http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/13/khalid.sheikh.mohammed/index.html

I have three questions:

1~ How in hell are they going to find a jury for the NY trials? Voir dire should be interesting with issues from how much coverage they've seen to how they feel about torture and confessions obtained thereby.

2~ Why not try all of them in civilian court? Is their evidence that weak against the ones going to tribunal?

3~ If any are found not guilty (which given the bloodthirstiness of our country I doubt) will they actually be released?

[

I don't know how they would do this but they did it in Oklahma for Timothy McVeigh



What the governmet says is that the ones going to tribunal, the evedance is clasified.



That’s an interesting statement, are you saying that even if they are not guilty they will be found guilty?
And yes they would be released to their native country, unless the beading hearts get a hold of them in which case they will be put up on the tax payer dime.

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Nope. McVeigh was tried in Denver.


Considering how low the bar is for something to be designated 'classified' I find that convenient.


I'm saying that yes, I do doubt that any jury could be truly nonprejudiced in this case. And also that I doubt that if in fact any are found not guilty that they will be released, as in free, not as in no longer held by the US.

Pretty much, yeah.

If you're a Muslim or look even remotely middle eastern and you get collared for having something to do with 9/11, no jury anywhere in the United States is going to let you off for anything. You're basically fucked in this climate, I'm sure.

There are obviously muslim issues, but I don't think anyone even remotely linked to 9/11 could get acquitted. If I were in coma from 1995 to 2005 and they put me on trial for 9/11, I would be found guilty.

If I'm wrong, then Obama is in trouble. I can't imagine them going through with this trial unless they were 150000% certain they would get a conviction. If these men walk, Obama has virtually guaranteed he will lose in 2012.

Of course, the "right" answer is: "So what, all people deserve justice." Well, there's theory and there's reality.

I guess what I don't get is how we are giving them a regular old trial when they are terrorists from another country. It's not they were found with bad visas, jaywalked or stiffed a cabbie on a fare.

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I think he means how can *we* try them...

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I think this is a complete sham. It's a show trial, nothing more.

In order for it not to be a show trial, so many things need to happen:

1) A jury needs to be assembled using the same standard set forth for all federal trials. How do you even begin to assemble a jury for this?
2) All normal rules for inadmissable evidence, grounds for mistrial, etc., need to apply, but we all know they won't. Will any judge free KSM on a technicality?
3) The presumption of innocence has to be in place, but it's obviously not. You could take Obama's recent statements that KSM would be convicted and that the death penalty would be applied as interference in the case, or prejudging. The defense can assert right off the bat that the president is tainting potential jurors.
4) You're going to draw jurors from the very people who were attacked, and an attack on that scale could be said to have affected ALL New Yorkers, and continues to. So is this about justice, or vengeance?
5) At the same time as this announcement, Holder announced that they will try a suspect in the USS Cole attack and several other suspects in military commissions. So where's the fucking line? You can try KSM in a civilian court, but not all suspects? What the hell? Varying levels of due process, dependent seemingly only on the profile of the suspect itself, and, we can only conclude, the political payoff of a conviction.

For the Obama DOJ to randomly choose different levels of justice depending on the profile of the suspect is categorically WORSE than what Bush did. The only thing worse than an unfair prosecution is an unfair and inconsistent one.

Is there a waterfall system in place, where we only try people based on the minimum standards of conviction of each court? If the evidence supports a conviction in a criminal court, we go there? If the evidence isn't quite up to that standard, we move down a notch to a military tribunal? Based not on any consistent system of due process, but simply on what a prosecutor can guarantee a guilty verdict?

I agree with what you’re saying here, my opinion on this is Obama needs to have this type of positive publicity to try to stem his plummeting approval ratings, he can say "look I am hard on terror".

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Interesting read.

Good points all. And part of me thinks shit like this needs to go to a 'world court' because as was pointed out...how can WE try them fairly?

And part of me doesn't trust anyone else to not fuck it up, and resents relinquishing power/authority to outsiders. Of course it's also the part of me that is pretty bloodthirsty too...and shouldn't be making such decisions due to bias.

I think to fairly look at the issue, we have to take our emotions from it and then frame the problem as someone else's problem.

One good place to look would be to the UK and Irish terrorism, did many of those people get a fair shake? Could they have? There's plenty of others I'm sure but that's the one that springs to my mind, and it's a country we find largely pretty reasonable overall and similar to us.

