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.