Sunday - December 07, 2008

BRIT PAPER SAYS OBAMA TO DERAIL TERROR TRIAL.  ?? OK people, what’s happening back home?

‘Architect’ of 9/11 to go on trial
On Monday morning, a heavily built man will be led from a concrete cell, whose slit window overlooks the Caribbean, by soldiers whose name tags have been removed from their uniforms and replaced with a Velcro strip reading: “I don’t know.”

By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 3:03PM GMT 06 Dec 2008

The Supreme Court ruled in June that the Guantanamo detainees have a right to go before federal judges. But the Bush administration pushed through the trial of its most notorious captive so it could open before the president leaves the White House next month.

Lt-Col Darrel Vandeveld, a former Guantanamo prosecutor who resigned in disgust, said: “It’s absolutely clear that civilians running the commissions wanted to charge the 9/11 defendants to meet an arbitrary deadline. They wanted to rush what they viewed as the ‘worst of the worst’ through the system, regardless of the evidence or whether it had been obtained by waterboarding or other forms of torture.”

Generally I do not like to include my own viewpoint inside the stories here.  If I do it isn’t too much more then a line maybe two at the most.
But this has me bothered no end I confess.  The traitor quoted above, and yes he is that, has already been on Brit radio spewing his traitorous venom.
I do not have the entire article here, so please go to the link for everything.

Something I really want my countrymen and women to understand.  Gitmo and torture and gasp, American dishonor over what libs and euro-weenies calling human rights violations. Yadda,Yadda.  Any wonder I stay pissed off most of the time?  This Guantanamo and torture thing get play here and we’re the heavies, not the bombers.  So .... when I see a line in the paper here that says the following, I have to wonder just what the hell is going on back home and no, it isn’t all that easy to keep up even with computers.  I have other things here that keep me busy and wound like a tight wire.  I sometimes sign letters to ppl back home,
“The Prisoner.” So ok, you’re in a better position to know what’s happening there. (USA).  Here’s the quote:

“THE TERRORISM TRIAL OF THE DECADE BEGINS TOMORROW IN GUANTANAMO BAY—

SO WHY IS THE US PRESIDENT - ELECT PLANNING TO DERAIL IT?”

The other quote is: “OBAMA STORMS THE TORTURE CHAMBER.”

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one of three detainees the CIA admits to waterboarding, an “enhanced interrogation” technique that simulates drowning. Everything said in the court will be broadcast to the world on a 20 second delay so that classified material can be muted.

There is also a chance that the whole trial could be in vain if Mr Obama tears up the laws under which it is being conducted.

Clive Stafford Smith, who represents the former British resident Binyam Mohammed, awaiting trial in Guantanamo, is dismissive of the KSM hearing. “This is just a PR exercise. Nothing will come of it. It will all be shut down before the trial is completed,” he said.

The Sunday Telegraph has learned that Mr Obama’s aides have assured Western diplomats that he will announce the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and an end to “enhanced interrogation” as soon as he is sworn in. This could happen in his inauguration speech - or during his first week in office. The President-Elect is also planning a speech in an Arab city, probably Cairo, during his first 100 days to help repair relations with the Muslim world.

Lt-Col Vandeveld said: “The military commissions are bankrupt, morally and legally. We should end the shame of Guantanamo now, close it down. The handful of bona fide terrorists, who have been held at Guantanamo for as long as seven years, should be tried in a civilian court of law.”

Guantanamo has 242 remaining prisoners and it could take months to repatriate some and arrange alternative detention facilities on the US mainland for others. One diplomat said: “Obama will start things off pretty fast. We’re expecting a very early announcement. There will be a roadmap to closure and there will be some proper process of law. But it won’t shut down immediately. We recognise that there are real security threats with some of those left.”

A study of the remaining detainees conducted by the Weekly Standard magazine found that of the 242 prisoners, 174 either ran or attended terrorist training camps, 146 have either operated or stayed in an al-Qaeda or Taliban guest houses, 116 have links to jihadist recruiting networks and 112 fought in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

“KSM" himself, who is charged with 2,973 counts of murder, one for each person killed on September 11, is probably the most hated prisoner in US custody. The 9/11 Commission labelled him the “principal architect of the 9/11 attacks”. Without him there might well have been no 9/11 and no war on terrorism.

Captured in Pakistan in 2003 and sent to Guantanamo in 2006, KSM also confessed to personally beheading the American journalist Daniel Pearl, according to the CIA.

But KSM has subsequently retracted his confessions, claiming that translators “put many words in my mouth” and accusing his captors of torture.

His trial is a test, in part, of whether torture can ever be an effective or ethical part of the armoury of a Western nation.

Lt-Col Vandeveld is clear that it cannot. “Torture may result in reliable information, there’s no question about that. But is torture reconcilable with our basic humanity or with America’s desire to be an example to the rest of the world? The answer is no. Torture, however you define it, is wrong, appalling, immoral.”

A former CIA officer said, ‘You want to close Gitmo, fine, but make damn sure you know what you’re going to do with these people before you do.’ If you will only put them on trial after the fact it’s harder to prevent attacks.”

MORE GUANTANAMO STORY

Posted by peiper     on 12/07/2008 at 08:30 AM   
Filed Under: • RoPMA • Terrorists • War On Terror •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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