 The Pentagon’s 86-page report on the Fort Hood massacre was “sanitized” to avoid discussing Islamic terrorism, the congressman who represents the base told POLITICO Monday. The report, released last week, says that the Army’s middle management missed signals about Nidal Malik Hasan in the months leading up to the mass shooting. But missing from the report is any discussion of what Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) said was the a “crisis” with Islamic terrorism.
Hasan allegedly wore ritual Muslim garb shouted “God is great” in Arabic when opening fire on a group of soldiers on the base — facts Carter said should have been disclosed in the report to help soldiers identify such signs in the future. A search of the report does not turn up any mentions of Islam. “People are afraid to speak out and label someone because they’ll be accused of being a racist or accused of profiling or being prejudiced against a certain religion or race of people,” Carter told POLITICO. “But in a time of national crisis, which I believe we are in, all identifiers must be discussed.” Carter’s complaint fits into a larger narrative that Republican lawmakers have been driving in the past few months.
The Obama administration, GOP legislators have said, has been irresponsible in its handling of terrorists, from their decision to close down Guantanamo Bay to the planned adjudicating of a 9/11 mastermind in New York City. In an election year that is already shaping up to be rough for Democrats, Republicans are sure to use such decisions to paint President Barack Obama and his Congressional allies as weak on homeland security. “We want the world to know that we are not prejudiced, even to the people that hate us,” Carter said. “That’s craziness.” Politico
 The American people overwhelmingly think that the Christmas Day airplane bomber, not to mention 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, should be treated as enemy combatants, not common criminals or Prisoners of War afforded protections under the Geneva Conventions.
Interestingly enough, Attorney General Eric Holder agrees -- at least, he did back in 2002.
Here’s what he said when discussing the 9/11 terrorists: “One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located.…It seems to me that given the way in which they have conducted themselves,…that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention. They are not prisoners of war. If, for instance, Mohamed Atta had survived the attack on the World Trade Center, would we now be calling him a prisoner of war? I think not.”
Holder also acknowledged back then that giving terrorists access to lawyers and telling them they have the “right to remain silent” -- as the Obama administration did with the Christmas day bomber -- means you can no longer effectively interrogate them.
In a 2002 interview on CNN, Holder was asked about John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban captured in Afghanistan and brought to America for trial. “How much pressure should they put on this man to get information out of him as they interrogate him?” CNN asked. Holder replied, “Well, I mean, it’s hard to interrogate him at this point now that he has a lawyer and now that he is here in the United States.” How times have changed. In his shocking new book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA has Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack, author Marc Thiessen reveals a stunning reversal of opinion when Holder said years later in a speech to the American Constitution Society “I never thought I would see the day when…the Supreme Court would have to order the President of the United States to treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention.” Like so many others in this administration, Holder puts political convenience above common sense, military tradition and any concern for the safety of American citizens. As Thiessen points out in Courting Disaster, this is just one more instance of the Obama administration endangering our safety and inviting the next terrorist attack.
 by Mark Impomeni Last Friday, nineteen members of the New York Congressional delegation put their names to a letter to President Obama in advance of the upcoming trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his co-conspirators in lower Manhattan. In the letter, the nineteen representatives, all Democrats, request inclusion of a special line item in the president’s 2011 budget request to “fully reimburse the City of New York for all security and other expenses related to providing a safe and secure trial.”The letter expresses the members’ support for hosting the trial in New York City, but takes note of the burden that will be placed on the New York City Police Department, the community surrounding the federal courthouse, and the budgets of the City and State of New York. “The trial of KSM will require an unprecedented amount of security, both to protect the judicial proceedings at the Courthouse and the surrounding area,” the representatives write. “Without full federal reimbursement, the costs of providing security for this trial will significantly compromise the NYPD’s efforts to prevent crime and terrorism, and further burden the budgets of New York City and New York State, both of which are already reeling from the severe economic downturn.” Rep. Michael McMahon is leading the reimbursement effort on the House side. McMahon also joined Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) earlier this month in calling on the president to provide funds for New York City in connection with the trial. McMahon was elected last year to represent Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, an area that had been continuously represented by a Republican since 1981. McMahon supported Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to hold the trial in New York City, telling Politico in November, “It’s time to move forward and bring these animals to justice.” That tough talk has given way to concerns about security, “emotional trauma,” and costs as the trial grows closer. All are factors that Democrats largely brushed off when the Obama administration’s decision was announced two months ago. One reason for the change of heart among New York Democrats could be a groundswell of opposition both locally and nationally to holding the trial blocks from the site where nearly 3,000 Americans died in the attacks. On the national level, HUMAN EVENTS and the influential conservative community website RedState.com have joined forces to sponsor a petition drive calling for the trial to be moved out of the civilian court