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Their lawyers have said they will plea not guilty and will explain why the attacks were justified because of American policies.

New York City will be a soap box.

WaPo reports KSM will remain in detention without trial for the foreseeable future.

So much for due process.

With Obama backing more and more of Bush's policies, does it mean that Bush was right, or that Obama is a liar?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn ... /14/trials

False dichotomy.

I'm at the point where I basically refuse to read any article or commentary that continues to encourage the sports-team-reminiscent juvenile conflict between "Liberals" and "Conservatives" or "Lefties" and "Righties".

You want to call Obama's policies into question? Fine. Lets see if you can do it without framing it in the same context that you'd frame a damn football game in.

Yay, another Glenn Greenwald post. I could feel the anti-Obama bias seeping through the edges of my monitor without touching the link.

At this point it makes zero sense to try them by means other than a tribunal.

As long as we don't allow Osama Bin Laden to post up bail. If some idiots had their way, they'd deny he was a flight risk and let him go. Forget common sense, innocent until proven guilty!

I am really uncomfortable relying on "common sense" as a basis for making judgements in matters of law.

Sounds like you're uncomfortable with ALL laws, then =p *Someone*'s common sense is always involved somehow.

I tend to think "I'm willing to blow a bunch of people up because I'm a religious whackjob and I take credit for numerous terrorist attacks on innocent people" qualifies as a flight risk, myself.

I don't know if you're using a different definition of what common sense is, but there is a drastic difference between common sense and a reasoned decision based on facts and logic. I don't care how long you've lived, or how well-experienced you are, I trust the studied expert over the guy spouting common sense any day.

And yes, common sense is involved in a lot of our laws. Ideally this would be corrected.

No, that shows that he presents a danger if allowed to go free prior to his trial. The fact that he is currently evading attempts at capture and that he can call up numerous resources that would aid his escape shows that he is a flight risk. Either is grounds to be denied bail.

You're probably using a different definition of common sense than I am, then. In the world I'm in, common sense includes, but doesn't necessarily perform the analysis of, studied and reasoned results. I would also prefer to look at the credentials of said "studied expert" before drawing conclusions, which requires some common sense. Discerning and weeding out certains antiquated ideals from some tunnel-visioned so-called "expert" would also fall within that purview.



Not exactly, but you're partially correct in that there are separable definitions. The steadfastness and dedication to his mission indicates in and of itself that he would want to escape to maintain proper leadership within his group and therefore presents a flight risk. My point was that if we relied on the opinion of some of the more idealistically(dare I say dogmatic) blind folk out there, he would end up being set free long before he got to trial, whether or not he's a flight risk or danger.

150 years ago, it was "common sense" to keep blacks and women from voting, too.

"Common sense" is simply wrong, and on a related note, people disagree often on what "common sense" is.

It's a bit subjective, sure, but it's meant to suggest that something is practical or makes sense to a rational mind. People often misinterpret it as "The kind of sense that everyone has because it's common! It says so in the expression!". The phrase "Common sense is not so common" comes to mind.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/common+sense

So I'd definitely disagree that it was common sense to keep blacks and women from voting 150 years ago. It makes just as much common sense to let them vote today as it did 150 years ago, and the fact that more people didn't agree with that 150 years ago has little to do with it. It makes common sense to insist that everyone has the right to a fair trial. It also makes common sense to prevent a known danger to the public from being released before due process is dealt and it can ascertained that they are not a danger to the public.

Guilty until proven innocent?

Sorry, doesn't pass the common sense test.

It's not a question of whether or not they're guilty of a crime. If there's evidence/reason to believe that they're a danger to the public prior to trial, they should be held on account of public safety. Unless you're suggesting we unilaterally do away with the notion of public danger and flight risk detentions?

Lol. There are no trials. That's the point.

Ok, and tell me why we need to suspend Habeas Corpus to accomplish this. There's a reason a judge can deny bail.

There wouldn't be for Osama? Right, whatever you say. In the case of KSM, sure. Osama probably could be too if we really wanted to, and he'd be held as an enemy combatant. The difference being we have enough evidence for him and then some for any unbiased jury.



There's also a reason we have rules for enemy combatants.

