Gitmo Update

Remember the GITMO trials?  KSM and cohorts?  The families of the victims surely do; the rest of America, not so much.

They are trying to resume them.  In the process an interesting revelation was recently leaked:

"I said, Mr Guard, is that a listening device, and he said, 'Of course not'," she said. "Well, guess what, judge? It's a listening device". The prison's lawyer, Captain Thomas Welsh, told the court he discovered the room was fitted with hidden microphones early last year and reported it to the then warden, Colonel Donnie Thomas, to seek assurances that meetings between the accused and their lawyers were not being spied on.

Bogdan said he was not informed when he took over. He told the court that the FBI was in control of the room until 2008 and that he has since discovered that the bugs were accidentally disconnected in October during renovations but then secretly reconnected by an unnamed intelligence service two months later, suggesting they were still in use.

And by an 'unnamed intelligence service' we can assume it wasn't Lichtenstein's.  Since it was presumably restarted in December 2012 that also means Cheney didn't order it.

So unless one of our agencies has gone rogue that means the bug order came from up the chain of command at some high level position.  Was someone trying to sabotage the proceedings?  Force the trials into an Article III court?  Undermine the entire tribunal process? 

Surely such planners would have to consider that if KSM were to be acquitted in such a court he wouldn't be given his belongings and 100 bucks and released into lower Manhattan, it would be back to prison in leg irons.  How would that make America look like a beacon of justice? 

Or maybe some are worried about the influence KSM might still have even after 10 years in jail.  The Blind Sheikh managed to get messages to his followers back in Egypt (kill all the infidels, etc) after being locked up for a few years and KSM's erstwhile nephew Ramzi Yousef was able to successfully communicate in code with Uncle Khalid while sitting in a New York City lockup (under the watchful eye of the FBI).

Good grief, we can't even trust Richard Clarke to keep the lid on a secret mole inserted into AQ in Yemen so the idea terrorists or their pro bono lawyers can be trusted not to babble or pass along secrets is fantasy.  Which in part explains the listening devices.  But again, revealing the devices undercuts the tribunals, which would open the door for more leaks.   Perhaps the solution is a 'prison break' and a well-positioned drone. After all, these guys aren't even citizens.

MORE  2/18/13

Speaking of Yousef, he's back in the news:

"I request an immediate end to my solitary confinement and ask to be in a unit in an open prison environment where inmates are allowed outside their cells for no less than 14 hours a day," he wrote the warden, according to confidential government records obtained by The Times. "I have been in solitary confinement in the U.S. since Feb. 8, 1995, with no end in sight.... I further ask not to be in handcuffs or leg irons when moved outside my cell."

Aww, the poor thing.  The traumatized terrorist.  Just a few years ago Basit Karim (supposedly his real name) claimed to have concerted to Christianity.   Of course letting this guy mingle is a bad idea based on past history--read the above link in the main post by Chris Carson if you don't believe it.  But this story should go towards the larger question of allowing the most dangerous terrorists have any kind of freedoms.  In one sense his current existence might be a harsher punishment than a martyr's death, so long as the authorities can keep him from contacting the outside world. 

By the way, this isn't the first time he has sued--he filed against the Bureau of Prisons back in 1998 for similar treatment:

On September 11, 1998, Yousef sued the Bureau of Prisons over what he called "Draconian" restrictions imposed on him in Colorado.

Wow, what a weird, wild coincidence. And surely the signature date on his Iraqi passport was also a coincidence.  If you believe in those things.

Eyes Wide Shut

In the same week the American public has been told:

...that the CIA's waterboarding produced no useful intelligence--except when it did...

...that a man invited to the Pentagon in an Islamic outreach program after 9/11 was actually purchasing airline tickets for the hijackers before 9/11 according to the FBI, yet he wasn't, according to the FBI.  

Yes, the war on terror remains as muddled as ever. 

The Zero Dark 30 back and forth on waterboarding is interesting, though.  Boals and Bigelow were on "Today" today talking about their award-winning film and refused to take a side on controversy despite prodding by Matt Lauer.  Waterboarding was simply part of an overall mosaic, something they compressed into a 2 1/2 hour version of the last 10 years.  It's up to the viewer to decide the morals. 

Of course if the movie starts at 9/11 they've already taken a side.  Telling the UBL story from there is like telling the Saddam Hussein story beginning at the Gulf War.  Bin Laden got his start in the 80s and hit stride in the late 90s, besides, who can forget Bill Clinton saying he did more than anyone to catch Bin Laden?   Who?  Well, apparently the movie makers.  No need to drag Hillary into this.  

Anyway, KSM's trial will eventually cause some of these questions to pop up again.  Obama, a constitutional expert strongly opposed to signing statements, just issued another signing statement on his recent stealthy re-authorization of the NDAA bill, mainly because the bill prevents him from transferring people like KSM to penal facilities here in the states for Article III court trials.  That darned Bush, he's responsible for everything!  Perhaps the FOIA tiff about Awlaqi and Hillary's presumed testimony on Benghazi will open some eyes that have recently been shut. Or not.

By the way, for a good read on the GWoT from an FBI perspective check out "The Threat Matrix" by Garrett Graff.  

The Men who Attacked America

It's been a few days since a new insider bin Laden story has trickled out of the elite media. He'll be back, though, we're coming up on the one-year anniversary and there's also an election looming.

But you say, "bin Laden was the big fish". No doubt, he blessed 9/11. But the guy who actually dreamed up 9/11 and made it happen was named Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and he was captured on George W. Bush's watch in 2003.

And he still hasn't been tried.

Not that some haven't tried to try him, but it's been 9 years. Obama's minions were out acknowledging this, saying "it's about time" without the slightest sense of irony seeing as how their boss canceled the last trial in-progress as soon as he entered office. But there's talk of a new attempt, so here we go. An interesting question is how these terrorist narratives might line up: zombie UBL in the press versus breathing KSM in the courtroom. The last time we saw Mukhtar he was taking credit for almost everything.

The thing is, not everyone knows KSM. Oh, they know the weird hairy little man from the picture who is blamed for the attack, but how much more does the average person know? Do they know he's the uncle of Ramzi Yousef Abdul Basit Karim, aka the first World Trade Center bomber? Do they know both conspired with an actual pilot, Hakim Murad, a childhood friend of common Baluch heritage, to kill the Pope, Clinton and knock down ten US airliners over the Pacific well before anyone had bin Laden on the radar?

Maybe they don't know that Yousef and Murad were not AQ members and that KSM remained on his own through most of the 90s. Maybe they don't know that none were quite as pious as the Islamists tied to bin Laden or Zawahiri. Maybe they don't know that KSM was almost captured in the mid 90s while living in the UAE after the feds intercepted a love note he wrote to a dancer he had dated in Malaysia. Which means they also may not know that Bill Clinton failed to catch him in the mid 90s even though he was devoting more time than anyone to catching UBL (we now understand that presidents catch terrorists, of course).

Bin Laden was indeed the face of AQ and it's good that his rotted corpse is being nibbled on by Charlie the Tuna but KSM is the face of 9/11. UBL sat in his hut and blessed mass murder via writ through Quranic scriptures while doling out his Saudi oil inheritance. KSM killed Daniel Pearl with a sharp knife. He didn't need Quranic blessings to murder westerners.