system. The petition has garnered over 80,000 signatures to date. Prominent New York Republicans Rep. Peter King, gubernatorial candidate and former Rep. Rick Lazio, former governor George Pataki, and the former representative of McMahon’s district, Vito Fossella. Lazio told HUMAN EVENTS the decision to hold the trial in New York was “unacceptable and irresponsible,” and said that McMahon’s letter was misguided. “It’s fine to seek reimbursement, but that doesn’t get to the real issue,” he said. “The fact that the cost of security is projected to be over $200 million of additional spending speaks to the seriousness of the risk to downtown New York City. Republican or Democrat, people understand that it is an outrage to have the trial for this terrorist mastermind held in downtown New York, a place that has already suffered great trauma as a result of [Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s] actions”Lazio was also critical of his potential opponents in the governor’s race, Governor David Paterson, and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, for not doing more to block the trial. He said that Paterson’s public opposition to the trial was “ineffective,” saying that the governor needs to be, “a relentless opponent of having these trials down town.” “Governor Paterson should have been much more outspoken from the start, not just in terms of money, but in terms of the jeopardy created unnecessarily for the people of downtown New York City,” Lazio said. But Lazio saved his most stinging criticism for Cuomo, who has not taken a public position on the trial. “I find it puzzling that the chief law enforcement officer in the state has been absolutely mum on this,” he said. “How [does Cuomo] expect to be chosen to a position of leadership without taking a stand on issues important to New Yorkers?" One local effort is taking place in lower Manhattan’s Community Board 1, which is represented by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, one of the Democrats that signed McMahon’s letter. Marc Ameruso, Assistant Secretary of Community Board 1, led a vocal group of residents at last month’s meeting in specifically asking the board to withhold its support for holding the trials in the area. The resolution was ultimately tabled, but not before about a dozen residents of the overwhelmingly Democratic area spoke passionately about their fear and anger at the Obama administration’s decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his 9/11 co-conspirators back into their community. Mr. Ameruso had strong words for Nadler, saying his signing of McMahon’s letter was politically motivated. “It’s ironic that Mr. Nadler acknowledges that this neighborhood will have to be locked down, that we will have to relive the experience of September 11th, but yet he is willing to put his constituency through this nightmare,” Ameruso said. “He’s throwing his constituents, of which I am one, under the bus.” Ameruso vows to reintroduce his resolution at this month’s board meeting. He said that he hopes his resolution along with the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas Day will, “wake people up.” “Holding this trial in lower Manhattan puts all of us in danger,” he said.
 The Hon. Eric HolderAttorney General of the United States
Washington, DC
Dear General Holder:
We, the editors of HUMAN EVENTS, RedState.com, and the many Americans who have attached our names to this petition hereby request that you try al-Qaeda's confessed 9/11 terrorist mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four al-Qaeda cohorts in a military tribunal, reversing your precedent-changing decision to try them in a civilian court in New York City.
There is no reason, much less a requirement, under U.S. Constitutional or statutory law to grant KSM and the others the right to a trial in civilian courts, nor to offer them any of the corresponding Constitutional rights afforded U.S. citizens.
Logic, reason, and justice demand that the terrorists who planned the 9/11 attacks be treated as enemy combatants in a war against the United States, not as common civilian criminals.
Our reasons for urging you to reverse your decision include:
1. Trying these terrorists in a civilian court would be a break with 200+ years of American jurisprudence. From British spies during the War of Independence to Nazi saboteurs caught on U.S. soil during World War II, we have tried those who make war against America in military, not civilian, courts. This change in policy sets a potentially catastrophic precedent. This would not happen with a military tribunal;
2. The very real possibility exists that if tried in a civilian court, KSM and the others could be acquitted on a technicality, such as their not having been informed of their Miranda rights, or having been denied a speedy trial. This would not happen with a military tribunal;
3. KSM and the others should not be allowed to hijack our courts, using them as a media circus to promulgate their hate-filled, extremist views. This would not happen with a military tribunal;
4. A civilian trial would send the dangerous message to our enemies that the United States has reverted to its ineffective, pre-9/11 crime-fighting approach to terrorism. This would not happen with a military tribunal;
5. In a civilian trial, valuable intelligence about interrogation techniques and other classified information will be revealed to America's enemies, giving them a huge advantage in successfully carrying out terrorist plots in the future. This would not happen with a military tribunal;
6. Americans are willing to pay to ensure justice is served. However, the estimated security cost of $200 million for the KSM trial is completely avoidable and a total waste of taxpayer money. This would not happen with a military tribunal; and
7. While Americans are willing and able to stand up to protect themselves and their property, trying KSM and the others in New York invites a terrorist attack, creating a huge, unnecessary risk to our court workers, jurors, and everyone in the New York City area. This would not happen with a military tribunal;
Our final words are from David Beamer, father of Todd Beamer, one of the heroes of United Flight 93: "Our enemies must be thrilled" he wrote of your decision to give KSM and the others a civilian trial in Manhattan. "We are willingly handing them an opportunity to inflict economic harm on New York City, keep their cause in the headlines, gather new intelligence, create new terror strategies, stimulate recruiting, celebrate new found rights, and foist a fresh round of pain and suffering upon their victims."
