Guantanamo Bay on the Hudson
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Looks like a great place for Jihad.
Why was Gitmo established in the first place? To keep some of the most dangerous people in the world off the shores of the United States. A second, important reason, was to keep these people in military jurisdiction. Military courts differ from civilian courts in several ways, the most important being that sensitive intelligence information does not need to be exposed for all the world to see. When you reveal your intelligence information you also tell your enemies how you learned it and from whom.
Surrendering intelligence information can only weaken the country that reveals it and can only strengthen those who learn of it. Don’t believe me? It’s already happened once before:
Precisely because so much other evidence may not be admissable, prosecutors may have to reveal genuine secrets to get a conviction. Osama bin Laden learned a lot from the 1995 prosecution in New York of the “blind cleric” Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman for the first World Trade Center attack. His main tip was that the U.S. considered bin Laden a terrorist co-conspirator, leading him to abandon his hideout in Sudan for Afghanistan.
So President Obama has put the intelligence community in a real pickle: reveal your intelligence assets to make a stronger case but weaken yourself or withhold your intelligence information and strengthen the defense’s side thus making a conviction tougher.
In a piece I wrote back in April of 2009 titled “Guantanamo Bay on the Potomac” I said that moving the Gitmo bunch to stand trial in Alexandria, VA would creat unnecessary security risks for the surrounding public (who, ironically, voted in large numbers for Obama):
Putting detainees on trial in Alexandria would mean moving them from an isolated island prison 90 miles from Florida to a neighborhood brimming with residents, thousands of federal employees and the new Westin Alexandria Hotel 190 feet from the courthouse door.
Even the Democratic mayor of Alexandria was agains this move. And the same thing will be true for New York City. I think we can all agree that the safest place to hold a trial is 90 miles out to sea not in the heart of one of the largest cities in North America.
President Obama has made a big deal about using the civilian court system in order to show how our “rule of law” works but it’s too bad he hasn’t applied this standard to all “suspected” terrorists:
Contrary to liberal myth, military tribunals aren’t a break with 200-plus years of American jurisprudence. Eight Nazis who snuck into the U.S. in June 1942 were tried by a similar court and most were hanged within two months. Before the Obama Administration stopped all proceedings earlier this year pending yesterday’s decision, the tribunals at Gitmo had earned a reputation for fairness and independence.
As it happens, Mr. Holder acknowledged their worth himself by announcing that the Guantanamo detainee who allegedly planned the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole off Yemen and four others would face military commission trials.
What Liberal beliefs do is place the “principle” over the reality (but only in certain cases when it’s more politically convenient to do so). What President Obama is really doing is giving our enemies an excellent opportunity to learn some of our most secret intelligence, stage a spectacular terrorist activity, and put innocent Americans at risk should there be a bombing.
This trial is a recipie for disaster. Sure, nothing may happen but is that really worth betting the lives of innocent people on this? Of course it’s not.
Yet another example of how Liberal politics are all “show” and no “go.”
If there is a terrorist act during the trial you can bet Team Obama will say it was George W. Bush’s fault because he, after all, created Gitmo.
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