Like UBL he used safe-houses in Pakistan and even the same courier--al-Kuwaiti. Yet after he was captured there were no leaked stories about how gutsy the Bush team was in nabbing the perpetrator of 9/11--on the contrary, they squirreled him away to secret prisons to mine him for intelligence on what might be coming next. And there were things coming next. His legacy is not of being shot by Navy Seals in the act of grabbing his trusty Kalashnikov but of having water being dumped on his nose by the CIA, ie, the victim of a Bush-Cheney war crime.

Assuming this tribunal goes forward there will likely be stories about KSM's exploits to accompany coverage. Like NBC's snippet coverage of George Zimmerman there will probably be some reshaping to fit the narrative if it can help Obama and hurt Bush-GOP in any fashion, so get ready. Perhaps coincidentally, a book about KSM has already hit the shelves called "The Hunt for KSM" written by Josh Meyer and Terry McDermott, a pair of former LA Times reporters.

The book is a good read with shortfalls. It cleverly tries to debunk some of the more conspiratorial views mentioned over the years by maintaining the 'super terrorist' rogue status despite shining no new light on how these super terrorists were actually funded or by whom. Or why a handful of Baluch natives would be so ticked off at America they wanted to knock down the Trade Center and other assorted skyscrapers. After all, what had we ever done to Baluchistan? Or for that matter Pakistan, other than help them help the Afghanis defeat the Soviets.

Anyway, the writers couldn't help choosing sides, taking the FBI over the CIA (Valerie Plame is just a memory now for lefties), which just so happens to line up well with Eric Holder's view of terrorism. Once again Ali Soufan is a hero while various CIA operators are made to appear as goofballs, know-nothings, or just petty bureaucrats, all save Michael Schuerer, founder of the Alec Station UBL group in CIA and a man who once wrote in a book that UBL was probably working with Saddam, which was flushed down the memory hole years ago.

They also rarely mentioned the name "Bill Clinton" while detailing terrorism in the 90s but had no such trepidation referring to Bush and Cheney in describing their short history on Mohammed between 2001 and his capture in early 2003.

Perhaps the clearest evidence of bias comes not from what was written, but what was not written. They detail the gumshoe vigor of FBI agent Frank Pellegrini in chasing the Baluchi boys for a decade but curiously mention little of informant Emad Salem, the Egyptian mole who had been inserted into the initial World Trade terror cell in 1992 before he got disgusted and pulled out.

Maybe that's because several months later, after a bevy of phone calls from the cell members to Iraq, Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Yasin showed up in New York and later turned the plot from a pipe bomb attack to knocking over two 110 story buildings with a massive cyanide bomb in an effort to murder several hundred thousand innocent New Yorkers.

The writers also provided a new version of the so-called terrorist summit meeting in Kuala Lumpur in 2000, describing only the two 9/11 hijackers in the condo without mentioning others or the fact there was an Iraqi airport greeter there who drove them to the safe house. The CIA was working that one and evidently lost them before they arrived in LA, later finding them but not informing the FBI in DC until a few days before 9/11, meaning we can't blame Robert Mueller while blaming the CIA.

Not all FBI agents got the glory. Ironically one who comes off less than spectacular is the late John O'Neill, G-man turned director of security at the WTC (killed there) who many claim tried to "warn America". The writers claim he was preoccupied with UBL while ignoring KSM because the Baluchi boys were old news or something, almost as if bin Laden was some kind of McGuffin.

And maybe he was. KSM and his Baluchi buds never stopped targeting America, with or without al Qaeda's support. They must be seen at least on the same level of depravity as UBL and Zawahiri and the book tries to correct that perception, which alone makes it worth the read. But elevating KSM might make the narrative problematic. Bin Laden is the kingpin bad guy, public enemy number one, who we got, and who we knew a lot about. We still don't know everything about KSM and crew, and the end is almost near.

KSM and Holder, Again

My, my, wasn't our Attorney General a bit flustered while explaining his reversal of the venue for KSM and friends. He blamed just about everyone except himself and his boss for all the delay, even though it was his department that stopped KSM's Bush-era tribunal in its tracks, delaying and politicizing everything.

But here we are again. Two questions remain for me--one, Holder has never explained exactly why it was so important to try KSM in Manhattan federal court instead of Gitmo. Two, he's never suggested that alleged Cole bomber al-Nashiri should be tried in federal court, only a tribunal.

There are some conventional wisdom answers to both. One, he delayed KSM to make an ideological point about federal courts and fighting the war on terror in general, and two, Nashiri attacked a military asset. Never mind that KSM attacked the biggest military target--the Pentagon, it's probably a given that the KSM delay and NY trial were all part of the close Gitmo, blame Bush plank of the Democratic Party.

Keep in mind one of the first actions Obama took was to throw out al-Nashiri's tribunal to review the case. Only now is the beginning in sight again, despite no suggestion he would ever be tried in federal court. So why the 2 year delay? There was no complication from Congress. So please with the "it's time for justice" stuff--they wasted two years.

Anyway, in reading through the unsealed federal indictment the motive of teh Barack Holder team becomes a bit more clear. The supporting information in the intro goes back to 1989 when bin Laden first formed al Qaeda, detailing his move to the Sudan and then Afghanistan and mentioning his two declarations of war against America. But there were no mentions of all the attacks. Mohammed's role seems to begin in 1999.

Ironically most of those unmentioned 90s attacks occurred with Holder was with the Justice Department working under Reno. There was also no mention of the prior indictment against KSM, issued in 1996...guess they didn't want people speculating on what might not have occurred had we got him back then.

And of course, no mention of all the previous terrorist attacks KSM had already copped to in his first Gitmo trial. For those who've forgotten, here's KSM's laundry list of attacks he claims to have engineered. Oh right though, he exaggerated. The left said so. And of course all those were gained via waterboarding. Some even bought the story that he was killed in the raid.

But Holder's super clean 9/11-only trial would have gotten rid of all those loose ends, including recent evidence that indeed it was KSM's cursed hand that slashed the throat of Daniel Pearl. And since that was one of the ones they said he exaggerated perhaps somebody might also ask why he said he was involved with the shoe bomber plot to bring down "two" airplanes. We only know of one.

Mayer Vs Thiessen

Readers of Marc Thiessen's book "Courting Disaster" will find a frequently mentioned name--Jane Mayer. For those unaware, she is a prize-winning writer for the New Yorker Magazine. Thiessen seems to have quite a beef with that writing, especially related to waterboarding and his 2006 speech written for Bush about closing the secret CIA prisons.

I came to this post by reading about the Frum scrum, where Colin Friedersdorf mentioned Mayer's response to Thiessen in the process of attacking Frum's unspoken contention that he was fired. He calls her rebuttal 'devastating', along with this Slate piece. Both appear to be garden-variety liberally slanted anti-torture efforts but I suppose devastation is in the eye of the beholder. Here's some of Mayer's:

Thiessen’s claim about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed looks equally shaky. The Bush interrogation program hardly discovered the Philippine airlines plot: in 1995, police in Manila stopped it from proceeding and, later, confiscated a computer filled with incriminating details. By 2003, when Mohammed was detained, hundreds of news reports about the plot had been published. If Mohammed provided the C.I.A. with critical new clues—details unknown to the Philippine police, or anyone else—Thiessen doesn’t supply the evidence.

Here's what Thiessen says (we know Mayer made it at least as far as page 7 of his book), regarding one of the supposed 6000 reports his EIT generated:

In one of those reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994-95 plan known as the "Bojinka plot"--formulated with his nephew Ramzi Yousef--to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean."