Mr. Holder, as Attorney General of the United States, it was within your power to move the trial of KSM from a military tribunal to a civilian court. It is equally within your power to reverse that dangerous decision. We request that you do so forthwith.
Respectfully submitted,
The Editors of HUMAN EVENTS and RedState.com
Petition signers include the following leaders
Former Gov. George Allen
Publisher Steve Forbes
Former Congressman Vito Fossella (R.-NY)
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
Former Gov. Mike Huckabee
Former Congressman Rick Lazio (R.-NY)
Radio talk show host and author Mark Levin
NY State Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long
Columnist and author Michelle Malkin
Actor and author Chuck Norris
Congressman Tom Price (R.-Ga)
Former Gov. Mitt Romney
Congressman Aaron Schock (R.-IL)
Congressman John Shadegg (R.-AZ)
Congressmen John Shimkus (R.-IL)
Congressman Todd Tiahrt (R.-KS) 
 Jihadists take note: The insanity defense may not work for you. On Tuesday, Naveed Haq, a self-styled soldier of Islam, was found guilty of aggravated first-degree murder and seven other counts related to a 2006 shooting rampage in Seattle. The prosecution successfully argued that Haq was a jihadi terrorist on a mission for martyrdom; the defense said that just proved he was crazy. The facts are open and shut. On July 28, 2006, Haq forced his way into the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and opened fire with two semiautomatic pistols, wounding five women and killing campaign director Pamela Waechter.
Haq was a methodical killer. When the wounded Ms. Waechter attempted to flee, Haq ran her down and shot her in the head. Haq explained his jihadist motives in detail after the shooting. He bragged about the killings in prison phone calls to relatives, tapes of which were played during the trial. "I'm proud of what I did," the murderer told his mother Nahida. "I'm a soldier of Islam." He said that she should be proud of him. "I'm a martyr now," he claimed. "I'm going to go to heaven." His mother argued with him that he was sick, that he was not in his right mind. "Yes I am," Haq said. "That's the path I've chosen. ... I did this for a reason. I wanted to be a martyr. I wanted to die on the battlefield." Haq showed evidence of premeditation. He told police he had planned the attack over several days. He chose the Jewish Federation office as his target to make a statement about U.S. policy in the Middle East.
He obtained the pistols specifically to conduct the attack and test fired them to see which was easiest to use. A police officer who pulled Haq over for a traffic violation just prior to the shooting found him calm and collected; he was not someone who simply snapped. Like many terrorists, Haq was seeking publicity. While holding one of his victims at gunpoint, a pregnant woman he had already wounded, the killer told a 911 dispatcher he wanted to be patched through to CNN to - among other things - demand the U.S. military pull out of Iraq. The legal defense conceded that Haq was the shooter, but contended that a "mental disease or defect" had impaired his ability to know right from wrong, which conforms to the standard for legal insanity in Washington state. Haq is an American born to Pakistani immigrants, had been raised a Muslim but for most of his life had not taken the religion seriously. He even renounced Islam for Christianity briefly before returning to the fold with a vengeance. Haq's jihadist orientation was central to the attack, but the prosecution initially downplayed it. At Haq's first trial in 2008, the jury did not hear the revealing prison phone tapes because prosecutors thought they were irrelevant.
The jury in that trial deadlocked over the question of Haq's intentions, and the judge declared a mistrial. The jury in the second trial heard the tapes, which seemed to have a clarifying effect on the question of intent.
Declaring "I'm a soldier of Islam" leaves little to the imagination. The Haq case has important implications for other domestic terror trials, such as the upcoming court martial of Fort Hood jihadist shooter Nidal Malik Hasan - or even the trial of al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others in New York City.
One lesson is that prosecutors should not downplay the jihadist motives behind such attacks.
