This decision to conduct civilian trials for a group of the worst offenders from Gitmo, including 9/11 mastermind KSM, is troubling - as in it doesn't seem to make any sense, unless one accepts conservative taking point that this is just a way to put the Bush administration on trial by proxy for the purposes of mollifying the uber left - the argument I guess being that in a civilian trial all the torture and other supposed abuses of due process endorsed by Bush will perforce be put on trial too.
If that's the reason then of all the bad decisions Obama has made so far this may go to the top of the list because from what I've read there seems to be a plethora of downside here and very little if any upside - the rationalization that this somehow sends a good message to the wider world viz American ideals of justice and openness seems ridiculous seeing as how KSM has already been prejudged and the outcome predetermined making it but a show trail which, for my money, would seem to discredit the system, not redeem it - hell, Obama himself went public yesterday with the pledge that KSM would certainly be executed which, as one wag put it, so sullies the jury pool that you'll be able to traverse it by walking on the bloated corpses.
Throw in not only the security concerns for New York, but the very real national security concerns since, if KSM chooses to act as his own attorney, he has the right to see all the evidence against him - the fact you're giving a soap box to the guy which, if he's as clever as I imagine he is, he'll be able to manipulate to his heart's content - the truly vexing problem of blurring the line between civilian and military forms of justice to the detriment of the latter - if OBL is captured tomorrow, will he have to be read his Miranda rights? will he have constitutionally protected right to remain silent? will a chain of evidence need to be secured? if we deny him a civilian trail, how can that now be legitimately justified? Lindsey Graham, in questioning the AG yesterday, brought to light two troubling realities: one, breaking down the barrier between military and civilian justice creates real problems on the battle field when it comes to dealing with illegal combatants; and two, the AG had no good answers for the senator - which says to me they haven't really thought this through - which seems to lend credence to the idea that their motivation is strictly ideological, placate the uber left.
I'm hardly an expert on jurisprudence [well, I'm hardly an expert on anything, truth be told] - but I've read nothing that convincingly suggests this is anything other than a reckless and utterly misguided act of blind partisanship that plays fast and loose with real issues regarding national security.