My emphasis. He goes on to say an unnamed CIA agent busy analyzing a cell the Brits were watching noticed a similarity (presumably based on the EIT-generated plan update) and notified the Brits who, while initially skeptical, eventually came around. Now, it's true this is an anonymous CIA source and they might be jacking him around to tweak their MI5-6 counterparts or involved in some kind of urinating contest, but it's hardly unsurprising a CIA analyst would speak off record. Mayer got a guy from Scotland Yard for her pushback, who said:

“version of events is simply not recognized by those who were intimately involved in the airlines investigation in 2006.”

But he doesn't provide any names either. He says Scotland Yard knew about liquid bombs due to the Tube attacks in 2005 but Thiessen's book doesn't say exactly what information the CIA analyst provided. It might have been about something else.

Looking back for stories, there was clearly some friction between agencies at the time with the US worried the Brits were going to dilly-dally too long before rounding them up but it's doubtful that either Thiessen's contention (or Mayer's contention he lied) can be proved via open sources. That hardly seems devastating.

Besides, the devastation may be more focused on Thiessen's main assertion challenging her honesty regarding her segment about the 2006 speech and her claim about a counter draft making the rounds nixed by Darth Cheney. Thiessen was there and talked to people who should know; she was not there and talked to people in State who might have had axes to grind. So we have a he said, she said situation, which is apparently good enough for some to call devastation.

As to my own opinion of his book, the main critique would be that in defending his own actions and those of the Bush administration in trying to protect America (easily forgotten) he's far too dismissive about the nastiness of waterboarding. If it's a necessary evil then it's still evil. He probably would have been more credible to the left had he volunteered to be waterboarded himself like Hitchens before writing the book but maybe they wouldn't have believed him anyway.

I have a feeling the real reason for their nastiness has more to do with his hit on Obama than the torture. In the 'Double Agents' chapter he listed the many lawyers who volunteered to work for suspected terrorists who later went to work for Holder at Justice along with some of their fairly radical support group ties. One such group was called the "1848 Foundation" (no web site but the year featured many revolutions and one manifesto). And yes, the name 'Che' comes up.

Trying Our Patience

CNN featured a guest editorial today from a JAG college professor who advocated for the trying of terrorists in criminal courts by starting his piece with the following premise:

Suppose that shortly after 9/11, when it became clear that Osama bin Laden and other members of al Qaeda were responsible for the attacks, President Bush had made the following announcement:

"Those responsible for these attacks are cowardly, vicious murderers, and we will pursue them to the ends of the earth to capture them. They are not warriors, they are criminals, and they will be treated accordingly. And once we catch them, we will bring them back to the United States and put them on trial right there in lower Manhattan so that a jury of 12 fair-minded New Yorkers can decide their fate."

Such an announcement would not have been controversial in the slightest and undoubtedly would have been met with widespread approval. After all, putting terrorists on trial in federal court is how we always dealt with terrorists, including the first group of murderers who tried to blow up the World Trade Center.

Emphasis added to point out that yes the hell it would have been controversial! Americans--especially those in New York and Washington--wanted shock and awe, not the deployment of a squad of G-men in black suits. So right off the bat his entire piece was flawed. He's not the only military person in favor of trying terrorists in courts rather than commissions (wonder what he thinks about battlefield justice using CIA predators? ), which is also still a goal for the administration.

And indeed, Obama may get his way. He'll probably get health care and with it the ensuing standing ovation from the media for an 'historic accomplishment', which he'll then parlay into a color commentator appearance during March Madness basketball and perhaps a the return of KSM to federal court.

The latter was the focus of questions for Eric Holder in Congress on Tuesday where he indicated that once again, they are weeks away from another "decision" on the matter. Isn't this a form of torture itself?

Keep America Safe has some excerpts from the testimony, focusing on the one where he compared the rights of bin Laden to those of Charles Manson. Allahpundit showed how it wouldn't matter because Holder thinks we're never gonna take him alive anyway. Click through to view (it's very long).


Holder stuck with the non-answer on bin Laden even under follow-up, which was key. The man hasn't changed his stance on terrorism since he worked in the Reno Justice Dept., that it's a criminal matter, not a military matter. Well check that, he did see the wisdom in not giving them Geneva rights after 9/11. But that was then! This is now, a more tranquil period where the Attorney General can sit in front of Congress and advocate for the same failed policies of the 90s and get away with it.

For instance, further testimony revealed that Holder didn't know where the HIG group was to be based in the DC area. Not surprising, since Obama created the HIG and the other blue ribbon panels to deflect his closing of Gitmo and the EIT program, not to actually do anything productive. The media played along by never asking questions until Abdulmuttalob threw a monkey wrench in the works, and even after that, very little has been asked. Nobody wants to think about it. The administration knows this--they don't either when there are domestic legacies to be forged.

Rep Culberson made a decent point on the possible leaking of material in the Ghailani trial in New York (hey we can always trust the lawyers!) but then made a fool of himself by saying there was no precedent for trying foreign nationals in court. Holder smilingly threw out Aafia Siddiqui--a foreign national brought to federal court in Manhattan by Bush and recently convicted. Apparently he and his staff have no memory of Ramzi Yousef or the Blind Sheikh, either (had he known about Siddiqui he could have pointed out that she was convicted of attempted murder of the officers, not terrorism). So it's true, liberals are smarter even when pursuing stupider policies, and Holder handed him his rear.

But it didn't have to be that way. Holder's main argument for using federal courts is the availability of making deals, something not possible in military commissions. This is designed to take the place of enhanced interrogation (except when Obama renders someone to Egypt, something else not mentioned). His example--dangle the specter of spending a life in the Supermax in return for information. Few challenged him on this but sure, low level ordnance like Abdulmuttalob may take a deal but they don't know much. The big fish are a different matter.

Before 9/11 Bush was widely quoted as telling Condi Rice that he was tired of 'swatting at flies' in pursuit of terrorists and preferred a bolder course of action, which we eventually saw. That's because the policies of the Reno Justice Dept had done nothing to stop the rise of bin Laden because they were reactionary and not designed to cull information. This is now lost on people as the waters calm.

Which is why he punted the question about capturing bin Laden. He knows the hard cores will never willingly give up sensitive information without being tortured. The reason Bush used waterboarding was not because he was an evil Republican, no more than Clinton was evil for starting the rendition program in the 90s to whisk terrorists to countries that used "enhanced" interrogation. It was because there was no other way to get time-sensitive information with WMDs possibly in the mix.

And Holder is not dumb enough to think the big fish can be given deals. It's both practically and politically out of the question (imagine cutting a deal with Osama) yet for some reason his GOP interlocutors didn't hammer this point, which is the crux of the entire problem--what do we do with the big fish who refuse all deals and efforts to persuade and exercise their right to remain silent? When the bomb goes off will people demand a new posse of FBI agents to chase down the perps as Holder and the JAG suggest? Or will they want another round of shock and awe?

The KSM Carousel

It's interesting that this story would come out on a Thursday night; normally such things appear Friday evening. Oh well, liberals are really gonna be honked off:

A decision to reverse course on Mohammed is likely to dismay civil liberties groups and human rights groups who loudly cheered Obama's election because they thought he would dismantle military tribunals developed during the Bush administration.