Terrorist ideology is the central framework for this type of violence, and absent that context, jurors may well misunderstand the nature and purpose of these religiously motivated attacks. Another implication is that the insanity defense may not offer an escape route for terrorists. Violent jihadists may do things that normal people consider crazy, but they are not insane. They know right from wrong, they just think that killing innocents is acceptable behavior. They are clear in their motives; they see themselves as agents of a divine power waging war on the infidel. Given their premises, radical Islamists can justify everything from suicide bombing to Sept. 11-style mass murder. Ignoring the jihadist impulse as a motive for attack, either because of political correctness or some other rationale, makes the insanity plea more plausible. A jihadist without the jihad is just a crazed killer. Washington Times
 Former Vice President Dick Cheney says trying suspected Sept. 11 terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City will make him "as important or more important than Osama bin Laden." In an interview with Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity, Cheney said holding the trial in a lower Manhattan courtroom near ground zero will make Mohammed "a hero in certain circles, especially in the radical regions of Islam around the world." Cheney said the trial will put Mohammed "on the map." The Republican called Attorney General Eric Holder's decision in November to try Mohammed and four other 9/11 suspects in a civilian federal court near ground zero "a huge mistake." The interview, for which Fox News provided a partial transcript, aired Tuesday. NewsMax
 Several hundred people rallied in the rain near Manhattan's federal courthouse complex to protest the plan to put major terrorism suspects on trial in New York. The demonstrators, including 9/11 families and their supporters, gathered in Foley Square, just blocks from the site of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. They say a New York trial could again make the city a terrorism target. Last month Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the U.S. would put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison on trial in a federal civilian court in New York City. Anger at the Obama administration ran hot in the crowd. One person held up a sign calling Holder "disgraceful and despicable." Another sign said "Obama/Holder ... Jihad from within." Supporters of the 9/11 Never Forget Coalition say the five defendants should face a military tribunal instead. A "statement of support" for the rally, posted on the coalition's Web site and signed by actors Robert Duvall, Brian Dennehy, Jon Voight, Danny Aiello, Robert Davi, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Ben Stein, states that Holder's decision to try key figures in the September 11 attacks in a civilian court in New York City is "a travesty of our justice system" that puts the national security of the United States of America at risk. The signers said the trial would give the defendants a platform "to spew their propaganda and hatred to the world from a courthouse just blocks from Ground Zero. "We stand with 9/11 families, New York City's first responders and the U.S. military who will be forced to cope with the consequences of this dangerous decision if it is not reversed," the statement said. Addressing the crowd, Dennehy said he didn't believe the men deserved "normal constitutional protections." Lee Ielpi, a retired firefighter whose son, also a firefighter, died on 9/11, said he believed the U.S. has been in a state of war since the attacks, and that a military tribunal was therefore the appropriate venue for justice. "They deserve a fair trial in a military tribunal, not on our soil," he said. "Guantanamo is where it should be." But other victims of the 9/11 attacks disagreed. Lorie Van Auken lost her husband at the World Trade Center. She said in an interview before the rally it was fitting that the accused answer charges a short walk from where the twin towers once stood. John Feal lost half his foot at Ground Zero. He told the N.Y. Daily News, "If you’re afraid of terrorists, then they’ve already won." He said trying the defendants in New York was "poetic justice." Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., says military commissions have a poor track record when it comes to trying terrorism suspects. He expressed confidence that U.S. prosecutors can win a conviction in a regular, civilian court.
 Their loyalties, if this is true, were with Islam, not with the United States. That should not be surprising: it is a staple of Islamic thought that loyalty to one's fellow Muslims trumps all other loyalties. "Another spying scandal at Gitmo," by Paul Sperry for the New York Post, December 1 (thanks to Pamela): A number of Arabic and Pashtu interpreters at the terror-war detention center at Guantanamo Bay are under active investigation for omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations, among other security breaches.
This could taint some of the evidence at the "9/11 trial" in New York and proceedings against other detainees. Remarkably, the Pentagon never cleaned up the "mole infestation" at its highest-security facility after the FBI busted a Muslim spy ring at Gitmo in 2003.
The 2003 probe involved at least two Arabic interpreters with high-level security clearance. Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, a Syrian native, and former Army linguist Ahmed Mehalba, an Egyptian native, were later convicted of stealing or mishandling classified documents.
Six years later comes a new problem with Muslim personnel who have virtually unfettered access to detainees and intelligence at Gitmo. Professional military security and intelligence officials at Gitmo did the preliminary probe, then prepared a classified summary and are now briefing top officials and members of Congress in Washington.
An active FBI criminal probe is also under way. The possible new spy ring involves several Arabic linguists, some also Egyptian and Syrian immigrants. They're suspected of, among other things:
* Omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of interrogations.
* Slipping notes to detainees inside copies of the Koran.
* Coaching detainees to make allegations of abuse against interrogators.
* Meeting with suspects on the terror watchlist while back in the United States.
Officials say some of the suspected "dirty" linguists -- who met privately in a locked mosque at Gitmo -- have had access to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other high-value al Qaeda detainees.
"Three years of investigations have revealed the presence of pro-jihad/anti-Western activities among the civilian-contractor and military-linguist population serving Joint Task Force Guantanamo," states a copy of a classified Gitmo briefing, prepared in May for the FBI, CIA and Congress' intelligence committees....
