Andy McCarthy, who led the 1995 prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and others for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, recently wrote the following regarding the Obama Justice Department decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) in a civilian court in New York City.
The decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other top al-Qaeda terrorists to New York City for a civilian trial is one of the most irresponsible ever made by a presidential administration. That it is motivated by politics could not be more obvious. That it spells unprecedented danger for our security will soon become obvious.
McCarthy and others have cited many reasons the decision is unwise including security concerns and the possibility (even if remote) of acquittal. What I have not been able to keep from wondering since hearing the decision is what kind of defense KSM will employ and how closely it will resemble the rhetoric I've heard so many times over the past eight years from those on the left.
Rush Limbaugh has been talking about how a jury of KSM's peers can be assembled from a pool of US citizens and has made some suggestions. What I want to know is who KSM's defense team is going to be quoting and asking for testimony.
One of my first thoughts was that Charlie Sheen could be called. Sheen made news this year when he requested a meeting with Barack Obama to discuss his theories on the subject of the 911 attacks.
Sheen, 44, argues that "the official 9/11 story is a fraud" and claims the attacks served as "the pretext for the systematic dismantling of our Constitution and Bill of Rights." Moreover, he charges that the Bush/Cheney "regime" was behind the attacks as a prelude to justify an invasion of Iraq. Sheen also insinuates that Usama bin Laden is working for the U.S. government.
Sheen is certainly not the only high profile liberal KSM could call to testify. When I suggested to fellow blogger John Hawkins that KSM could call Rosie O'Donnell to testify for his defense, John commented that she would make a great expert witness on the scientific properties of steel.
High profile "truthers" are not the only ones in the pool of potential KSM defense witnesses. What about all those politicians who argued that the Bush/Cheney sanctioned waterboarding of KSM was cruel and unusual punishment? There are enough of them to drag the trial out for many, many months. Considering CIA claims that information obtained as a result of waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed thwarted terrorist attacks on the West coast, maybe that would not be the strongest defense argument to make.
1 comment:
This accusations concerning al-Qaeda members working for the U.S. government are just ridiculous. As well as the Obama's administration decision to try the terrorists in NY, because so far it seems its aim is just to judge the previous Bush administration and the interrogation methods used at Guantanamo, which actually gives hopes to these war criminals for being acquitted. Elli
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