"If President Obama reverses Holder's decision to try the 9/11 defendants in criminal court and retreats to using the Bush military commissions, he deals a death blow to his own Justice Department, breaks a clear campaign promise to restore the rule of law and demonstrates that the promises to his constituents are all up for grabs," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The military commissions have not worked, they are doomed to failure, and Obama will invariably find himself running for office again while not achieving justice for the 9/11 attacks."

Since Obama had already announced he was trying the Cole bombers and others in commissions and had previously backed the commission legislation while in the Senate it's a mystery as to where the ACLU has been the past few years. Apparently some liberals simply had fantasy allusions as to what an Obama presidency was going to mean.

Politically speaking, the announcement may be designed to soften conservative and moderate anger over health care, since it's not clear the story had to be dumped now and Obama is saying he wants a health care bill in the next two weeks. He knows the liberals have nowhere else to go, so why not appeal to moderate and hawks while health care still stands a chance? Maybe that's why the story wasn't dumped on a Friday afternoon.

Interesting the WaPo mentions a deal to get the Illinois prison open if KSM is kept out of Manhattan. That sort of goes along with an initial feeling that the whole thing was designed as a threat against the GOP ahead of the 2010 mid-terms, ie, we'll bring Bush, torture back into the news constantly. Perhaps they've realized the expiration date is passing on blaming Bush for everything since the Stimulus was all Obama's failure. Or maybe they realized that terrorism is actually real (Hasan, Abdulmuttalob) and not some Cheney pipe dream, and that another attack could blow back in their face. Maybe. Or maybe they'll change their minds after health care is settled. They are democrats.

Whatever the case the place was going to stay open anyway whether KSM's trial was in New York or Gitmo, since without another holding facility they cannot have the scheduled commissions or hold the legal zombie detainees (cannot be tried, cannot be released). Perhaps with KSM still there the failure to close it won't seem as idiotic. Besides, they may be able to blame it on the conservatives who blocked the federal court option. And they'll still get some desired press when the commission finally comes. And boy, if he's freed during a commission due to 'torture tainted' evidence the whole thing goes on Bush.

17 Years Ago Today

February 26, 1993--with Kuwait celebrating their second "Liberation Day" in memory of the ouster of Saddam's Army by valiant US/coalition forces, a sinister event was about to transpire in New York.

Several terrorists led by a man named Abdul Basit Karim, or "Ramzi Yousef" according to his Iraqi passport, drove a rented Ryder Truck packed with explosives and cyanide into the parking garage of the World Trade Center with hopes the massive bomb would topple one tower into the next and kill over a hundred thousand in lower Manhattan.

Little did we know it then but the War on Terror had begun.

It would take eight years and an elaborate plot by Karim's Kuwaiti-born uncle to forever change the landscape of lower Manhattan and bring this war home to the average Jane and Joe. This same man is still wreaking havoc on New York and America from his jail cell at Gitmo as we fight over how to dispense justice.

To this day it's still a mystery as to where Clinton might have retaliated had the attack been successful as planned. Despite Yousef's Iraqi passport and dozens of calls made by cell member Mohammed Salameh to his father in Iraqi--himself with ties to terror groups--and despite Iraqi national Abdul Yasin being a bomb mixer then fleeing to Iraq after the attack, Iraq was never blamed during the 90s. Al Qaeda was unknown.

Clinton did strike back quick at Iraq later in 1993, blaming the attack on the thwarted Iraqi-sponsored hit on Bush 41. He continued to sporadically bomb Saddam and search his sands for WMDs until the final flurry of shock and awe--Desert Fox--came in 1998. He also bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum in 1998, making a public tie to Osama bin Laden, who had become known via the Embassy attacks. Yes, Republicans accused Slick of wagging the dog but several others were also busy forming PNAC while Congress passed a near-unanimous resolution calling for regime change. Nobody had forgotten.

After the 1993 attack there were no calls for a fact-finding commission; likewise for Oklahoma City despite circumstantial evidence linking the two. Maybe they weren't big enough to cultivate the necessary public outrage but the 9/11 commission seemed to have no interest in dredging up that past in their pursuit of the truth.

Flash forward to today. Conventional wisdom says Yousef was an AQ operative and that bin Laden hated us and declared war on us because we took out Saddam from Saudi soil, even though we helped his mujihadeen defeat the Soviets just a few years prior and despite his much ballyhooed hatred for the scotch-drinking butcher of Baghdad.

And Yousef is locked in the Supermax for life. But it might be interesting to ask the one who almost pulled off the first 9/11 on 2/26/93 why he obtained his Iraqi passport with a date stamp of 9/11/90 to enter America in prep for the job. Was it just an odd coincidence or was it an answer to this? Does anyone really want to know? Or is it all just too much?

Ambinder on Siddiqui

Marc Ambinder from the Atlantic covers the Aafia Siddiqui case:

What makes Siddiqui's conviction relevant for the current debate is that she was captured, on a recognized battlefield -- Afghanistan -- and tried to kill FBI agents and American soldiers who had come to question her. Siddiqui, 40, could easily have been designated as an enemy combatant. But the Bush administration determined instead that she be tried in federal court. She was read her Miranda rights, and given access to a lawyer

.. snip ..

So far as I can tell, Republicans on Capitol Hill did not utter a peep of protest.

Maybe that's because Siddiqui was not found guilty on any of those terrorism allegations, rather, for attempted murder of her captors:

She was not charged with terrorism, and Judge Richard Berman barred any mention of the chemicals or Siddiqui's supposed ties to Al Qaeda.

Her sentencing will occur in May. She has various rooters, a fan club, and even her own day - some of her supporters showed up at Brennan's NYU speech the other day. And the Taliban has already demanded her in exchange with captured soldier Bowe Bergdahl. Does Ambinder not consider any of this important?

As to why she wasn't rung up on the terror stuff the likely reason is the same as with former enemy combatants Ali al-Marri (also sent by KSM who recently plead out for 8 years) and Jose Padilla (not charged on the dirty bomb)--doing so would require their court-appointed lawyers access in discovery to KSM and his cohorts, including Siddiqui's presumed husband Ammar al-Baluchi (KSM's nephew and the cousin of Ramzi Yousef), himself part of the group to be tried in Manhattan. And contrary to belief we did get intelligence from Padilla before trial.

Meanwhile Siddiqui claimed 'torture', made an ass of herself in court, blamed everything on Israel, and her lawyers have hinted an appeal on "mental grounds". Considering that she arrived in New York in 2008 and was nowhere near as important as KSM, her case was probably not a very good preview of the chaos a high profile version might produce.

The KSM Effect

KSM actually gets more press than the VP. Stupid comparison, I know, since Joe the Plumber gets almost as much ink than Joe the Veep. But KSM stays in the headlines, and continues to have amazing powers of destruction from behind bars.

He once provided a list of terrorist deeds. Here's a list of acts committed since he's been locked up:

• rattled the justice system,
• damaged Bush's legacy,
• helped bring the Democrats to power in 2006,
• shook up the CIA and FBI,
• made a liar out of Pelosi,
• hastened the departure of Rosie
  

And now he might take down Eric Holder:

In fact, it appears that Holder may already be going under the bus

Next on his list--Obama's approval numbers, which explains the leak. Speaking of leaks, Cap'n Ed used this piece in the WaPo, which has a paragraph that seems erroneous:

In an effort to avoid leaks, Holder kept the decision close in the days leading up to his Nov. 13 news conference, calling New York officeholders that day to inform them.