 By: David Limbaugh I can think of a number of motives President Barack Obama might have for his egregious decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other high-profile al-Qaida terrorists to New York for trial in our civil courts. Regardless of which motives apply, one thing is clear: Our enemy is at war against us while we are in a suicidal, 9/10 state of denial. I've heard at least three possible reasons for his decision, which fall into the categories of political, ideological, and strategic, respectively. These motives are by no means mutually exclusive and are overlapping. My friend Andy McCarthy, at National Review Online, emphasizes: "The decision . . . is one of the most irresponsible ever made by a presidential administration. That it is motivated by politics could not be more obvious." Andy surmises that these proceedings will put the Bush administration on trial, giving the anti-war left, Obama's base, "its promised feast."
The left's "shock troops, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights," will add each new disclosure to "the purported war-crimes case they are urging foreign courts to bring against President Bush, his subordinates, and U.S. intelligence agents." Andy's analysis is difficult to refute. Another bright friend of mine doesn't dispute Obama's political motivations but calculates that in the end, though appeasing the hard left, his strategy will end up costing him dearly because of the national security nightmare (and public backlash) it will generate — a scenario Andy McCarthy himself thoroughly lays out with foreboding. Given the inevitable and foreseeable blowback awaiting Obama, my other friend reasons that Obama has decided to do it because he is a true believer. That is, it's not just a matter of feeding his base. He is his base. He is a hard-left anti-war ideologue. Again, I would be hard-pressed to poke holes in this assessment. Then we also have to consider as a motivating factor Obama's stunningly naive belief that by being solicitous toward Islam and overly kind to terrorists, we can convince them that we are good people after all and not an enemy they should attack. That Obama harbors this belief is scarcely deniable. His various statements on American foreign and domestic policy reveal his conviction that America's past behavior and attitude, up until the precise nanosecond he was inaugurated, have contributed to our unpopularity in the world and served as a terrorist-recruiting impetus throughout the world. If we hadn't been so "arrogant, sometimes dismissive," if we hadn't initiated "wars of choice," if we hadn't been imperialistic and "unilateralist," if we hadn't avariciously consumed a disproportionate measure of the world's resources, the world wouldn't look upon us with disfavor, and maybe even Islamic terrorism itself would be but a couple of isolated footnotes in an otherwise peaceful world. Included in Obama's convoluted mindset is the notion that we are not engaged in a war, but confronted with a knotty law enforcement challenge. Obama is Mirandizing captured Taliban on the battlefields in Afghanistan, has deliberately substituted "overseas contingency operations" for "war on terror" and "man-caused disasters" for "acts of terrorism," and refuses even to acknowledge that the "Allahu akbar"-screaming Nidal Malik Hasan was engaged in an act of Islamic jihad in the Fort Hood massacre. more at NewsMax
 BY the real-world standard of how lawyers act, Attorney General Eric Holder's professed certainty about his decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-defendants in federal court is strictly (pardon the expression) "bush." It's an old adage among litigators that you're not a real trial lawyer until you've won an unwinnable case and lost an unloseable one.
Lawyers in private practice know -- and make sure their clients know -- that litigation is a chancy business. That, of course, is a major reason why private disputes are overwhelmingly settled before (or during) trial and why most criminal cases are also "settled" by plea agreement. Holder insisted in his Senate testimony that "failure is not an option" -- that a conviction in the federal court trial of KSM and his co-defendants is assured. No responsible lawyer in private practice would ever make that kind of statement to a paying client. Murphy's Law applies as fully to trials as to any other human endeavor -- maybe more so. To start with, there's the little requirement that a jury be unanimous -- and in a capital trial, that it be unanimous twice. Does any lawyer worth his salt ever guarantee to a client that the 12 members of a jury will surely all vote the same way -- much less that they'll do so twice? When Holder was a partner in the white-shoe Washington firm of Covington & Burling, did he give his fancy private clients that kind of advice? Don't bet on it. Then there's the unpredictability of what evidence will be found admissible. There has never been a trial of the sort Holder has committed the government to: against foreign fighters captured in foreign countries, detained and questioned when the country seemed in imminent jeopardy of attack from them and their ilk -- and whose counsel in the last eight years have succeeded in creating a narrative that the previous administration treated them brutally and otherwise unlawfully. What possible basis could Holder have for his claimed certainty about just what kind, and how much, of the evidence against KSM and his co-defendants will be deemed "untainted" in this entirely unprecedented circumstance? No lawyer advising a private client -- much less a $1,000-an-hour Covington & Burling partner -- would give such an assurance in a million years, even about a run-of-the-mill trial of a run-of-the-mill case. Holder's certainty that a federal-court trial is more likely to be favorable to the government than if the defendants were tried before a military commission is also baseless.
