Administration may send 9-11 terrorist back to military commissions

Washington Post:

President Obama's advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.

The president's advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York and demands, mainly from Republicans, that Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators remain under military jurisdiction, officials said. While Obama has favored trying some alleged terrorists in civilian courts as a symbol of U.S. commitment to the rule of law, critics have said military tribunals are the appropriate venue for those accused of attacking the United States.

If Obama accepts the likely recommendation of his advisers, the White House may be able to secure from Congress the funding and legal authority it needs to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and replace it with a facility within the United States. The administration has failed to meet a self-imposed one-year deadline to close Guantanamo.

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The decision to close Gitmo was a screw up that was compounded by the decision to try the 9-11 terrorist in courts in the US after they had already agreed to plead guilty. That latter decision borders on criminal malpractice. At best it was based on ideological considerations that had little to do with our national security interest or justice. Based on what the President and the Attorney General have said they would just be show trials with the verdict and the sentence already decided.

Closing Gitmo is still a mistake and this Lindsay Graham compromise corrects only the trial portion of the screw up. The idea that Gitmo is creating terrorist is based more on enemy propaganda than objective reality. They will make the same bogus case against whatever place the prisoners wind up at. It is what they do. That Obama and his administration fell for this scam tells you something about their poor judgment.