Depends on the definition of "close". The AFP ran this story on June 26, 2009 hinting that KSM could be tried in a civilian court and the New York Times ran a leak on September 16, 2009, directly saying the administration was considering a federal trial in New York.

BTW, when KSM was brought before the military judge at Gitmo in 2007 and entered his plea, he admitted to a number of terrorist acts. There was a preliminary section where several things were admitted, including this:

6. I was directly in charge, after the death of Sheikh Abu Hafs al-Masri Subhi Abu Sittah, of managing and following up on the Cell for the Production of Biological Weapons, such as anthrax and others, and following up on Dirty Bomb Operations on American soil.

The document then listed another 29 items. Number 4 on the list was this:

I was responsible for the Shoe Bomber Operation to down two American airplanes.

Emphasis mine. We all know about the American 63 event with the infamous Richard Reid. But what was the other shoe bomb operation? Did it succeed?

MORE 2/13/10

The new narrative we are being asked to believe--that Obama will now become involved in the selection of trial location--sounds like a political tactic to give the prez deniability when they eventually back off the lower Manhattan venue. But c'mon, does anyone really think Obama was not making the decisions all along? Do they really think people are that dumb?

No Appetite for KSM

That's what John Boehner said before the SOTU... now Obama seems to agree:

The White House ordered the Justice Department to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan.

That's according to one of Obama's anonymous spokespeople, at least. But if the order was indeed given to move the trial remember one thing-- it was never Obama's idea to hold the trial in New York. It was Holder's. This will be explained to all us simple rubes in due course.

DONE 1/30/10

According to the White House media office, MSNBC division, the move is a done deal (besides, it's a Friday evening):

Though the officials wouldn’t discuss locations under consideration, others have suggested Governors Island, a former military base in New York Harbor that now welcomes summertime picnickers and bike riders; the U.S. Military Academy at West Point or Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, N.Y.

A remote military base? Who'd have thunk? Actually, it's fine so long as it doesn't cost more or threaten picnickers. My main beef all along is the disparity between the classifications of KSM and al-Nashiri or the others at Gitmo who will be tried using commissions. Holder has never offered a rational reason why he's bringing KSM to federal court in New York, so there must be something or other they want out to the press about this whole thing, and they know it might get buried without a media circus.

On Bringing KSM to New York

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and friends will be coming to court in New York soon, a controversial decision likely to produce a circus atmosphere with terrorist supporters, constitutional purists, conspiracy theorists, Biblical and Koranic prophets and charlatans, glory hounds and a host of others seizing the media spotlight at any given time.

Obama and his supporters insist it's necessary to "uphold our American values", making the reward worth the risk--the reward being a final rendering to Allah or wherever. At least that's the fatalistic impression the president seems to be leaving with any potential jury pool, which is rather odd since our values state that suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty. There are no exceptions for terrorists other than handling national security evidence.

This apparent dichotomy recently earned Barack Hot Air's "Obamateurism of the week" due to this exchange with NBC's Chuck Todd:

NBC: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — can you understand why it is offensive to some for this terrorist to get all the legal privileges of any American citizen?

Obama: I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.

NBC: But having that kind of confidence of a conviction — I mean one of the purposes of doing — going to the Justice Department and not military court is to show of the the world our fairness in our court system.

Obama: Well —

NBC: But you also just said that he was going to be convicted and given the death penalty.

Obama: Look — what I said was people will not be offended if that's the outcome. I'm not pre-judging,

Not surprisingly, if a reader clicks on the NBC video of this exchange they will see an interesting edit (KSM part begins at 01:30 mark). After Obama says, "...death penalty is applied to him" they stop the interview and insert an announcer voice-over with a still photo backdrop of KSM to cover the awkward exchange. The unedited video is not easily located on You Tube.

NBC would only do this because the president was entirely snookered by Todd and his answer made no sense. KSM has to be called an 'alleged terrorist' and must be released if acquitted, they can't have it both ways. Obama and Holder should well understand this based on their legal backgrounds. So what's the deal?

The left might reply by moving the goalposts and saying the government has successfully tried terrorists in federal court before, so the deal is there is no big deal. But that depends on one's definition of success. KSM's nephew Ramzi Yousef was tried in Manhattan and are now trying suspected AQ terrorist Aafia Siddiqui in New York. Many other bombings and murders happened anyway, and information may have even leaked out of the MCC holding center while he was undergoing trial. Attorney Lynn Stewart will be going to prison soon for helping the Blind Sheikh kite messages out of the MCC to his followers in Egypt. There will be similar sympathizers with KSM, which represents the danger.

Yousef defended himself pro se and at one point proudly called himself a terrorist. Here's an old link to LGF about such things (before the proprietor crossed an ideological precipice).

So, ruling out sheer incompetency and rank stupidity the decision certainly has the air of politics. There's no reason to try AQ terrorists in separate systems since clearly every al Qaeda member is by nature a part of the criminal conspiracy to attack American targets, both military and civilian.

Holder's very presence as AG is a clue itself. Why were ex-Clinton officials the top candidates for that job? Shortly after Obama was elected they even tossed around Jamie Gorelick's name for Attorney General, another former Clintonite associated with the original KSM indictment and the 'wall' memo that got a lot of attention during the 9/11 commission hearings where she was a commissioner (some say she should have been a witness). Weren't there any other candidates?

Going even further back Gorelick was number two in the Justice Department when the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed on April 19, 1995. Both McVeigh and Nichols got federal trials but many questioned whether others were involved. Since there was no 4/19 Commission America was left with only the FBI and Clinton administration version of events, quite similar to the previous worst terror attack on American soil on February 26, 1993. Neither were covered extensively by Gorelick's commission in 2004.

That vacuum of information has left some to see the circumstantial evidence as a link between 2/26, 4/19, and 9/11, which they hope the KSM trial will open to disinfecting sunshine.

Part of that sunshine would be to explain Yousef and his connections. Simon Reeve's 1999 book "The New Jackals" chronicled his life through capture in the 90s before America was shocked awake by 9/11 (it even mentions a secret program to sort through phone calls). The world was certainly different back then--no doubt few thought Reeve a kook when on page 20 he described New York's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) discussing the possible culprit(s) of the WTC attack:

Later it was proposed that the bombing was in quick retaliation for the US bombing of the Al Rashid hotel in Baghdad, Iraq, on 17 January 1993. The Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had invited a number of Islamic fundamentalist leaders from around the world to the hotel for a conference when the building was struck by a US missile.

Perhaps the JTTF's suspicions were peaked by the fact Yousef referred to himself as "Rashid the Iraqi" when working on the bomb in New York. Ever since the left successfully cemented a conventional wisdom that says Saddam had no relation to terrorism (a move that helped them gain absolute power in government) such a person would now be roundly dismissed.

Anyway, most who've been paying attention have heard the story--Yousef was captured in Pakistan in 1995 and rendered back to America where he predicted his friends would one day get the Trade Center, but few know he was in Cebu City, Philippines in 1994 (along with childhood friend Abdul Murad finding ways to hijack and explode airplanes and assassinate Bill Clinton and the Pope) at the same time Terry Nichols was there visiting relatives of his Filipino wife.

In 2006 Congressman Dana Rohrabacher used his House committee on International Relations to investigate possible connections between Yousef and Nichols and between Nichols and white supremacists. They found no smoking guns, but did find some smoke, such as the fact Yousef made several calls while in New York to a Filipina girl who lived in the same apartment building and was related to Nichols' wife Marife. Among the 'unanswered questions' in their draft report:

7 Why was Terry Nichols concerned for his personal safety when he traveled to the Philippines in November 1994?

8 Why did Terry Nichols leave $20,000 in a package at his ex-wife Lana Padilla's house before departing for the Philippines in November 1994? Where did Nichols get the money?