Put aside the simple fact that Holder turned down the offer (made even before he took office) from KSM and his co-defendants to plead guilty in a commission proceeding -- so there was a 100 percent "chance" of conviction there. Even if that hadn't happened, how could a conscientious lawyer ever be certain -- to the point of giving sworn testimony before Congress -- that the outcome in one entirely unprecedented proceeding will be better than the outcome in another entirely unprecedented proceeding? Again, you can be sure that's not the way Holder expressed himself when he was making the big bucks at Covington. The truth is that there are no unloseable cases and so no basis for Holder's assurances. The only two things any experienced lawyer would know for sure are that a federal trial will give KSM & Co. the widest possible latitude in presenting their defense, and that their counsel are bound to use that latitude to put the Bush administration on trial. Is it just a coincidence that this means that, when Holder's present client seeks re-election, the media coverage of this trial will enable him to run against his predecessor yet again? There's another old adage: Politics makes strange bedfellows. NYPost
 On Monday night Bill O’Reilly had a representative of the traitor class in his cross-hairs, an episode he re-visited Tuesday night. The traitor class is easily defined as people who can’t identify a self-declared enemy of the United States even after he has killed 3,000 innocent people in an act of self-described holy war and is prepared to provide his talents and services gratis to help the enemy combatant attack this own country. Scott Fenstermaker is an attorney for Covington Burling, a white shoe law firm which has provided millions of dollars in pro bono legal work to Gitmo terrorists.
A Covington partner is the brother of Weather terrorist Kathy Boudin, and the lawyer organizing the Gitmo pro bono defense team is family friend and political comrade Michael Ratner, head of the terrorist-supporting Center for Constitutional Rights, who has spent his life defending America’s enemies and serving anti-American causes. If you can’t describe the 3000 innocent victims of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as “murdered” and your first move is to describe your own government’s case as propaganda, and you are devising a case to “justify” the evil deed your client has committed and won’t say that you would be upset if your country were to lose the case, and also if you’re a Jew and don’t have any problem defending an Islamic Nazi who beheaded Daniel Pearl after forcing him to say “I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew” — there can be only one explanation.
You believe in the justification defense you are preparing, you think America and the Jews are guilty and deserve what they get, and you are a traitor. And much worse — only words are inadequate to describe just how low on the human scale you have sunk. FPM
 THE prosecution case against the only accused Mumbai gunman to be captured alive will close today, one year after the attacks, bringing him a step closer to a possible death sentence. Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, who allegedly opened fire on commuters at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai's main railway station, has admitted to a high-security court that he was one of ten men who killed 166 people in a commando-style assault on India's financial capital a year ago.
To Indian eyes, however, justice will only be served when those behind the attack are brought to trial - something that they say would require more action by Pakistan, which is accused of sheltering them.
Mr Kasab, a Pakistani national, is accused of being a footsoldier for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group. He is charged with murder and waging war on India - crimes that carry the death penalty.
 Earlier this month, the Obama administration moved to transfer alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from the military justice system at Guantanamo Bay to the jurisdiction of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Behind this move away from the military tribunal system, which delivered justice so effectively at Nuremburg, is an $8.5 million lobbying effort by the so-called “ John Adams Project” launched in April, 2008 by the American Civil Liberties Union. With the endorsement of Clinton Attorney General Janice Reno, former boss of Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder, as well as former President Jimmy Carter, FBI and CIA chief William Webster, and others from both Republican and Democratic administrations, the ACLU‘s victory on behalf of the man sometimes described as “al Qaeda’s CEO” is also a defeat in the U.S.-led war on terror.
Thanks to the ACLU, a terrorist like KSM will now enjoy the constitutional rights reserved for American citizens. The civilian trial of a leading terrorist is the culmination of a years-long campaign by the ACLU to handicap U.S. efforts in the war on terror.
The ACLU responded to the 9/11 attacks with the formation of its so-called National Security Project. Under the leadership of the ACLU and its ideological affiliate, the so-called Center for Constitutional Rights, hundreds of lawyers from top law firms have worked without pay to “serve the caged prisoners,” as they call the terrorist detainees in American custody. Their assault on the courts, combined with Democratic electoral gains in 2006 and 2008, has seriously undermined the military commission system. With the ACLU and CCR lawyers having long claimed that the failure to provide constitutional rights to terrorist captives is a crisis for the United States, the Obama administration has stepped in to “solve” it by transferring Mohammed and the four others to civilian courts. But, to the ALCU and its liberal allies, the al-Qaeda defendants are merely pawns in a larger game aimed at shackling the American and international forces who have been fighting al-Qaeda since 9/11. Many of the ACLU’s campaigns have taken place under the “National Security Project.” Led by its CAIR-affiliated director, Jameel Jaffer, it reveals a broader picture of ACLU’s ongoing sabotage of American national security. More at FPM
 What: 9/11 Never Forget Coalition Press Conference. Details to be provided on December 5th rally protesting the NYC based trial of 9/11 conspiratorsLOCATION 100 yards east of Castle Clinton at Battery Park Gardens Restaurant.
