Judge Bars Key Witness From Civilian Terrorism Trial

Judge Bars Key Witness From Civilian Terrorism Trial - NYTimes.com

Minutes before a major terrorism trial was about to begin, a federal judge barred prosecutors in Manhattan on Wednesday from using a key witness. The government had acknowledged it learned about the witness from the defendant, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, while he was being interrogated and held in a secret overseas jail run by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The ruling by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan would seem to be a setback for the Obama administration’s goal of trying former detainees in civilian courts, because it would limit the kinds of evidence that prosecutors could introduce. Mr. Ghailani became the first former detainee to be moved into the civilian court system for trial.

...

Judge Kaplan added that Mr. Ghailani’s status as an “ ‘enemy combatant’ probably would permit his detention as something akin to a prisoner of war until hostilities between the United States and Al Qaeda and the Taliban end, even if he were found not guilty.”

Wow. Who could have possibly seen that coming?

Well, anyone who stopped and thought about if for two seconds. Like I did, and I certainly wasn't alone in this position.

What if, just theoretically, you get a whacked out jury, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is actually found not guilty. Are we then going to release him? Answering "yes" to that question is unthinkable, but what about "no?" It's one thing to hold him indefinitely as an enemy combatant, but after all the wailing that those on the left have done about our prestige overseas being damaged by detention, what's going to happen if we continuing holding someone that a jury has found "not guilty?"

The fact is, there is no possible benefit that accrues to the United States of America by the President and Attorney General taking this course of action. It's all downside for national security, for national prestige, for international relations. But they get to pander to their base while continuing to use the Bush administration as a bogeyman to frighten the children with. Short-term political gain for the Obama administration is the only benefit, and they're harming the country to do it.

Just a terrible idea...

Obviously, it isn't KSM that they're trying to try here, but lets face it - this wasn't only easy to predict, this is one of the easiest political predictions that there's ever been. There really isn't any other feasible scenario.

Just a terrible idea...

Hey, it's the "no fly" list...

... not the "not allowed on board the plane for an international flight" list.

I'd have expected them to be the same thing, of course, but the government dictionary always tends to differ from the civilian dictionary...

Deputy FBI director John Pistole says the alleged Times Square bomber was placed on the No Fly list Monday, hours before he was arrested.

This was a key step to stop the suspect, Faisal Shahzad, from fleeing the country.

Customs and Border Protection officials at the airport ordered that the flight be stopped before takeoff. They were able to arrest Shahzad on the plane and turned him over to the FBI.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declined to say how Shahzad was able to board the flight if he was on the No Fly list.

She's sure to issue a statement soon telling us how well the system worked, though...

Keeping his eye on the ball

Andy McCarthy:

The real agenda here is to close Gitmo. That’s the ball to keep your eye on. The Post is trying to soften the opposition to shuttering the detention camp by portraying beleaguered, reasonable Obama as making a great compromise that will exasperate the Left. The idea is to strengthen Sen. Lindsey Graham’s hand in seeking reciprocal compromise from our side.

This, however, is a matter of national security, not horse-trading over a highway bill. You don’t agree to do a stupid thing that endangers the country just because your opposition has magnanimously come off its insistence that you do two stupid things that endanger the country.

If a deal to grant military commissions in exchange for closing Gitmo happens, it is a major win for the Obama Left and an enormous loss for public safety.

Bolton on Obama

Here's a big part of the reason that the left hates John Bolton - he's not afraid to speak the truth:

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton says President Obama was "not qualified" to be president on his inauguration day and "13 months later" is "still not qualified." Speaking at CPAC, Bolton went on to say that Obama "doesn't really care about foreign policy," "doesn't believe in American exceptionalism," and remains the "first post-American president."

Making choices

Great post from Andy McCarthy on Obama's abdication (or, to be more polite, delegation) of presidential authority with regards to national security issues.

the main problem with Obama's above-it-all, government-by-speeches approach, is that the job of a president is not to vote present, observe, and provide us with running commentary. He's not the play-by-play announcer of a game between arch rivals. He is the main participant on one of the teams, who actually has to make decisions. If he doesn't affirmatively make them, he makes them by default — meaning, the system's routine processes will carry on.

...

Then there's Obama — you know, the guy who actually has decision-making authority. (In the executive branch, all the power is reposed in the president. Everyone else, including the vice president and the attorney general, is just carrying our his policies.) What do we get from our president? We get his already tired routine: Some people say our criminal justice system is not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists. Others say you must give every arrested person Miranda rights and treat them just like shoplifters. I reject this false choice between terrorism and shoplifting.

Well, no, big guy, it's not a false choice. But it is a choice, it has to be made, and you have to make it. If you're going to use our criminal justice system because you think, as is, it is capable of safeguarding the country from terrorists, then, as the Attorney General argues, you have to give the terrorists Miranda warnings and be accountable for the fact that you will lose at least five weeks of actionable intel against people who are tying to kill us. If you think the justice system doesn't work for this class of offenders, then you have to try another approach, as VP Cheney urges, and be prepared for the inevitability of caterwauling from the Left (knowing it will be considerably milder than what Cheney had to deal with). But one way or the other, you've got to decide. And if you choose to stay on the golf course while the Attorney General handles it, that is a decision to do it the Attorney General's way. Obama's decision, not Holder's.

Read it all. And McCarthy is someone who knows what he's talking about on this subject, as he was the prosecutor who convicted the blinh sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, after the first World Trade Center attack.