9 How did Terry Nichols, a man with no steady job or source of income, finance his five trips to the Philippines?

10 Why was an unaccounted-for leg found in the debris after the bombing?

11 Did Terry Nichols play a bigger role than he has admitted or has been thus far proven?

12 Why was there so little investigatory focus on Strassmeir and Hussaini?

13 Why the rush to rule out the existence of John Doe Two?

Now, the point of all this is to question whether a KSM trial could possibly dredge up all this old unanswered stuff and whether the Obama administration actually wants this to happen or not. One idea is they want everything except that evidence put forth at trial to get swallowed up in a maelstrom of twooferism, acting to diminish all of it (except the trial material, which will become the truth). But that would seem a bit hard to control, even with the MSM in their corner.

We all saw the way Bill Clinton reacted in his interview with Chris Wallace a few years ago when asked if he tried to get bin Laden. Surely there is no secret goal is to forever ruin the Clintons by doing this with Hillary now the Secretary of State. A tribunal would have likely kept all this old baggage circling on the carousel forever, all of which makes the decision so much more intriguing.

Investigative journalist Peter Lance is out in front on the potential for the KSM trial to open a sort of backdoor terrorism commission (read the 'cold case' on his front page). He will be coming out with a new book just as the trial likely gets started, which will no doubt once again ask questions of Justice as to why Ali Mohammed was allowed to remain free for so long. It will be interesting to see if any mainstream media outlets book him for interviews.

Others may pop up and ask what really happened with other notorious events, such as the al-Shifa aspirin plant bombing (Holder was around for that one, too) and why they linked it with Saddam Hussein, or why a guy the 9/11 Commission called an "WMD chief procurement agent" for AQ is still walking free after being interviewed by both the FBI and CIA in the Sudan after 9/11. Others might question the whereabouts of figures such as Abderraouf_Jdey, Abdul Yasin, Abu Ibrahim, and "Jafar the Pilot".

Perhaps the answer to all of this lies in a recent story about the DNC's strategy for the 2010 mid-terms: they plan to run against Bush. That's right--Bush, in 2010. It certainly explains the unprecedented way in which Obama never misses an opportunity to bash his predecessors when talking about, well, anything.

But this is obviously dangerous. A recent poll showed the blame rhetoric isn't really working, and by 2010 it could be a huge gamble to run against a previous president if the economy is still weak. And not only because the Dems gained control of Congress in 2006 and have increased spending by over 25 percent but because it would only solidify with the voters their sheer level of incompetence. Why should the people who broke the economy be rehired to fix it, etc?

Maybe the 'run against Bush' was just a trial balloon to gauge how much blame Obama and Congress are currently on the hook for, but the KSM decision seems irreversible. If the Obama folks aren't staging it to keep the focus on Bush for political reasons in 2010 (and beyond) and this isn't really about justice, then what on earth could they be doing?

MORE 12/21/09

Jamie Malanowski at True Slant reports about an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Bill Clinton on a trip to the Philippines in 1996. He boils it down, but misses an obvious point:

Why did Clinton not reveal that he was a target of this attack? Surely the incident, in combination with the embassy bombings and other attacks, could have helped create the basis for a vigorous response. In particular, why was this plot still a secret as late as 1998, when Clinton’s presidency was in jeopardy, and especially in August 1998, when the missile attacks he ordered on al Qaeda training bases were suspected of being a `Wag the Dog’-type ploy designed to deflect attention from his legal problems?

Indeed, not only did he not escalate the war but according to Scheuer he passed on several attempts to get UBL in the years afterward. And when he did finally attack in 1998 it was a pinprick on Afghan, a factory in Khartoum suspected of using Iraqi scientists to produce VX, and a hail of hundreds of cruise missiles to Baghdad. Go figure.

Fensterman Follies

Captain Ed had an interesting back and forth with "Fensterman", the lawyer skewered on O'Reilly the other night for refusing to say the 9/11 victims were murdered. Mr. Fenstermaker contacted Ed after he leaked a memo on why he was booted from the attorney group representing the terrorists at Gitmo, which Ed said was tied to the notion that Fenstermaker was a '9/11 Truther'.

Hmm. Well, tooting my horn a moment, here's what I said about the interview yesterday:

4. "You're gonna hear United States government propaganda", as opposed to plain propaganda? O'Reilly seemed to miss the distinction, which made me think of 9/11 trutherism. If not that then it's the basic 'oil for blood' etc. Bush 41 will not be spared, setting up a Bush two-fer.

That came from 'US govt propaganda', which can only be taken as trutherism or generic 'war for oil' stuff. Fenstermaker's reply to Ed was almost cartoonish:

I don’t know what a “9/11 Truther” is. If you explain it to me, I’ll let you know if I’m one.

Which was followed by the explanation, replied to with this:

I have no idea who attacked the WTC, and couldn’t care less.

Having "no idea" might be his way to protect the terror clients, but "couldn't care less" about an attack on our country puts him into asshat territory.

Meanwhile, it's time for the featured Baluchi item of the day.. Fensterman supplied Ed with a document purportedly from Ammar that features excellent English handwriting and a command of the language.


Website notice -

It also seems to suggest these guys have access to the internet. Are they on Twitter perhaps? Not that we wouldn't be watching every click, but that doesn't always ensure success as the past alludes.

Final Baluchi tidbit of the day... according to wiki Ammar married Aafia Siddiqui, currently engaged in making a circus of her trial in the Apple:

In 2002, 'Ammar directed Aafia Siddiqui--a US-educated neuroscientist and al-Qa'ida facilitator--to travel to the United States to prepare paperwork to ease Majid Khan's deployment to the United States. 'Ammar married Siddiqui shortly before his detention.

Maybe that explains Ammar's language skills. As to his wife (ex wife?), many think she's angling to get off on an insanity rap. Of course, many also consider murdering in the name of God insane. Others are curious, curious as to the mystery (Fensterman would approve).

Baluchis, Again

Ammar Al-Baluchi's counsel Scott 'the weasel' Fenstermaker was on O'Reilly and dropped some clues about the defense strategies of the murdering terrorists:

1. He wouldn't say the civilians in the towers and airplanes were murdered. What else could that mean other than self-defense? We're sure to hear about all the indiscriminate deaths from cruise missile attacks and other dabblings since 1955. Like a never ending bin Laden tape.

2. "The way these men have been treated", ie, tortured. This will be the leftist pablum part of the trial. The terrorists will use it try to sway at least one juror. The good news is maybe this suggests there will be no attacks during the trial, since the trial itself will be an attack.

3. "Defense won't necessarily be anti-American".. in other words, anti one politician or another, or anti US policy. This may get tricky since most of the 9/11 plot was formulated during the 90s. It's hard to imagine even the terrorists blaming Bill Clinton. Everyone loves Bill Clinton.

4. "You're gonna hear United States government propaganda", as opposed to plain propaganda? O'Reilly seemed to miss the distinction, which made me think of 9/11 trutherism. If not that then it's the basic 'oil for blood' etc. Bush 41 will not be spared, setting up a Bush two-fer.