When: November 24, 2009 12:00 noon
Who:
- Representative Pete King (R, NY)
- Debra Burlingame, co-founder 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America
- Tim Brown, founder TheBravest.com
- Andrew C. McCarthy, former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern
District of New York and prosecutor in the trial of the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing
- Peter Regan, Active FDNY, 2 Tour Iraq War Vet, 9/11 Family member The 9/11 Never Forget Coalition, a diverse group of 9/11 victims, family members, first responders, active and reserve members of the military, veterans, and concerned Americans, is holding a November 24th press conference to discuss the details of their December 5th rally protesting the plan to bring the 9/11 terrorist conspirators to trial in New York City. The Coalition formed to fight the decision of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to try the 9/11 co-conspirators in New York City’s federal court, effectively giving war criminals the same rights as American citizens while endangering the safety of all New Yorkers.
Two weeks ago, we sent a letter signed by 300 family members of 9/11 victims to the President, Attorney General and Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking them to reverse course.
The letter has now been signed by over 120,000 Americans and is posted at http://www.keepamericasafe.com. At the November 24th press conference, leading organizers of the Coalition will give details on a large rally which will be held on December 5th in New York City to protest the plan to bring terrorist detainees to trial in civilian courts. Debra Burlingame, founder of 911 Families for a Safe and Strong America, said “We chose to hold it on Thanksgiving Week in the hope that our fellow Americans will join us in sending our prayers and messages of thanks to our troops and first responders, who will bear the brunt of these dangerous decisions made in Washington.
Our rally on Saturday, December 5 will tell Attorney General Eric Holder, President Barack Obama and their supporters in Congress: We will fight you all the way! ” With thanks to Atlas
 by Leon de Winter I was involved with a similar fiasco with Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Holland. Why would Obama risk a constitutional crisis? Some years ago, when the legal position of Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a matter of national discussion in Holland (she had lied about her refugee status when she entered Holland fleeing an arranged marriage, a fact she had talked about many times in interviews), Minister of Immigration and Integration Rita Verdonk, herself a member of Ayaan’s political party, insisted on pushing this issue to the very edge. Vehemently, Ms. Verdonk stuck to the facts, and formally she was right. Yes, Ayaan had lied when she had fled to Holland, as many people knew inside and outside parliament, and formally Ms. Verdonk had the power to cancel Ayaan’s passport and declare her an illegal alien. The problem: What would this mean for the current session of parliament? Instead of 150 members, the Dutch parliament would have had only 149 members, a clear violation of the Dutch constitution. Together with my dear friend Afshin Ellian, a law professor at Leiden University, I wrote an op-ed piece for De Volkskrant, the Dutch New York Times (only better — Holland has a population of 16 million, and the paper has a daily print run of over 300,000 copies).
We wrote that Ms. Verdonk was right, but the consequences of her rightness could be devastating. It would mean a constitutional crisis unlike any we had ever seen in Holland.
Everything that was debated in parliament would need to be annulled and the laws canceled, since parliament had never formally started with full membership as the constitution dictates. And Ayaan would have to be arrested and sentenced, since she had been acting as an MP without being a Dutch citizen. Immediately, the presidium of parliament answered — the chairmen declared that Afshin and I overreacted. They stated it didn’t matter if Ayaan was Dutch or Somali, this was no problem for the functioning of parliament.
Of course, Afshin and I asked these politicians if parliament could also function with 148 members, or with 140, or 100 — where was the bottom line? The politicians tried to avoid this question, and after some weeks the status quo was protected.
In order to avoid constitutional chaos, regardless of the facts, Ayaan was declared a Dutch citizen and Rita Verdonk had to step down — although she had been right about Ayaan’s original legal status. I am not an expert in legal matters, but I have some questions about the criminal court case against the five terrorists who will be brought to New York City. There must be readers who have the expertise to help me, a simple Dutch expatriate in California observing the political and legal circus surrounding the present administration. Concerning the purity and transparency of the American justice system, I imagine it doesn’t make any difference if a suspect has killed one or two or a hundred people. The system has its own rules, equal to every suspect and blind to the identity of the suspect or his acts. The autonomy of the system is the essential difference between a legal system in a transparent democracy with separation of powers and the legal system in a tyranny. More at Pajamas Media
 BY Andrew C. McCarthy The prosecution team I led in 1995 convicted the notorious Blind Sheikh and 11 others for conspiring to wage a terrorist war that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and attempting (unsuccessfully) to attack New York City landmarks. Consequently, some observers seem puzzled that I'm a vocal critic of civilian trials for our terrorist enemies. But they are confusing litigation success with national-security success. So is the Obama administration in deciding to transfer Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 plotters to federal court in Manhattan. We certainly can convict terrorists in civilian court. We've done it too many times for that to be a serious issue. It's also indisputable that the U.S attorney's office in Manhattan, where I was privileged to work for 18 years, is without peer in the expertise needed for such complex prosecutions. I have every confidence the Justice Department could convict KSM & Co. The problem on this ride is not the destination; it's the journey. We are in a hot war, overwhelmingly authorized by Congress, against vicious enemies still plotting attacks that could dwarf the carnage of 9/11. To deal with war crimes, Congress in 2006 endorsed military commission trials, which have a rich pedigree in our history, are fully consistent with our Constitution, and better enable us to withhold intelligence methods and sources. Indeed, the Obama administration concedes that military commissions are sound: Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the bombers of the warship Cole will face one. From a legal standpoint, it makes no sense to try the Al Qaeda quintet in civilian court. Eleven months ago, these men were prepared to plead guilty in their military commission and proceed to execution.
