Bill Clinton: "We will do whatever we can to bring the murderers to justice."

[Karen Kraft]

Bill Clinton: "We will do whatever we can to bring the murderers to justice."

http://www.thoughtequity.com/video/clip/1B17324_0076.do

CBS News 1990s Comp
President Bill Clinton speaking after bomb attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, "we will do whatever we can to bring the murderers to justice", Washington DC; 12 Aug 98

People who work in, around, and for our embassies worldwide, including the United States Marines, put their lives at risk for America every day.

Rigging a spoof court system to acquit the murderers would never be allowed by an American president.

Impeach the poser!

 

[RobDownSouth]

20-to-life conviction = acquittal?

You do have some rather fanciful legal interpretations.

Now be a good little pecksniff and remind everyone that you have me on ignore.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

But beyond that, the Justice Department walks away from the case as a big loser. That’s because the Obama administration made this much more than a terrorism trial. It cherry-picked the case to be a demonstration that the civilian criminal-justice system is up to the task of trying terrorists. This was to be the “turn the clock back” moment — specifically, back to the Clinton years, when Eric Holder was deputy attorney general and when prosecution in civilian courts was the U.S. government’s principal response to the jihadist onslaught that began with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

This was the model that Barack Obama campaigned on and that the anti-anti-terrorist Left takes as an article of faith. No more Bush-era counterterrorism: no enemy combatants, no military commissions, no indefinite detention, and certainly no aggressive interrogation. The president and his attorney general are adamant that “the rule of law” must be restored.

Never mind that the laws of war — which support all the Bush-administration measures — are the rule of law during wartime. Never mind that at no point in our history have the nation’s wartime enemies been given access to the civilian justice system and endowed with all the protections and presumptions that American citizens receive. To the Obama Left, the law-enforcement approach is effective national security, a way to win the hearts and minds of Muslims and consequently make ourselves safer. It makes no difference that the country was demonstrably unsafe — and repeatedly attacked — during the Clinton years. Nor does it matter that people in Islamic countries have no idea of the legal differences between American civilian and military proceedings — they care only that we are imprisoning Muslims, not about the abstruse details of our basis for doing so.

The Obama Justice Department saw the Ghailani case as the perfect opportunity for the civilian system to prove itself. After all, the case had already been tried successfully: In 2001, before the 9/11 attacks, four terrorists were convicted and sentenced to life terms. Moreover, while critics of the law-enforcement counterterrorism model emphasize that civilian due process requires the government to hand over too much sensitive intelligence, thereby educating the enemy while we are trying to defeat the enemy, that argument was significantly diminished in Ghailani’s case. Because the case had already been tried in the civilian system, most of the relevant intelligence had already been disclosed. You could contend that this was not a good thing, but for better or worse it had already been done.

But instead of a shining moment for proponents of civilian prosecution, the Ghailani case is a body blow.

Even before the trial began, the trial judge ruled that prosecutors could not call a key witness, the man who had personally sold explosives to the defendant. The court reasoned that the government had learned of the witness during the CIA’s coercive interrogation of Ghailani, so permitting the testimony would have violated what the judge found (and the government did not dispute) were the alien terrorist’s Fifth Amendment rights. Similarly, the jury was not allowed to learn that Ghailani had confessed, and that after the bombing he had become a celebrity in al-Qaeda circles.

That is, swaddled in the protections of civilian due process, Ghailani was allowed to pose before the jury as a victim of circumstances who had no idea that the terror network was preparing simultaneous massacres at American embassies.

It seems to have worked, at least with one juror, who reportedly held out for a complete acquittal for several days.

Andrew McCarthy
NRO

 

[mercury14]

20-to-life conviction = acquittal?

You do have some rather fanciful legal interpretations.

Now be a good little pecksniff and remind everyone that you have me on ignore.

Yes in KK's mind a 20-to-life sentence is getting off scott-free. Especially when no parole board is going to let this dude out after minimum time. He's going to be locked up either until he dies in prison or is old and decrepit. That's what KK and a bunch of Republicans are calling an aquittal though.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

284 acquittals is a good thing?





Probably gets a reduced sentence or exonerated upon appeal...

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Yes in KK's mind a 20-to-life sentence is getting off scott-free. Especially when no parole board is going to let this dude out after minimum time. He's going to be locked up either until he dies in prison or is old and decrepit. That's what KK and a bunch of Republicans are calling an aquittal though.

Just proving you're as stupid as the average Republican...

LOOK KAREN! It's a WALNUT TREE!
__________________

AJ: I live in an oak forest...

fs: AJ, I'm standing in front of this tree and it's clearly a walnut, you don't live in an oak forest.

