Good News: The war on terror is over.
Bad News: The terrorists won.
Their victory lies in the shocking display of cowardice by New York politicians, Republican and Democrat, over Attorney General Eric Holder’s plan to hold the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed in lower Manhattan.
Republicans on this issue are total hypocrites. For eight years, under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, U.S. policy was to bring terrorist suspects to trial in federal civilian courts. According to Human Rights Watch, they did so in 119 cases, against 239 suspects – with a 91 percent conviction rate.
And that included successful trials and convictions of two high-profile, top security trials: shoe bomber Richard Reid in Boston; and al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui in Alexandria, Virginia.
Trying terrorist suspects in federal civilian courts was the right policy for Bush and Cheney, and it’s the right policy for President Obama.
As for Democrats, they’re just chicken. So afraid of being accused of bring soft on terror that they run for the hills at the slightest criticism.
On every level, no city in the country is better equipped to handle a major criminal trial than New York. But if they don’t want it, we’ll just move the trial to some other city where people are not such wimps: like Alexandria.
That’s my parting shot for today.
Yes, trial lawyers will find the elusive cause of the accelerations that the world’s best engineers can’t find. It is called a “theory of recovery.”