Civil Trial for Khalid Mohammed Puts Obama on Sheikhy Ground

nullObama’s presidency is already on shaky ground, but now his administration is going out of its way to create their own fault lines.

Attorney General Eric Holder will announce this morning that the 9/11 “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terror suspects (I’m sorry… “Alleged man-caused disaster participants”) will be tried in a civil court in New York.

Everybody in America who was around eight years ago remembers 9/11, but nowhere do they remember more than in New York City. The Obama administration was already taking a gamble by trying terrorist suspects (oops, I did it again) in civil courts and giving them constitutional protections reserved for US citizens (If forcing our way of life on non-U.S. citizens in other parts of the world is a bad thing to do overseas, how is it the right thing to do just because that non-citizen has been brought to the U.S.? And they called Bush an Imperialist?), but now they’ve cranked it up to a whole new level by trying these animals in New York City.

How the Obama administration cannot see that taking these enemy combatants to the scene of the crime(s) and allowing them the opportunity to wrap themselves in the protections of the same Constitution they devoted their lives to trying to destroy is an insult to not only those who died on 9/11 and their families, but to all Americans, is… well, not very surprising.

You’d think Obama would at least first have thought this through in a political CYA sense. What if, by some not unlikely chance, one of these guys gets off the hook because he wasn’t read his Miranda rights in Pashto? He then leaves court smiling and waving, virtually within sight of Ground Zero, looks into a camera and says “Thank you, Obama”? Outside of Berkeley, California and Ward Churchill & Bill Ayers’ cocktail parties, that probably wouldn’t do wonders for the president’s steadily dropping approval rating.

Civil trials for terror suspects is a bad idea in general, but Obama’s mile-wide streak of political correctness could eventually lead to his own downfall — if it doesn’t lead to the rest of America’s first.

Update: Holder says the US Government will seek the death penalty for the five men — still can’t pour water on their faces though. That would be cruel.

Obama said the men would “face the exacting demands of justice.” Yeah, well so did O.J. Simpson.

Prepare for the possibility of major backfire. This has all the markings of being the Cash for Clunkers of legal decisions.

Update II: I’m no lawyer, but I believe that the confessions Khalid Sheikh Mohammed made to a military tribunal won’t be admissible in civil court. Well done, BHO.

Author: Doug Powers
