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The
worst decision ever!
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It Begins |
A federal judge has
tossed out most of the government's evidence against a terrorism
detainee on grounds his confessions were coerced, allegedly by U.S.
forces, before he became a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.
In a
ruling this week, U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan also said the
government failed to establish that 23 statements the detainee made to
interrogators at Guantanamo Bay were untainted by the earlier coerced
statements made while he was held under harsh conditions in Afghanistan.
The judge said the government presented medical records about the
detainee's debilitating physical and mental condition that confirm his
claims of harsh treatment during the 40 days he spent in Pakistan and
Afghanistan.
Despite Hogan's concerns about the 23 statements,
the judge relied on other evidence and three statements Al Madhwani made
to a military tribunal and a review board to conclude that he trained,
traveled and associated with members of al-Qaida, including high-level
operatives. On those grounds, the judge ruled he is legally
detained. |
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I Know Why The Caged Bird Isn't Singing |
Scott at Powerline blog says Obama's decision to treat
Umar Abdulmutallab as a criminal
defendant rather than an enemy combatant is indefensible on the merits.
It is also incredibly costly in terms of foregone intelligence.
The administration's combined arrogance and stupidity would be laughable
if their consequences weren't so serious.
Today's Telegraph
carries Philip Sherwell's
article quoting former Senator and 9/11 Commission member Slade
Gorton on the issue. Speaking of Abdulmutallab, Gorton says:
"He was singing like a canary, then we
charged him in civilian proceedings, he got a lawyer and shut up,"
Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the
Sept 2001 terror attacks on the US, told The Sunday Telegraph.
"I find it incomprehensible that this administration is treating
terrorism as a law enforcement issue. The president has
finally said that we are at war with al-Qaeda. Well, if this
is a war, then Abdulmutallab should be treated as a combatant not a
criminal."
Why is Obama treating Abdulmutallab as a criminal
defendant? It is an unbelievable fact that we have as yet no
straightforward answer to this question. There is, in any event,
no good answer to it. If we are at war with al Qaeda, as Obama
himself asserted last week in the statement to which Gorton alludes, why
are we treating Umar Abdulmutallab (not to mention Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed) like John Gotti?
John Hinderaker adds: Check this
out, too -- Marc Thiessen's excellent piece which
explains the unique value of intelligence gained from captured al
Qaeda terrorists. |
| Obama Yields |
Last night, Obama ordered the Attorney General to consider other
places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to
holding the trial in lower Manhattan.
The dramatic turnabout came
hours after Mayor Bloomberg said he would "prefer that they did it
elsewhere" and then spoke to Attorney General Eric Holder.
"It
would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that's too mild a
word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the
neighborhood," Bloomberg told reporters. "There are places that
would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive for New
York City."
State and city leaders have increasingly railed
against a plan to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Manhattan federal court
since Holder proposed it last month.
The order to consider new
venues does not change the White House's position that Mohammed should
be tried in civilian court.
"President Obama is still committed
to trying Mohammed and four other terrorist detainees in federal court,"
spokesman Bill Burton said Thursday.
Continue reading
here . . .
Half a loaf
is better than none -- add this to the growing list of Obama
defeats. |
| Obama Officials Wrong on Padilla |
Thomas Joscelyn says al Qaeda terrorist Jose Padilla started talking
only after he was designated an enemy combatant.
During an
interview on MSNBC Thursday morning, White House Press Secretary Robert
Gibbs defended the Obama administration’s handling of the
Crotch Bomber, bomber Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab.
Gibbels
argued that the administration was right to treat Abdulmutallab as a
criminal defendant, instead of as an enemy combatant. "Just
because you make somebody an enemy combatant [it] doesn’t make them
talk," Gibbs argued. He then pointed to an example from the Bush
years to supposedly support his point.
"Jose
Padilla was made an enemy combatant so that we could get him to
talk," Gibbels said. "And guess what happened when we made him an
enemy combatant, he didn't talk. He did talk when he was
transferred back into a civilian court."
Obama’s top
counterterrorism adviser, John
Brennan, made the same point on Tuesday in an op-ed for USA Today.
Brennan argued: "Terrorists such as Jose Padilla and Saleh al-Mari did
not cooperate when transferred to military custody, which can harden
one's determination to resist cooperation."
Brennan and Gibbels
are wrong. In fact, Jose Padilla only started cooperating once he
was transferred into the military’s custody and interrogated.
Continue reading
here . . . |
| Obama Will Choose KSM Trial Location |
Ryan J. Reilly is
reporting that Obama will help select the location of the
trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) and insert himself into the process
that has faced major political setbacks
-- notice, the italicized word, "help."
At 3:29
in this video, Perky
Katie Couric asks Obama if he has ruled out conducting the KSM trial in
the Big Apple. Obama responds, "I have not ruled it out."
-- notice, "I have not..." -- not "Holder hasn't ruled it out."
And, Fox News just broadcast a news alert (2/12/10 at 9:02 AM (EST))
that said Obama was personally going to Congress and get the money for
the trial -- what's that they say
about he who has the gold?
Anyone who has been following this
page knows I strongly believe Obama has made all the decisions of the
handling of KSM and his trial from the beginning -- he's calling the
shots on the
Black Panther
case too.