We *shouldn't* need to under ideal circumstances. Unfortunately we have folks in power who enjoy twisting the law in order to suggest that there is no intelligible "reason" that a person is a danger to the public, even when there clearly is. I certainly would hope that it'd be enough, but in a case where overwhelming evidence that a person is a danger can be circumvented by a loophope in legal interpretation, I'd prefer that the law be changed in order to (fairly) detain people of his ilk. We don't need to refuse people the right to a fair and speedy trial nor make inaccurate/unjust assertions about their danger to the public in order to accomplish that.

Who? Can you name one person in power who would argue that Osama (beings that is the person you are bringing up as an example) is not a threat and should be granted bail?

You're asking me to predict who's going to do something stupid? That's a tough one, as I'm not known as a psychic. People usually don't make these kinds of judgement calls ahead of time lest they make themselves look more stupid and risk the chance of backlash before they can perform the task. If it were the generic case of who has at least a chance of doing so, take your pick of judges who have let people go free which resulted in more crime. Granting clemency would be less likely by say, a governor, especially for someone like Osama... but it's always interesting when you have cases like Mike Huckabee and Maurice Clemmons who gets released and goes on a killing spree.

No one's going to come out and say it before the fact, but we can look at their histories and reason that they have a chance of making a stupid decision regarding the matter.

Given our track record for intelligent decisions, I wouldn't put it outside the realm of possibility. Unlikely even for us? Sure. But if you think it'll be a smooth, unbiased, and speedy trial with an easy conviction and sentence, I have a bridge to sell ya.

I'm not asking for you to look into the future, I'm asking you to back up your assertion. You said that there are people in power who would lobby for or grant Osama bail, and I'm asking you to back that up. Who are some of the people that so enjoy "twisting the law" such that they would help someone like Osama go free on bail?

This isn't some case where a guy may have committed murder and was set free because there wasn't strong enough evidence to say that they were a flight risk or present danger. Osama has repeatedly admitted his culpability of his own free will in voice and video recordings as well as writings.

Can you honestly cite examples where there was a preponderance of evidence against someone (especially on the level of evidence that we have against Osama) accused of a violent crime who was then granted bail by these hippy extremists?

It's been one big strawman from the start, Devyn.

Are we talking specifically about federal prosecutors that might oversee the case? Given that we don't have much of a track record for that kind of thing, it'd be a little odd to ask for examples from them where violent offenders' first opportunities to get bail usually get handed down on the local level, and if they don't, it simply gets upheld by the next court up. If we're talking about examples on a more local level that might represent what we'd see from other judges, even on the federal level, then there are definitely examples...

First degree murderer gets bail after 4.5 years:
http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_stor ... 2%BD-years?

BART cop "meant to fire" his stun gun instead of his pistol gets bail:
http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-01-31/n ... scar-grant

Newlywed gets bail set at 25k after trying to have her husband murdered:
http://cbs4.com/local/boynton.beach.pol ... 17668.html

The slightly more famous case of Lisa Nowak, granted bail after an attempted murder charge :
http://articles.cnn.com/2007-02-06/us/a ... n?_s=PM:US

Yale lab worker granted bail after murder charge:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32890245/ns ... nd_courts/

Registered sex offender gets bail on an accused repeat offense:
http://www.fox40.com/news/headlines/ktx ... 2960.story

Man granted bail even after police found a connection between him and his son to conspire to rape, with multiple charges:
http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascoun ... t_bai.html

The list goes on. With most of these, there's at least some evidence that the accused committed the crime. This is also mostly just more recent stuff as well. As I said: Unlikely for Osama? Sure. Possible? Sadly, I think so, but I'm sure there'd be some sort of federal stopgap(which would probably be quasi-legal, no doubt) before we simply set him free even after a judge granted him bail.

As I hinted at, my concern lies chiefly with ideological loons who think in terms of absolutes, even if generally those absolutes are good for society and freedom.

And therein lies the rub. We call them enemy combatants, however we deny them the other rights afforded to prisoners of war. We cannot have it both ways.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/20 ... ma-shifts/

Again I wonder if this makes Obama a liar or.... Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney right? heh

LOL!

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Devil

Build a man a fire, and he's warm for the night.
Set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.

IT'S HILARIOUS GOOOOOOOOOOO TEAM!

I'm trying to figure out Joxur's point. Should I have voted for the guy that didn't want to close Gitmo, when closing Gitmo is what I wanted?

But you voted for the guy who promised to close Gitmo, but hasn't, and probably won't.