AJ: A forest will have more than one type of tree, but one usually predominates.

fs: All I see is this fucking Walnut tree! You're misusing the term Oak. It's just a forest.

AJ: 90% of the trees are oak.

fs: Now, you're just redefining the terms... We can't go any further with this conversation until you admit that this is a walnut tree...

AJ: Yes firespin, it's a walnut tree.

fs: Then you lied, you're stupid, you're inconsistent, and you make NO sense what-so-ever...

 

[mercury14]

284 acquittals is a good thing?





Probably gets a reduced sentence or exonerated upon appeal...

As in most cases like this, most charges were made by prosecutors because... why not? They don't expect them to stick but they know 285 charges makes a person seem much more guily than ten charges.

 

[mercury14]

Just proving you're as stupid as the average Republican...

LOOK KAREN! It's a WALNUT TREE!
__________________

Just proving you're as stupid as the average Republican. "We believe in Freedom and LIFE! Unless we want to torture you, pay Egypt to pry off your fingernails with a screwdriver, execute you, or put you in prison forever... all without charging you of anything."

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

As in most cases like this, most charges were made by prosecutors because... why not? They don't expect them to stick but they know 285 charges makes a person seem much more guily than ten charges.

The defense had the one juror they could get only in a liberal bastion like NYC and nearly got a complete acquittal...

Now the jury pool has been tainted and next time they'll get two jurors.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

This was the model that Barack Obama campaigned on and that the anti-anti-terrorist Left takes as an article of faith. No more Bush-era counterterrorism: no enemy combatants, no military commissions, no indefinite detention, and certainly no aggressive interrogation. The president and his attorney general are adamant that “the rule of law” must be restored.

Never mind that the laws of war — which support all the Bush-administration measures — are the rule of law during wartime. Never mind that at no point in our history have the nation’s wartime enemies been given access to the civilian justice system and endowed with all the protections and presumptions that American citizens receive. To the Obama Left, the law-enforcement approach is effective national security, a way to win the hearts and minds of Muslims and consequently make ourselves safer.

Andrew McCarthy
NRO

Contrary to McCarthy's rant, the Obama administration has retained the option of prosecution under military tribunals and has never repudiated the concept of indefinite detention. Enemy "access to the civilian justice system" via writs of habeas corpus has been granted by the Supreme Court as early as 2004 in the case of Rasul v. Bush and has been expanded through the 2008 case of Boumediene v. Bush. I don't recall Obama or anyone in his administration filing amicus briefs for the defense in either case.

And never mind that far too many of the Bush administrations legal interpretations surrounding the laws of war have been overturned by the courts. And whatever one's personal beliefs about the wisdom of such repudiations, the FACTS regarding the extent to which the rules of law align themselves with Bush administration measures is far from the state that McCarthy seems to believe.

Moreover, for someone who apparently believes that the prosecution of Ghailani via the civilian court system was such a major tactical blunder, McCarthy spends scant little time documenting the apparent ease with which Ghailani would have presumably been convicted on the remaining 284 charges under a military tribunal.

Since there appears to be widespread belief that procedural due process and protection of a defendant's rights are all but non-existent under the military justice system, it would seem to have been a simple matter for McCarthy to make that case.

One can only wonder why he didn't.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

This guy was never an American, never on American soil, and he confessed...

He HAD to have a civilian trial, or as Andy posits, is this nothing more than a return to a "legal" issue instead of them being at war with us? I mean let's face it, instead of looking for them, we're molesting three-year olds in the name of political correctness.

They are now, officially winning again. We're harsher on our own citizens than we are on them and that was one of their goals; taking away our freedom by killing us and pitting us against each other.

To answer the last question, he must have thought he was making the superior point.

I'm no lawyer. I would have merely shot the guy as soon as he confessed and lost not a wink of sleep over it. I'm a realist.
__________________
"You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality."
Ayn Rand

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Wanna know what I'm looking for?



CAIR to have a hissy and the TSA to stop searching burkas...




There's a real tragic comedy in the making here.

 

[RobDownSouth]

This guy was never an American, never on American soil, and he confessed...

Alright, let's reverse circumstances here.

Let's say you throw a bomb at the Kenyan embassy in Washington DC (coz you're protesting Kenya's refusal to release Obama's birth certificate). One person is killed.

You are subsequently caught, of course.

Now then, who should have jurisdiction?

1. American civil court
2. American military tribunal
3. Kenyan civil court
4. Kenyan military tribunal

I look forward to watching you squirm to avoid answering this question.

 

[mercury14]

The defense had the one juror they could get only in a liberal bastion like NYC and nearly got a complete acquittal...

Now the jury pool has been tainted and next time they'll get two jurors.