This is just more evidence. |
| Obama Wants Terror Trial In America |
Daniel Roberts
says John Brennan, Obama's
top counterterrorism aide, said Obama is committed to holding the 9/11
terror trial in the U.S., though he's not sure where.
Obama
remains committed to trying accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed in an American court -- although he remains unsure where, a top
administration official said Saturday.
"As far as support from
the community and funding requirement, the most important thing to keep
in mind is we need to bring him to justice in an American court," said
John Brennan, Obama's top counterterrorism aide.
"Whether it
happens in New York, Pennsylvania or Virginia, where will funding come
from?"
New York officials estimated the cost of holding a trial
in Manhattan at $250 million. Mayor Bloomberg is among those opposed to
a trial in lower Manhattan, just a few blocks from Ground Zero.
Brennan, appearing before a mostly Muslim audience at an NYU Islamic
Center-sponsored event, avoided commenting on the controversy during his
45-minute speech, but addressed the issue after an audience member posed
the question.
"Clearly, this is an issue people in the city feel
strongly about," Brennan acknowledged.
"We are trying to push
this forward as best we can, but we also need non-obstruction from
certain forces in our government," he said later. "There are stiff winds
delaying us from bringing this man to justice." |
| Obama Open To Miranda Review |
NewsMax.com Barack
reports Obama is open to the idea of reviewing Miranda warnings for
terrorist suspects, Senior White House adviser
David Axelrod said Monday.
Axelrod's comment came after Attorney General
Eric Holder said changes by
Congress may be needed to allow law enforcement more time to question
suspected terrorists before being told about their right to a lawyer and
their right to remain silent during interrogation.
Holder's
weekend statements got a mixed reception from Republicans on Capitol
Hill, with Sen. Lindsey Graham saying he was generally pleased with what
he heard from the attorney general.
Graham said: "I've been
advocating a long hard look at all of our laws regarding the threats we
face."
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Holder's
statements on Miranda were overdue.
"I would remind Attorney
General Holder that we have been very much at war with international
terrorism for a long time," McConnell said on the Senate floor.
In an interview with CNN, Axelrod said: "I think the president is open
to looking at that issue. ... Certainly we're willing to talk to
Congress about that." Axelrod said any changes would be in the
area of adjustments, not a wholesale revision.
The New York Post
reports that Holder said he wants legislation expanding an exemption
to the rule, to apply when investigators interview terror suspects like
Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized citizen.
Such
authority would let cops immediately grill suspects about other plots
and plotters -- without worrying that the questioning would harm their
legal case.
It's certainly no coincidence that Holder also
confirmed that the Pakistani Taliban was "intimately involved" in the
bombing attempt. "We know they helped direct it, and I suspect
that we are going to come up with evidence which shows that they helped
to finance it," he said. |
| Obama Gives Up On Gitmo |
Charlie Savage says that Obama, who has been
stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, has
sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely
that he will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in
2013.
When the White House acknowledged last year that it would
miss Obama’s initial January 2010 deadline for shutting the prison, it
also declared that the detainees would eventually be moved to one in
Illinois. But impediments to that plan have mounted in Congress,
and the administration is doing little to overcome them.
"There
is a lot of inertia" against closing the prison, "and the administration
is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see,"
said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee and supports the Illinois plan. He
added that "the odds are that it will still be open" by the next
presidential inauguration.
Continue reading
here . . . |
| Congressman King Rips Obama On Ghailani
Verdict |
John McCormack says Peter King rips the
Ghailani verdict as a "total miscarriage of justice today in Manhattan’s
federal civilian court." He says it demonstrates the "absolute
insanity of the Obama Administration’s decision to try al-Qaeda
terrorists in civilian courts."
"I am disgusted at the total miscarriage of
justice today in Manhattan’s federal civilian court. In a case
where Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was facing 285 criminal counts,
including hundreds of murder charges, and where Attorney General
Eric Holder assured us that 'failure is not an option,' the jury
found him guilty on only one count and acquitted him of all other
counts including every murder charge.
"This tragic verdict
demonstrates the absolute insanity of the Obama Administration’s
decision to try al-Qaeda terrorists in civilian courts.
"This case was doomed from the beginning when the judge excluded
DOJ’s key witness who admitted selling the explosives to Ghailani.
Where is the justice for the more than 200 people killed and 4,000
injured in the terrorist bombings of our U.S. embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania?
"This is a tragic wake-up call to the Obama
Administration to immediately abandon its ill-advised plan to try
Guantanamo terrorists like the admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik
Mohammed in federal civilian courts. We must treat them as
wartime enemies and try them in military commissions at Guantanamo.
"As the next Chairman of the House Homeland Security
Committee, I intend to hold hearings and conduct the necessary
oversight on this critical homeland security issue in the 112th
Congress."
Related: State-Run Media Neglects to
Report That Ahmed Ghailani Delivered Explosives That Killed 2oo
Innocents
Related: Ahmed Ghailani, Gitmo detainee,
acquitted of all but 1 charge in N.Y. (cleared on 285 counts)
Related: Obama Justice Department Says
It’s "Pleased" Ahmed Ghailani Acquitted on 285 of 286 Charges |
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