What a crock. It was the citizens of NYC who were up in arms about the
trial of the Sheik in Manhattan and the disaster that would have been
who deserve blame for the trial not taking place in Manhattan in a civil
court - and I agree with the citizens totally. If Obama had stepped out
of the way and the Dems in Congress had stepped out of the way then the
trials could have been held by the military, the people who are most in
the line of fire of these terrorists, under the laws for military trials
promulgated by the congresses since WW II.
If you will look at the various congresses and senates in the past 65
years since WW II, there have, with very few exceptions, been Democratic
senates and congresses. It is only since 1994 that the Republicans have
held power in these legislative bodies and not all the time since then.
It is the Dems who made the laws and held the hearings on these issues
and we need to not lose sight of that. It is not time for the Dems at
this point to try to point fingers at who caused these trial holdups.
The games that have been played in the media by the Democrats since 2001
are the major cause of the trials being held up. It is now time for
them to go forward and hold the trials and get this mess out of the way.
On 03/10/2011 09:02 AM, MJ wrote:
*Still in the Dark About 9/11
*Posted on Mar 8, 2011
By Robert Scheer
Ignorance is the real victor in the president’s reluctant decision to
abandon the effort to bring the alleged perpetrators of the 9/11
terrorist attack to account in civilian court. The significance of a
fair and public trial would be to reveal to the world the motives and
makeup of those we must defeat, and yet the very people in this
country who claim to be the most militant in combating terrorism have
been the most energetic and effective in stifling that inquiry.
It must be said that Barack Obama deserves credit for attempting to
show the world that truth will triumph and justice will prevail when
even the most dastardly offenders are given their day in court. But
faced with a shrill Republican-led opposition in Congress that
succeeded in banning the trials on U.S. soil, the president
reluctantly reversed the decision he had made upon taking office to
halt military commission trials of those detained at Guantanamo. The
announcement Monday by Defense Secretary Robert Gates rescinding the
ban on the military trials also called for the indefinite imprisonment
of those Guantanamo inmates thought to be too dangerous to be released
but against whom the government doesn’t have enough evidence to obtain
convictions. The shortcomings of the military commission trials was
denounced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.,
who said such proceedings fall “far short of core constitutional
values by failing to provide judicial review of cases considered by
the review board’ and to guarantee “meaningful assistance of counsel”
to those accused.
But it is not the rights of the accused, important as they are, that
should be the main concern here. Rather it is the right -- indeed,
need -- of the American public to learn the truth about the motives,
financing and methods of those who are alleged to have torn at the
heart of our social fabric. What led 15 solid citizens of our ally
Saudi Arabia to hijack those planes under direction of their
Western-educated leaders is still murky. How did our allies in the war
against Soviet communism in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, come to mastermind that savage attack on America? It
is startling that, almost a decade after the attack, we still must
rely for our understanding of what happened on a narrative informed
not by the full disclosure revealed by the evaluation of a vetted
record and robust cross-examination in open court of the key witnesses
but rather by the unexamined and unquestioned reckoning of the facts
supplied by the government officials who interrogated and indeed
tortured the prisoners, most significantly Mohammed.
What the public has been led to believe about the events of 9/11 is
most fully encapsulated in the report of the bipartisan 9/11
Commission, appointed by President George W. Bush. But the Bush
administration denied the commission access to the prisoners whose
testimony, elicited after torture, provided the basic narrative as to
how Sept. 11, 2001, came to be. That fatal flaw in the investigation
was clearly conceded in a box on Page 146 of the official 9/11
Commission report containing a disclaimer that the key chapters “rely
heavily on information from captured al Qaeda members” and admitting
that the commission was dependent on hearsay reports from the
interrogators as to what those witnesses actually said.
“We submitted questions for use in the interrogations but had no
control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest
would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so
that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and
clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests
might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process.”
Much of that story was derived from the waterboarded Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, who was slated to be tried in Manhattan in civilian court
until Congress derailed that possibility. As a result, the mystery of
what led him from a small North Carolina Baptist college to fight
alongside the United States in Afghanistan and then turn against this
country may never be knownalong with who financed and directed his
journey and that of the hijackers he is said to have guided. For a
decade, we have been obsessed with a terrorist enemy that we still
barely comprehend. Ignorance is not bliss.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/still_in_the_dark_about_9_11_20110308/
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