Lefties....please defend the decision to try KSM in NYC..... (Page 4 of 4)

Who cares? In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he's gonna be convicted anyway, so why tarnish the civilian judicial system if the military tribunal was gonna do the same thing... except do it faster, cheaper and with less partisan debate?

I don't question your commitment to a fair hearing... I just doubt whether it's possible, so again, why bother?

If this were an American, I would "fight the good fight" with you.

But military tribunals have tried, sentanced and punished enemies of the US for decades, so I personally think it's asinine that we create this circus; wasting our nation's wealth and damaging our judicial credibility for such a high-profile TERRORIST.

You may not like my rationale (truth be told: *I* don't either), but this is the fact of the situation.

Last edited by Abraxas (2010-02-09 18:18:54)

Fine. But he's never gonna get one. In recent times, no one as infamous, with the exception of Suddam Hussein (who was tried in an Iraqi court) has ever defended himself in a "fair" trial. For Heaven's sake, the man's name, "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," has been condensed into an acronym by bloggers and the media because they're tired of saying the whole thing. I can only think of one other person off the top of my head who has that kind of noteriety - OBL himself.

You can talk about all the lofty ideals of justice and honor till you're blue in the face... but it simply won't happen here, and since I don't have a lot of faith in humanity, I personally don't think it ever will.

This man is evil and everybody knows it. He won't get a fair trial so why waste the resources on this dog-and-pony-show if, in the end, it only serves to discredit the American judicial system?

Well, the 20th hijacker, Moussaoui, was not American and tried and convicted under the rule of law. (Life sentence.) Abdel Rahman, co-consprator with Ramsay Yousef in the 1993 bombing of the WTC, not Americans, tried and convicted under the law.(Life sentences.) Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. (Life sentence.)

Now let's look at convictions by military tribunal. Since 2001, there are two (a third was plea-bargained). One was convicted in absentia, and the other was Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan, accused of transporting weapons for use on the battle field in Afghanistan. Convicted on that charge, he was acquitted of conspiracy. And his sentence? Well...

After seeking 30 years in prison for Hamdan, in a military tribunal, before a military jury, and in a trial where many rights normally afforded defendants in a civilian court were greatly curtailed, the five and a half year sentence was nothing short of a disaster for the Bush administration.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w … 482417.ece

Yep, military tribunals are more lenient.

Either way, if any person commits a crime against the US anywhere in the world, we extradite and try them under OUR law. Every other country in the world does the same under their law. Military tribunals are supposed to be used exclusively where we are at war with a country, not a group of individuals. For instance, KSM (incidentally another conspirator of '93) is a citizen of Kuwait, one of our closest ME allies. Rahman was from Egypt, another ally. Moussaoui is from France, which only some on FOX might call an enemy. So, why not KSM?

So how about Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber? He's Nigerian, not a country we are at war with. He was interviewed for 50 minutes before being mirandized. (By comparison, the shoe bomber was mirandized immediately.) Not only that, but he was given drugs for surgery and it was decided to let him recover before they continued the interview. The media went ballistic, the most common refrain, "Now we will never know what he could have told us!" About a week later, the media and the Obama attack machine were eating crow:

>>WASHINGTON - The Nigerian man accused of trying to use a bomb hidden in his underwear to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day has been cooperating with investigators since last week, discussing his contacts in Yemen and providing intelligence in multiple terrorism investigations, officials said Tuesday.<<

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0210/7 … ews_702225

Contrast that to KSM who was waterboarded 183 times over a month. Did this yield better info? It remains to be seen. Meanwhile it remains, the rule of law cannot be refuted on coming down hard on these bastards.