning evidence collected outside of Gitmo and the Black Site days, most notably that in support of his 1996 indictment. Of course revealing such means the general public might suddenly wake up and realize he was indicted in 1996. Indicted and not caught until after 9/11.

This might be shocking to some voters who believe the history of AQ terrorism began on either January 20 or September 11, 2001. Those halcyon days of Bubba have largely been left as a misty water colored memory and/or stain on a blue dress.

So lots of machinations to consider for our politically-minded president. Let's just hope they don't get swept away in the blink of an eye by another serious attack, because that could change everything.

MORE 11/18/10

Funny how the DoJ is patting themselves on the back for saying there were no security incidents in New York with the Ghailani trial, as if that proves anything about a potential KSM or bin Laden trial. Note also their dropping of the torture card on the Bush folks. They just can't resist.

HEARTBROKEN 11/18/10

...seems to capture this Times piece about what didn't happen in the Ghailani trial:

That said, the trial also failed to fulfill one of the hopes of some advocates of civilian courts, who saw them as a potential forum for a detailed examination of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 policies on detention and interrogation.

Evidently that was the silver lining for the Bush folks--the trial failed to show them for the criminals they are. Geez. Imagine what these "advocates of civilian courts" were/are expecting from the KSM version.