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defrogI was rather stretched for time back when New York, the GOP and America in general was freaking out over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants being taken to New York to stand trial. Which is as well, as I was thoroughly baffled, bamboozled and perplexed by all the hoopla.
Well, let me put that another way. I wasn’t surprised by the hoopla. Hoopla is what America does best when it comes to Teh Terrorz. I just couldn’t get my head around the reasons behind the hoopla.
Because as near as I could tell, the main objections were (1) Bringing terrorists onto US soil is extremely dangerous, even if the terrorists are still in jail and (2) It’s especially dangerous to try them in a civilian court (even though that’s how we’ve tried every other terrorism case in the US in the entire history of the US) because OMG what if they WIN? Then terrorism will be legal and we’ll all DIE!
Neither of which makes even the slightest bit of sense to me. So I figured I must be missing something, and that I needed time to work through the details – which, as I said, I didn’t have back when the story broke.
Luckily, that worked out pretty well, because since then, the BlogoNet has done all the heavy lifting for me.
Glenn “Constitution Boy” Greenwald has a pretty good (albeit really long) summation of what Eric Holder has in mind, how it adds up to a case of very selectively applied Rule Of Law (in essence: we’re only going to use civilian courts for slam-dunk cases, and use military tribunals for the ones the DOJ might actually lose) and why that’s a bad idea (at least if you don’t want yr justice system to resemble North Korea’s).
If that’s too much work, Fafblog brilliantly sums up the whole Gitmo Terrorist-Storage Offshoring dilemma as “Schrodinger's Guilt”:
Exactly.
Order in the court,
This is dF
Well, let me put that another way. I wasn’t surprised by the hoopla. Hoopla is what America does best when it comes to Teh Terrorz. I just couldn’t get my head around the reasons behind the hoopla.
Because as near as I could tell, the main objections were (1) Bringing terrorists onto US soil is extremely dangerous, even if the terrorists are still in jail and (2) It’s especially dangerous to try them in a civilian court (even though that’s how we’ve tried every other terrorism case in the US in the entire history of the US) because OMG what if they WIN? Then terrorism will be legal and we’ll all DIE!
Neither of which makes even the slightest bit of sense to me. So I figured I must be missing something, and that I needed time to work through the details – which, as I said, I didn’t have back when the story broke.
Luckily, that worked out pretty well, because since then, the BlogoNet has done all the heavy lifting for me.
Glenn “Constitution Boy” Greenwald has a pretty good (albeit really long) summation of what Eric Holder has in mind, how it adds up to a case of very selectively applied Rule Of Law (in essence: we’re only going to use civilian courts for slam-dunk cases, and use military tribunals for the ones the DOJ might actually lose) and why that’s a bad idea (at least if you don’t want yr justice system to resemble North Korea’s).
If that’s too much work, Fafblog brilliantly sums up the whole Gitmo Terrorist-Storage Offshoring dilemma as “Schrodinger's Guilt”:
If they stay in the box they might be guilty, but if we open the box they might not be.
Exactly.
Order in the court,
This is dF
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no subject
on 2009-11-29 03:25 pm (UTC)