“Ask yourself this question: suppose that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial results in an acquittal or a hung jury. Would the Obama administration really let him go?”

That’s right. I’m sure Mr. Mohammed would have no problem walking out of the courthouse in New York, free as a bird. No problem at all. In New York. Who could imagine New Yorkers holding a grudge? I certainly couldn’t.

There you go again, bringing reality to Ass Rockers mindless speculation.

Hindrocket:

The potential for these trials to turn into fiascoes is large; perhaps President Obama and his Attorney General have forgotten the “political” trials of the 1960s and 70s.

What is he saying? That KSM is going to stage yippieish pranks and provocations, which will inspire “The Kids” with their long hair and their dope-smoking? And then Graham Nash will write a counterculture anthem?

All of the wingers know that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, like all terrorists, has powers beyond those of mortals. The first day of his trial will look exactly like this and then you’ll all be sorry.

Could someone please explain to Ms. Malkin that when we talk about today’s conservatives as being “through the looking glass,” we’re trying to exaggerate. Her spot-on impression of the Queen of Hearts makes me think she misunderstands.

Question for the Bush administration flunkies:

1) Why didn’t you do anything with these turkeys except hold them and kick the can down the road? Were you ACTUALLY going to hold them for the rest of their lives?

2)If we are truly at war, and the Bush admistration considered these people unlawful combatants not covered by the Geneva Convention, why were they not summarily executed?

Republicans: Strong, manly, virile . . .

. . . and utterly terrified of a broken shackled man being held in a high-security prison.

Stay classy!

We all know that if Khalid Sheik Mohammed is brought to New York, he will instantly escape and immediately fly a dozen planes into the Fox News Studios all by himself.

Maybe some “deranged” Muslim can take KSM et. al. out there out back in Gitmo in the next 45 days and just gun them down like Maj. Hasan did. That should even the score and save the American taxpayers a bundle.

TBogg, take a look at this take-down of Amity Shlaes at AARP (who allowed her to publish a factually challenged op-ed). Scroll down to the first comment:
http://bulletin.aarp.org/opinions/othervoices/articles/opinion_from_history_a_forgotten_lesson_.html

Remember not so long ago when the Republicans were touting themselves as “the Daddy party”? Now Daddy’s hiding in the basement in case some guy who’s been waterboarded 184 times suddenly discovers his Islamic Super Powers and kills all the Daddies. Either that or Daddy’s just jerking off to pictures of Sarah Palin. Again.

I disagree with Powerline 99.999% of the time, but his question “Ask yourself this question: suppose that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial results in an acquittal or a hung jury. Would the Obama administration really let him go?” is rhymed by Glenn Greenwald:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/13/guantanamo/index.html

“The problem is that this decision does not stand alone. Instead, it is accompanied by this:

Holder will also announce that a major suspect in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, will face justice before a military commission, as will a handful of other detainees to be identified at the same announcement, the official said.

…

So what we have here is not an announcement that all terrorism suspects are entitled to real trials in a real American court. Instead, what we have is a multi-tiered justice system, where only certain individuals are entitled to real trials: namely, those whom the Government is convinced ahead of time it can convict. Others for whom conviction is less certain will be accorded lesser due process: put in military commissions, to which most leading Democrats vehemently objected when created under Bush.

…

A system of justice which accords you varying levels of due process based on the certainty that you’ll get just enough to be convicted isn’t a justice system at all. It’s a rigged game of show trials. This is a point I’ve been emphasizing since May, when Obama gave his speech in front of the Constitution at the National Archives and explained how there were five different “categories” of terrorism suspects who would be treated differently based on the category into which they fell:

If you really think about the argument Obama made yesterday — when he described the five categories of detainees and the procedures to which each will be subjected — it becomes manifest just how profound a violation of Western conceptions of justice this is. What Obama is saying is this: we’ll give real trials only to those detainees we know in advance we will convict. For those we don’t think we can convict in a real court, we’ll get convictions in the military commissions I’m creating. For those we can’t convict even in my military commissions, we’ll just imprison them anyway with no charges (“preventively detain” them).

Giving trials to people only when you know for sure, in advance, that you’ll get convictions is not due process. Those are called “show trials.” In a healthy system of justice, the Government gives everyone it wants to imprison a trial and then imprisons only those whom it can convict. The process is constant (trials), and the outcome varies (convictions or acquittals).

Obama is saying the opposite: in his scheme, it is the outcome that is constant (everyone ends up imprisoned), while the process varies and is determined by the Government (trials for some; military commissions for others; indefinite detention for the rest). The Government picks and chooses which process you get in order to ensure that it always wins. A more warped “system of justice” is hard to imagine.

That the Obama DOJ is now explicitly picking and choosing different levels of due process in the very same announcement — we can give that defendant a trial because we know we’ll win, but that one over there needs to go to a military commission because we’re less sure — highlights how manipulative this “justice system” is.”

Were you ACTUALLY going to hold them for the rest of their lives?

Someone with too much time on their hands called up Alberto Gonzales, and that fuckwad ex-Bushie said that he felt indefinite detention without charge or trial was the way to go.

OTOH, Greenwald is right: the multi-tiered approach pretty much makes clear that Obama and the DOJ aren’t going to countenance open civilian trials for people where there’s a sniff of a chance of an acquittal. However, it’s slightly naive to think that any administration (other than an imaginary ideal one) would be prepared to risk the political damage of letting any of the remaining big-name detainees walk free.

These pants-pissing idiots are really getting pathetic. What, do they think this guy fucking Lex Luthor or something? Is his army of adamantium robots with laser beam eyes going to crash through the ceiling of the courthouse and spirit him away in a force-filed protected magnetic hovercraft to his secret lair? (A volcano shaped like a skull, of course.)

I was hoping they’d be trying him under New York State law, since that’s where the crime occurred. New York has no death penalty. I think locking him up for life with the general prisoner population in Attica would be a very fitting punishment. Make sure he gets *ahem* an appropriate cellmate. *cough* Let him rot for decades like the Unibomber, or his buddy the “Blind Sheik”, instead of giving him what he *wants* and making a martyr out of him.

It’s that whole damn “jury of your peers” thing. Obviously that means that the juries for these trials will have to be made up of crazed Islamic militants with scraggly beards and wild eyes. It’ll be OJ all over again.

“No justice! No peace!”