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Still better than voting for the guy who wanted to keep it open?

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At least he was well and truly honest about it. Not saying that Obama didn't want to close it, but it's one of those things that I assume was an empty campaign promise.

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I never said anything about who you should have voted for. I am just wondering if all of these reversals, and now the neocon-like attack on Libya, makes Obama a liar or Bush right.

Honest about it? Sure I guess, but he was about as honest as a robber saying "Yes, ABSOLUTELY I will rob your house!". Doesn't really make McCain a more honest politician over anyone else. Keeping Guantanamo open, while unpopular at the time with the American people, was still a plus in his favor for getting the Republican nomination.

And sure, Obama did the same thing. The question is whether you want someone in office who has a 100 percent chance of NOT doing anything good, or even a 25 percent chance of getting some things done that are for the benefit of the American people. I'll take the latter any day of the week.

Sadly, I'm with Venen's logic on this one. I wouldn't change my vote even at this stage. That said, I'm still greatly disappointing even knowing I would be as much at this point.

Hmm.. yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting theory.. That the chance of change is better than the certainty of no change.

But I think your view is short sighted. There is a cost for these reversals. I think the cost comes in both perceptions, inside the US and abroad, and in competency.

- When someone like Obama comes in on a wave of "hope" and expectations for change, I think it's more damaging to have him reverse that than to simply have someone who was up front and honest about it. In the end, you have the same policy in place, but one of them came with reinforcement that, if HE can't change, we'll NEVER change. For all of the talk about how we are perceived abroad, I think it's more damaging to our credibility internationally than if McCain were voted in.

- Competence gap ... frankly, I also worry that the current administration is running with these policies because of political cowardice, not necessarily any decision in "the trenches" of the government, where the experts really are. With the neocons, at least they did what they did out of conviction that it was the right thing. I happened to believe it was the wrong thing, but I don't think you could argue that Cheney and Rumsfeld stomped all over our civil liberties because they thought it would win them votes. Personally, I think they did it because they're nuts, but that's neither here nor there.

In other words, if I want a neocon stance on civil liberties and intervention abroad... I'd rather just have a neocon in office. I don't think you'd see some of the same mistakes. Two that I'll point out right now are:

1) The initial announcement that KSM would be tried in a public court, subsequently reversed.
2) The intervention in Libya almost a *month* after much of the damage was done.

That to me shows a waffling in conviction, not just policy. I would even describe it as timidity, to be honest.

Honestly, I don't think so. I would better describe it as naivete. He's learning that wanting to change shit as president and BEING president are very different things.

If you're right, Ele, and I think you very well could be, we should see a very different campaign for Obama's re-election than we did in 2008.

Here's another... story today from the AP. Gates says that some US troops can stay past our committed deadline of Dec 2011 "if Iraq wants it".

So, that's a reversal. Whatever. More importantly to me... why is our barometer on whether we stay in a highly volatile, dangerous situation whether the local government "wants it".

I'm sure (at least I hope) there is more to it than that, but... horrible messaging.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110407/ap_ ... 9tZXVzdA--

I thought we were down to ~45,000 troops in Iraq and they were mostly non-combat troops (the combat troops have been redeployed to Afghanistan) and that the number of US troop casualties in Iraq have gone down to where one or two a month was it.

I would like to know what kind of troops are in Iraq. Civil affairs troops are still troops but they offer all sorts of assistance to the areas in which they are stationed (my last few years in the Reserve I was in a CA unit).

There are combat troops in Iraq. Civil affairs troops still need MPs, convoy security, route patrols, EOD, etc. They are still being shot at, still returning fire, and still clearing IEDs. Over the past few months they have averaged more than one or two casualties, even if we don't consider accidents.

There's a cost for reversals only if public perception allows it to be so. If the world community looks at us in terms of credibility with a large amount of emphasis on OUR judgement in voting people in who make reversals, they're stupid for not realizing that we're doing it for the specific reason I outlined of some chance vs no chance.

As for "if HE can't change, no one can do it!", one politician staking claim on a tagline doesn't mean that person is the most apt at getting it done. Sure, there's a risk that stupid people won't vote for anyone else who claims they'll implement change, even if they actually will implement it. At the same time, those same stupid people rarely elect the best person for the job anyway, so I say take every chance you can get when someone comes along who even has a remote chance of doing something a little different and potentially game-changing. "Omgah he seems inexperienced" is not valid grounds for the claim that he had no or even less chance to make change.

