Heading to Asia, the 'You Know What' Hits the Fan for Obama

by the Left Coast Rebel

Today the Justice Department announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is coming to NYC for a vacation and a trial. Which comes first? The vacation or the trial? The chicken or the egg? The terrorist or the acquitted? Anyone remember who this guy is? Well I do and the fact that he is heading for civilian court is well........unsettling to say the least. Can you say, "If it don't fit, you must aquit," or as Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection says, "objection your honor, my client was waterboarded"?

You know, really; I yearn for the day when I can open up a newspaper and expect to see normal headlines, normal times, life as usual, the way things used to be. Even a few years ago would suffice.

Oh well back from my melodrama, my daydream. From The NYT, the downside of having civilian trials for Guantanamo detainess, (of which Khaled Sheikh Mohammed was), according to Senator McConnell of Kentucky :

....the Republican Senate leader, asserted that civilian trials risk “compromising sensitive information,” present “logistical and security nightmares for American cities” and would give terrorism suspects additional legal rights. He also warned that if a defendant is acquitted and cannot be deported, the former detainee could end up being released onto United States soil.

How's that for downside? And where is the upside? Brighter minds than I weigh in:

Andy McCarty in NRO :

......but as new revelations from investigations and declassifications are churned out, Leftist lawyers use them to urge European and international tribunals to bring "torture" and "war crimes" indictments. Thus, administration cooperation gives Obama's base the reckoning it demands but Obama gets to deny responsibility for any actual prosecutions.

Today's announcement that KSM and other top al-Qaeda terrorists will be transferred to Manhattan federal court for civilian trials neatly fits this hidden agenda. Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses — intelligence sources — must expose themselves and their secrets.

Ah-hah, get it? At least that political angle is certainly a potent possibility. Ann Althouse weighs in as well on the waterboarding issue and admittance of evidence gotten by such means:

So he is the confessed mastermind of 9/11, but the court, bound by the usual precedents, may need to exclude the confession. If the Obama administration believes this was torture, then surely it was the sort of coercion that will require the exclusion of the confession. I assume the administration has worked out how to deal with this problem. But how? Imagine Mohammed acquitted!

Elections have consequences.......

Via Memeorandum

Via NRO

Via NYT

Via Althouse