5. "The people who hate me hate the rule of law". It's true John Adams defended some of the British troops involved in the Boston massacre but I think they were pleading self-defense in a mob. He sounds noble until one considers the fact Holder is trying a bunch of others in military tribunals and holding some others indefinitely. Does Holder hate the rule of law, too?

By the way, Ammar al-Baluchi, the client Fenstermaker spoke of the other day, is an interesting character in that he's part of KSM's familial clan:

Mohammed's entourage also included Aziz's cousins Abd al-Karim Yousef and Abd al-Mun'im Yousef, the older brothers of Ramzi Yousef, now serving a life term in a US prison for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. One of the Yousefs (U.S. officials won't say which) was captured recently. The other Yousef and Aziz were attempting to carry on the terror plots Mohammed was overseeing at the time of his arrest.

One of those brothers was reportedly a twin to Ramzi but neither are mentioned very often. Some have wondered why one family from Baluchistan would hold such hate for America and be such major players in two major terror attacks on our soil. One of those who has long wondered is Laurie Mylroie, who at one time thought Yousef was an Iraqi agent or proxy. She described one of the 1993 WTC conspirators, Mohammed Salameh, thusly:

Despite this pedigree, Salameh himself is naive and manipulable. When one considers that he was arrested in the process of returning to collect the deposit on the van he had rented to carry the Trade Center bomb, it is not so surprising that on June 10, soon after being recruited into Nosair's plot, Salameh made the first of forty-six calls to Iraq, the vast majority to his terrorist uncle in Baghdad.

And here she is, from the way-back machine, on Charlie Rose Show in 1994 speaking after a Clinton speech on Iraq with none other than infamous Times reporter Judy Miller (it's in the first segment):



As to al-Baluchi's money transfers, perhaps they've traced the money he wired to the hijackers, and perhaps we'll learn its origin amidst all the US Govt propaganda.

Defending Jihad

The spectacle hasn't even begun and yet, it has begun:

A lawyer for one of five men facing trial for the Sept. 11 attacks says the men plan to plead not guilty and use the trial to express their political views.

Attorney Scott Fenstermaker says his client Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and the others will not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but will tell the jury "why they did it." He says the men will explain "their assessment of American foreign policy."

Meanwhile, the lone nut who used Islam to justify killing 13 soldiers will likely plead not guilty:

Asked if he was considering an insanity plea for his client, who faces 13 counts of premeditated murder, Galligan said, "I'm fairly confident that that's going to have to at least be examined. And that's problematic. But we haven't reached that stage yet."

At least according to his attorney, who was whining about having to conduct a hearing in the ICU (Hasan is paralyzed from the waist/chest down). Don't bet the ranch on this, since an insanity plea would essentially mark all suicide bombers, jihad fighters and even sympathizers such as Aafia Siddiqui as clinically nuts, along with the Imams who encourage them.

In other words, fundamental Islam itself may end up on trial, which could open a huge can of worms. We'll see. Eric Rudolph bombed in the name of Christ, which is pretty nuts, and he's now serving time in the Supermax beside Richard Reid, who was not only nuts but stupid to boot. Who doesn't think all 21 9/11 bombers weren't nuts? Flying planes into buildings is not the mark of an adjusted mind.

Meanwhile the Cole bombers must still be huddling to discuss their media strategy since it hasn't been released yet. Will they also decide to make it about 'foreign policy'? Could be problematic--their crime occurred in 2000 so the judge could limit their rantings to pre-2000 foreign policy. So it's a loser unless they can find a clever way to blame Bush for the Cole when he was running for president. Maybe something he said on the campaign trail? That might get more coverage from the national media.

CHENEY WEIGHS IN 11/23/09

And his response is hardly surprising: Holder wants a dog and pony show. He also opined on Obama's bow--

Obama's recent bow before the Japanese Emperor was "fundamentally harmful" to the United States and indicates that Obama "doesn’t fully understand or have the same perception of the US role in the world that most Americans have." Obama's behavior on foreign trips is "very upsetting," Cheney added.

Wonder if Obama will remain speechless?

For the record, I don't think it was the bow more than the depth and prostrated breadth of it. A short respectful head-up nod while shaking hands would have left a little better impression as to the respect WE deserve, based on history if nothing else. OK, conservatives would have still complained but the image left would have been less, well, grotesque. But that version wouldn't have fit in with the apology mosaic so it's no wonder Cheney took the shot.

More from the Holder Testimony

Questions, questions, questions. Tom Maguire's question about whether there are any DOJ lawyers left to prosecute KSM and crew based on their prior pro bono work on behalf of said terrorists is certainly a good one and was not well answered by Holder at the hearings.

From that same testimony, the AG said he will 'consider' giving Senator Grassley the names of all the recused lawyers within DOJ that were formerly trying to obtain civil rights for the terrorists. Considering? What happened to the Obama sunshine?

Here's Senator Hatch asking whether how discovery might work if KSM decides to be his own lawyer. Holder said there were protections. He later called Andy McCarthy, who has made the contention that a list of unindicted co-conspirators ended up in bin Laden's hands as a result of discovery in the Abdel Rahman case, a "polemicist". McCarthy responds.

Senator Coburn asked why the killing of the Arkansas Army recruiter wasn't a hate crime. That begs the question of why all terrorist crimes aren't hate crimes, and whether the hate crime attachment would actually produce a stronger sentence in a standard murder case versus not having it attached during a terrorist case. Surely a lawyer/prosecutor could answer that, it's just a bit perplexing.

Finally, Benedict Specter asked Holder to explain his distinction between choosing civilian courts versus tribunals, to which Holder offered a slightly better answer than he did with Kyl. The AG who once said Americans were race cowards suggested his decisions are based on the level of interrogation (but never torture!), which affects admissibility, along with apparently some magic dust thrown over the right should onto a paper target. OK, the last past was editorial license.

Anyway, a worry over admissibility may answer the question of why al-Nashiri is being tried in a commission since he was already under indictment prior ot 9/11 and before they applied the waterboard. The case is supposedly weaker, presumably relying on evidence gathered during the Clinton (and Holder) years, so perhaps it will struggle to get media coverage with the KSM case blaring on simultaneously. Not that politics would ever factor in, mind you.

Ironically KSM was also under indictment since about 1995, and the government even lost a chance to nab him in Qatar in 1995. Neither of those items sound like a winner on the nightly news, assuming they would make news.

Holder kept going back to explaining his distinctions by mentioning his super top secret evidence on KSM, which will negate the loss of tortured confessions. What is it, Bojinka? Stuff from nephew Ramzi's laptop? Maybe, but that wouldn't necessarily satisfy the public's demand for vengeance over the 9/11 attacks. How about his confession to al-Jazeera:

Summoning every thread of experience and courage, I looked Khalid in the eye and asked: "Did you do it?" The reference to September 11 was implicit. Khalid responded with little fanfare: "I am the head of the al-Qaida military committee," he began, "and Ramzi is the coordinator of the Holy Tuesday operation. And yes, we did it."

Again though, that doesn't have any political bombshell to it. He's already denied some of it. So if this is about politics there has to be something bigger and more damaging to the previous administration with 2010 coming up.

So What's the "Battlefield"?

Holder and his Republican opponents just spent an afternoon splitting hairs over the definition of "battlefield". The AG explained that since al-Nashiri killed sailors overseas in Yemen while KSM killed mostly civilians in America (apart from the Pentagon), they warrant different court proceedings.