Was he probably naive about what the job would entail? Yea, but we found that out later. Obama is a player. He's a sly politician, and Bush was a sly politician. The difference is, Bush was a much easier character to judge/read. He was a simple man with honest, straightforward and stated goals. There's practically no one(though I'd allow for a few) that can safely say they were unbiased and objective about Obama and make an accurate character judgement before he stepped up to the job. Anyone that does and says "I told you so" is pretty much full of shit.

Would someone be naive to think Obama was actually going to follow through on all his promises? Absolutely, and no one intelligent thought he would come close to fulfilling them. The question for people was the general direction. Countless promises piled on top of each other is the sign of a politician, not the sign of someone who's not going to do *anything* at all. The difference is that we expect a few (hopefully important) things to followed up on, not very very little as Obama has done.

Anyhoo... People said Kennedy seemed naive/inexperienced, and his election battlecries were not all that dissimilar in nature to Obama's. Young/inexperienced politicians are as capable at stepping up to the plate and becoming something more upon attaining the job as anyone else.

I'm not sure that is an accurate portrait of what he HAS done. I realize some of the list Maddow made is going to argued back and forth if it was a "win" or not, but:



So I think he deserves a bit more credit than your comment entails. Particularly now, with the environment where it is clear the ONLY republican strategy is "say no to everything until the democrats say yes to us and then say no again to make them come further to our side".

I'm not happy about Gitmo (and Libya) in particular, don't get me wrong, but as I was pretty clear about on in other threads on these very forums, he kept his promises on DADT and DOMA (and I think he handled DOMA in a pretty fucking brilliant way)...the first president to promise "us" anything and actually deliver on it, so he's pretty much earned my vote again.

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So because I work in for a recruiting battalion for the Army National Guard I had to receive Tier I training on the repeal.

I can tell you this.

The only things that have changed are, you can't be discharged for telling and you can now join if you are openly gay. That's it. Nothing else has changed. So I'm not sure what kind of victory you are looking for, but I really don't see one here. Basically what happened was Obama said I want "them" (I used quotes because you did) to vote for me again, so I'm going to make it look like I did something great for "them", but actually I didn't do anything.

BTW, I agree that gays should be able to openly serve in the military and that their partners should be able to receive the same benefits as a dependent as long as they have a legal civil union together.

I also believe that it should be federally legal for gays to have a civil union that allows them to reap any benefits that a man and woman who are married can receive.

However, I also believe that it should be referred to as a civil union and not a marriage. A difference in words should not mean a difference in benefits though.

Right, exactly! I'm glad we can both agree that separate but equal was a terrible idea, and that government has no business interpreting the meaning of marriage, be it gay, straight, or plural, so long as the benefits are the same (including the collectively limited tax breaks/rights for plural). And thus, I'm glad we can both agree that calling ALL of these contracts with regards to government recognition, a civil union is the best choice.

Unless, of course, I misunderstood your statement to mean that only heterosexuals can waste government tax dollars by exclusively having their own classification. In which case, I disagree. And if that stupid whore of a wife of yours also disagrees, you should put that bitch in her place like the piece of property she is. <- Otherwise known as "traditional marriage" as recently as 150 years ago.

That's the only thing that needed to be changed regarding DADT.

As has already been pointed out, that's a huge change and was kind of the whole point of DADT repeal. Maybe (and I don't mean this in a snarky way at all), you only get how huge it is if you've ever existed inside the "closet". Just having the ability to be yourself is a huge boon.

But more importantly....remember all those threads where people (including me!) kept saying they didn't understand why Obama didn't just do an Executive Order to end DADT...why he kept being so adamant that it had to be done by Congress? Remember how angry everyone was when he defended DOMA and defended his defense of DOMA at that time?

There were two laws on the books written by congress that essentially dealt with gay people. DOMA and DADT. Now that Congress has repealed DADT as a discriminatory law, it has opened up the discussion on DOMA for the president to be able to say, "Well, you said singling out people for being gay is discriminatory, so I don't think I can defend DOMA any more for exactly the same reason." He couldn't have done this as effectively if he'd just arbitrarily decided to do it via Executive order.

He used Congress against itself to open up two pathways for DOMA to die. It was brilliantly played, as far as I am concerned.

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