Yet the Obama administration pulled the plug on that commission. This was a transparent sop to the left, which wants to judicialize war-fighting and is repulsed by the intelligence-centric, prevention-first counterterrorism strategy that has protected us for eight years from a reprise of the 9/11 atrocities. Now, our enemies will be given a full-blown civilian trial with all the rights of the American citizens they are sworn to kill. They will get a year or more to sift through our national defense secrets. They will have wide latitude to turn the case into a trial of the Bush administration - publicizing information about anti-terrorism tactics that leftist lawyers will exploit in their quest for war crimes prosecutions in foreign courts against current and former U.S. officials. In the military system, we could have denied them access to classified information, forcing them to accept military lawyers with security clearances who could see such intelligence but not share it with our enemies. In civilian court, the Supreme Court has held an accused has an absolute right to conduct his own defense. If KSM asserts that right - as he tried to do in the military commission - he will have a strong argument that we must surrender relevant, top-secret information directly to him. And we know that indicted terrorists share what they learn with their confederates on the outside. Finally, as policy, the administration's decision is perverse. A half-century of humanitarian law, beginning with the Geneva Conventions, sought to civilize warfare. To receive enhanced protection, combatants must adhere to the laws of war and refrain from targeting civilians.
Under Obama-logic, the Cole bombers get a military commission while the 9/11 savages are clothed in the majesty of the Bill of Rights. So here's the message to terrorists: If you kill thousands of civilians, we will give you better rights than if you attack military assets. That is dangerously irresponsible. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and the author of "Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad."
 The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead "not guilty" so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said today.Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but "would explain what happened and why they did it." The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the nation's deadliest terrorist attack will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the World Trade Center site. Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain "their assessment of American foreign policy," Fenstermaker said. "Their assessment is negative," he said. Fenstermaker met with Ali last week at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He has not spoken with the others but said the men have discussed the trial among themselves. Critics of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try the men in a New York City civilian courthourse have warned that the trial would provide the defendants with a propaganda platform. Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said today that while the men may attempt to use the trial to express their views, "we have full confidence in the ability of the courts and in particular the federal judge who may preside over the trial to ensure that the proceeding is conducted appropriately and with minimal disrupton, as federal courts have done in the past." NYPost
 BERLIN (AP) A German government official says the nation will send an observer to the upcoming trial in New York of the professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and four accused henchmen. Justice Ministry spokeswoman Katharina Jahntz on Saturday confirmed a report in Der Spiegel that a German observer would attend the trial to ensure that no evidence provided by Germany would be used to apply the death penalty. U.S. authorities announced last week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be tried by a New York court. No date has been set. Three of the four suicide pilots who carried out the attacks had lived and studied in the northern German city of Hamburg. Germany, like the rest of Europe, except for Belarus, does not execute criminals. 1010WINS H/T: Smooth Stone
 By Eric Zimmermann The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee expressed opposition today to Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to give civilian trials to the 9/11 plotters. Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) penned a letter to Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggesting military trials would be a more appropriate venue for the accused terrorists. "As a former prosecutor, I am not yet convinced that the right decision was made in these cases, nor that the presumption in favor of federal criminal trials over military tribunals for these detainees should continue," Skelton wrote. The Missouri Democrat argued that legislation passed in 2007 brought military commissions up to constitutional standards. He also invited Holder and Gates to testify about the administration's decision before the Armed Services Committee.
"The decision to terminate the prosecution of these self-confessed terrorists in military commissions, transfer them to the United States, and bring them into a federal courthouse for trial raises many serious questions which I would like you both to address in a full committee briefing on December 3, 2009, at 1:00 PM," Skelton requested.
Read the full letter after the jump. More at The Hill
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The Pentagon’s 86-page report on the Fort Hood massacre was “sanitized” to avoid discussing Islamic terrorism, the congressman who represents the base told POLITICO Monday. 
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