The right remains appalled along with Glenn Greenwald:

-- what convincing rationale can anyone offer to justify giving Mohammed and other 9/11 defendants a real trial in New York? If you're taking the position that military commissions and even indefinite detention are perfectly legitimate tools to imprison people -- as Holder has done -- then what is the answer to the Right's objections that Mohammed himself belongs in a military commission?

Holder never gave a compelling answer other than 'trust me'. Deja vu all over again. Of course Greenwald's beef with Holder is that he won't be using trials for ALL captured GWoT suspects (and doing away with tribunals) because we're not really officially at "war". That leaves no battlefield anywhere, which makes our use of troops anywhere legally tenuous.

But to most people this is a war. And if indeed it is a global war on terror, and AQ are "rootless and stateless" as the 9/11 Commission described them, then it seems logical the battlefield consists of the entire world. Surely AQ considers lower Manhattan part of their battlefield as opposed to a few dusty deserts and caves near Kandahar.

Holder was playing coy at the hearings in suggesting the evidence obtained by waterboarding might not be admissible even in a military tribunal, ie, he has no choice but to bring KSM to the media capital of the world to prosecute, presumably using pre-torture evidence (explained for the media every day as in, 'we couldn't use the good evidence due to Bush's torture', etc). But why? Why can't any of that be used in a tribunal?

After all al-Nashiri was also waterboarded, meaning they will most likely also be using pre-torture evidence gained during the Clinton years (during Holder's reign as deputy AG) to prosecute him for the Cole. It's likely that some of that secret stuff Holder is alluding to will include top secret sensitive from NSA or CIA captures, but won't that also be required during the KSM trial? Confusing, all this.

Holder in front of Congress

Some interesting and thought-provoking questions, particularly with respect to catching bin Laden (or Zawahiri)...



Here's Jon Kyl pressing for an answer as to why Holder thinks he has a better chance to get a conviction in federal court than a tribunal after KSM and the others had already expressed an interest to plead guilty at Gitmo. His reply--that he doesn't know what KSM might do today--seemed more like defensive spin on the Senate hot seat than a thoughtful and considered line of reasoning as to the possibility of overturn on appeal.

But if such were his worry why doesn't it pertain to al-Nashiri? If there's no way KSM ever walks why not complete the tribunal already started then proceed to federal court on older charges (Bojinka) if it fails? Or would that open too many old wounds?

Whatever, it's odd both Holder and Obama are trumpeting our values as the big reason for bringing these guys stateside while simultaneously proclaiming their guilt. Holder called KSM a 'murderer' and a 'terrorist' today. It looks more likely this administration has an ulterior motive here, unless they are grossly incompetent.

Finally, Hot Air links to an NPR story about Khalid Mohammad's teacher at Chowdan College in North Carolina and of a friend who attended NC A&T with him in the 80s. Amazingly, we now know almost as much about KSM's college years as we do about the president's.

MORE 11/19/09

After looking at more testimony a common thread runs consistently throughout Holder's answers--the admissibility of evidence. He's suggesting the only reason they are bringing these guys to federal court is because he's not sure evidence gained by enhanced methods wouldn't be tossed even in a military commission, which means they will presumably be using evidence obtained before his capture. Holder made a point to remind Lindsay Graham that bin Laden was under indictment before 9/11, but so was KSM. The public was simply never made aware.

So, what's the evidence they will use to get a death penalty conviction? The only thing that comes to mind is the Bokinka plot, of which his nephew Ramzi Yousef was convicted. There is probably evidence on the laptop that Yousef and Murad were using that connects to KSM, along with other evidence such as NSA or wiretap evidence from the 90s or even before his capture. But the big question is, why can't any of that be used in a military tribunal?

Sestak on Grandstanding

Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak was all over the late week air defending Obama's Holder's decision to bring the Gitmo Five to Manhattan for trial. So what does he think about the Major Hasan investigation? He's worried about grandstanding:



But notice his rather blank pause on O'Reilly when Bill asks whether the former Navy Rear Admiral believes in military tribunals:



KSM to Manhattan? Upholds our values no matter what media grandstanding occurs. Hasan investigated by Congress? Let's not have any political grandstanding. It would be nice to hear him explain how our values are upheld by allowing Cole bomber Nashiri to get a tribunal while Walid bin Attash, who also participated in the planning of the Cole, should come to New York. Of course KSM planned the Pentagon attack, which would seem a military target.

A partisan might deduce that evidence against Nashiri will be limited to the years before Bush arrived and therefore not something Holder would want splashed all over the news. But they wouldn't dare politicize war on contingency trials, would they?

Ironically, Bill Clinton and some of his buddies campaigned hard for Sestak's 2006 victory against Curt Weldon, who was poking around in some rather sensitive (and some say absurd) areas before his political demise. A notable name in the Sestak corner was Sandy Berger. Not to say this is an outright defense of Weldon--that jury is still out. Just sayin'.

By the way, Sestak is one of few Democrats to ever hold that House seat, which might make some wonder how blue dog he might be on health care. In the bigtime affirmative column. Wait, wait, he's running for US Senate now against Specter. No need to grandstand to a bunch of teabaggers to get reelected anymore.

KSM and the Grand Plan

What an amazing president. The day after he leaves for Asia (where he refused to defend the dropping of the atomic bombs) he dumps KSM on New York City.

Reactions are predictably heated. My previous thoughts on this construct are here but events call for an addendum.

The basic question is why. What's in it for the Chicago administration? Their stock answer has been something like "upholding our values", a bit strange since they're apparently fine with using a tribunal against the Cole bomber and blowing away terrorists on the battlefield with Predators sans trial.

But the answer is obvious. If trying KSM in New York 'upholds our values' that means Bush was holding them down. Bill O'Reilly bloviated as much this evening and Geraldo immediately confirmed by scolding him over GITMO.

Everyone knows KSM and crew are guilty--they've proudly confessed and have requested death. It appears Obama needs some mileage out of them first as the 2010 elections draw closer and with an economy that ain't coming along as forecast. Not to mention the money outlay issue, probably in the millions after the taxpayers have already spent millions on the 9/11 Commission, who told us KSM was responsible. Now the administration has amended that to "suspects" again. Are they trying to appease the secret truthers, perhaps? Speaking of which, this trial will easily become a sort of conspiracy theory clearinghouse. More distraction.

There would seem to be some political risk, though. If enough voters sense a politicization they might take it out at the polls come November.

Also, Eric Holder was a Clintonista along with Leon Panetta back when they were losing bin Laden and hiding the existence of KSM. Clinton himself has already gone ballistic twice over any historical rendering of his terror-warrior failures, once on Fox News and the other when ABC tried to air "Path to 9/11". Then again, the media ran cover on that story so we never really found out why Sandy stuffed his socks. But the media doesn't love the Clintons as they did before.

Seems like there should be more. Occam's Razor would say this is all about showing up Bush and drawing out Cheney to distract from a lousy economy and a failure to actually close GITMO on time as promised, politics as usual. If that's really the case--if they really are that stupid--then the blowback is going to fun to watch. Trying KSM in the same courthouse we tried his nephew Ramzi means a few journalists might get curious about their relationship and dig up stuff about kites, zoom climbs and weird date stamps on passports and such. Don't forget the dreaded triple agent.

That said, there's a small chance the administration has something up their sleeves so powerful as to overcome any skeletons that might rattle back out during trial and perhaps even muzzle Dick Cheney. Let's see what Darth does next, it could be telling.