Entrance of the Gladiators

[radarrider]

This quote from IBD pretty much sums it up.  I leave determining the significance of this post’s subject as an exercise for the reader. –RR

"[Attorney General] Eric Holder's move to try the 9/11 masterminds in Manhattan makes it official: This administration has reverted to pre-9/11 'crime' fighting. Amid all the talk during the attorney general's surreal press conference of the 'crime' committed eight years ago, the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon wasn't even mentioned. Lest anyone forget, the military headquarters of the United States was attacked that day along with the Twin Towers. An entire wedge of the Ring was gutted when the Saudi hijackers slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into it. Nearly 200 military personnel were killed, along with the passengers and crew of the hijacked jet. The jet was a weapon used to attack the very center of our military. That was not a 'crime,' as some say. It was an act of war. And 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, along with the four other al-Qa'ida terrorist co-conspirators Holder wants to try, are no mere criminals. They are enemy combatants -- and should be treated as such. ... Holder clucked that the 'trials will be open to the public and the world.' And they will turn into circuses, playing right into the hands of the enemy. These trials will drag on for years, perhaps even decades, as defense lawyers file endless motions and appeals. Meanwhile, valuable intelligence about interrogation techniques and other methods we've used against al-Qa'ida will be revealed to the enemy during trial discovery. This move to a civilian court makes no sense at all, except viewed through a political prism. ... It will only remind people how much America has shrunk in the last nine months." --Investor's Business Daily

Comments

[From: technoshaman]

OK. Aside from the two missiles used when Ronald Reagan solved the Lockerbie thing, exactly the same thing happened. The miscreants were tried in civil court, under Scots law, and remanded to Scotland, where all but one will live out their lives; that last was released to go home to die *like any other person who committed such a crime in Scotland would be*. I don't think either of us has much argument with the way that went down; maybe as to whether the last poor bastard shoulda died on the inside, but if we're about having nations of laws, then the law was obeyed, and that should be that.

Given that the sons of bitches who plotted New York weren't acting on behalf of a government, what they did was not an act of war, but a crime. We're a nation of laws. We can't just stick'em up against a wall and shoot them. We have to try them before they swing. (We did the same thing in Iraq.) And if some of the heinous things that WE did come out in court? So be it. We've got to root out the tyranny here same as we rooted it out over there. If we stand up and deal with it, and say "this will happen no more", and make those responsible pay, then this is justice. If we cover it up, using military tribunals and a big fat cloak of secrecy, we're no better than the tin-horn dictators from points south of here.

And it's *all* politics. War is just politics that goes boom. The question is, are our politics putting power and empire-building first, or are our politics putting liberty and justice for all first?

America has shrunk the last nine *years*. The last nine months have just been a continuation of the previous eight years. And I'm pretty ticked off by that... if we can get some of this crap out in the open where people can see it and raise hell about it, maybe we can reverse that trend.

[From: draconis]

Agreed.

The 9/11 attacks were not an act of war, they were an act of terrorism. I don't recall anyone claiming that the Oklahoma City bombing was an act of war, yet it was essentially the same act -- someone blew up a building full of innocent people.

Terrorism is a crime, and the perpetrators should be treated as the scumbag criminals they are... but that does not excuse us abandoning our own principles and throwing our own laws out the window.

As the saying goes, "We cannot defend Democracy abroad by abandoning it here at home."

[From: draconis]

oh, and the claim that one entire wedge of the Pentagon was gutted? Just a slight exaggeration.

http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/evidence/photos/docs/aerial_precollapse1_s.jpg

Damaged, yes. Probably somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 gutted, yes. An entire wedge? Hardly.

And no, that doesn't make it any better. I just dislike people exaggerating facts to try and make a point.