Eric Holder's Nation of Cowards Countered by a Sports Writer -Ed Weaver

By Ed Weaver
The Record

President Obama’s decision — and it was his, not Attorney General Eric Holder’s — to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorists in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, rather than try them before a military commission, is an outrage. It is a further example that this administration has a contempt for the U.S. military and still can’t come to grips with the fact that the War in Iraq met its objectives.

Holder’s arrogant, indignant announcement is an insult to every American of every race and nationality.

“After eight years of delay,” Holder said, “those allegedly responsible for that attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice,” Holder said. “They will be brought to New York — to New York — to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood.”

Alleged? Are you kidding me? They’ve all admitted their guilt and some, including KSM, asked to be put to death.

Crimes? These are acts of terrorism, not crimes.

This insidious, reckless, irresponsible, dangerous, sophomoric, placate-the-far-left-base, stick-it-to-Bush decision will further weaken the resolve of the Central Intelligence Agency and could get more Americans killed.

This is an abomination.

Suppose KSM decides to represent himself. He will then be given access to all kinds of U.S. intelligence materials that he could relay to al Qaeda leaders around the globe.

He and the others to be tried were not given their Miranda “rights.”

Most have not been afforded the “right” to a speedy trial. Mohammed has been held for six and one-half years, the past 32 months at Guantanamo Bay.

Theoretically — quite literally — they could be acquitted simply on those grounds.

Hell, Obama has admitted that KSM was “tortured” and you liberals just laughed and made ridicule when people such as this writer, who don’t allow our emotions to overrule our intellect, warned loudly that classifying waterboarding as “torture” was as reckless as it is inaccurate.

Mohammed, “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks,” according to the 9/11 Commission, also admitted he murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl when he stated, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.”

Holder also announced that five other detainees held at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, will be sent to military commissions for trial. They were identified as Omar Khadr, Mohammed Kamin, Ibrahim al Qosi, Noor Uthman Muhammed and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Al-Nashiri is an accused mastermind of the deadly 2,000 bombing of the USS Cole.

Military tribunals are good enough for them but not KSM? Yes, I know his “crime” occurred in NYC, the others did not? So, is that the determining factor in this horrendous decision?

Andrew McCarthy, a former U.S. Attorney for the same Southern New York District, prosecuted Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheik who masterminded the 1993 WTC attack, is outraged. He states it was a mistake to try al Qaeda terrorists as domestic criminals then and it is now, and affording them rights under the U.S. constitution is absurd.

McCarthy, writing for National Review Online on Monday, said KSM and the other defendants “will demand disclosures about investigative tactics; the methods and sources by which intelligence has been obtained; the witnesses from the intelligence community, the military, and law enforcement who interrogated witnesses, conducted searches, secretly intercepted enemy communications, and employed other investigative techniques. They will attempt to compel testimony from officials who formulated U.S. counterterrorism strategy, in addition to U.S. and foreign intelligence officers. As civilian “defendants,” these war criminals will put Bush-era counterterrorism tactics under the brightest public spotlight in American legal history.

“This is exactly what President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder know will happen. And because it is unnecessary to have this civilian trial at all, one must conclude that this is exactly what Obama and Holder want to see happen.”

“Let’s not rush…”: How profound it was to so many on the left, highly-elected Democrats, almost deny any possibility that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was an radical Islamist bent of killing American military personnel.

Again, the word “alleged” was used by everyone from Obama and Holder to local news anchors in this market when the whole damned world knows he did it!

And by refusing to term Hasan’s actions as an act of terrorism, calling it simply murder, and ignoring the fact that Hasan was motivated by the same hatred as that of al Qaeda, Hezbollah and other terror groups, he dishonors every member of the U.S. military, especially those who’ve given their lives.

Ed Weaver is a sports writer. His column appears on Tuesdays.