What does being a liberal have to do with anything? Liberals don't believe that terrorism is a crime? How do you know this juror wasn't one of the millions of conservatives in NY? Maybe he didn't think the prosecution made enough of a case?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

What does being a liberal have to do with anything? Liberals don't believe that terrorism is a crime? How do you know this juror wasn't one of the millions of conservatives in NY? Maybe he didn't think the prosecution made enough of a case?

Terrorism is NOT A CRIME!




It is an act of WAR. That was the finding of the 9-11 commission, they were at war with us, we were not at war with them, we were treating it as a legal matter and they exploited that to hit us...

For Christ's sake, the underwear bomber was on watch lists, his dad turned him in, and they STILL LET HIM ON A PLANE!

Once he confessed, he should have been marched out and decently SHOT!!!

Now he stands a chance of going scott-free when he gets before the appeals court, just like the let Bill Ayers go free as a bird on a technicality...

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Alright, let's reverse circumstances here.

Let's say you throw a bomb at the Kenyan embassy in Washington DC (coz you're protesting Kenya's refusal to release Obama's birth certificate). One person is killed.

You are subsequently caught, of course.

Now then, who should have jurisdiction?

1. American civil court
2. American military tribunal
3. Kenyan civil court
4. Kenyan military tribunal

I look forward to watching you squirm to avoid answering this question.

Insufficient information to answer.

I need to know whose police car I was in when they drove me downtown. (Come to think of it, I need to know the name of the town! )

 

[Karen Kraft]

This guy was never an American, never on American soil, and he confessed...

He HAD to have a civilian trial, or as Andy posits, is this nothing more than a return to a "legal" issue instead of them being at war with us? I mean let's face it, instead of looking for them, we're molesting three-year olds in the name of political correctness.

They are now, officially winning again. We're harsher on our own citizens than we are on them and that was one of their goals; taking away our freedom by killing us and pitting us against each other.

To answer the last question, he must have thought he was making the superior point.

I'm no lawyer. I would have merely shot the guy as soon as he confessed and lost not a wink of sleep over it. I'm a realist.
__________________
"You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality."
Ayn Rand

People who do not understand how terrorism works say that, were we to torture iSlammer prisoners (which we don't), it would be tantamount to allowing terrorism to win, as we are forced to "stoop to their level." This is yet another example of the left's total misunderstanding of terrorism.

Sorry for the repeat, but I think many people here either are new or have forgotten my Philosophy of Terrorism 101 lesson points:

The intent of terrorism is NOT to cause widespread destruction in the target country. While that may be seen (by them) as a nice sort of thing, it is only a happy bi-product of terrorist acts.

The MAIN purpose of terrorist acts is to force the governments of open and free societies to curtail freedom, limit civil liberties, OF THEIR OWN POPULATION so as to cause widespread public discontent with said governments.

Thus, Grasshoppers, when we grant civil liberties to iSlammers but invade the privacy and civil rights of Americans, THAT IS THE TIME TO SAY THAT THE TERRORIST WON.

Quiz next Friday - closed book.

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

They ARE winning!





We refuse to win because it might make us look bad.

 

[Karen Kraft]

They ARE winning!





We refuse to win because it might make us look bad.

Yes, you are 100% correct.

Well said.

 

[mercury14]

Terrorism is NOT A CRIME!




It is an act of WAR. That was the finding of the 9-11 commission, they were at war with us, we were not at war with them, we were treating it as a legal matter and they exploited that to hit us...

For Christ's sake, the underwear bomber was on watch lists, his dad turned him in, and they STILL LET HIM ON A PLANE!

Once he confessed, he should have been marched out and decently SHOT!!!

Now he stands a chance of going scott-free when he gets before the appeals court, just like the let Bill Ayers go free as a bird on a technicality...

From your precious 911 Comission Report:

"5.The U.S. government must define what the message is, what it stands for. We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors. America and Muslim friends can agree on respect for human dignity and opportunity. "

Does it hurt to be so hypocritical?

 

[firespin]

From your precious 911 Comission Report:

"5.The U.S. government must define what the message is, what it stands for. We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors. America and Muslim friends can agree on respect for human dignity and opportunity. "

Does it hurt to be so hypocritical?

Generous and caring neighbors, hmm?

"GERMANY, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, taking into consideration the agreement, which has been already reached in principle for the cession to Germany of the Sudeten German territory, have agreed on the following terms and conditions governing the said cession and the measures consequent thereon, and by this agreement they each hold themselves responsible for the steps necessary to secure its fulfilment: "

 

[mercury14]

Terrorism is NOT A CRIME!




It is an act of WAR. That was the finding of the 9-11 commission, they were at war with us, we were not at war with them, we were treating it as a legal matter and they exploited that to hit us...

For Christ's sake, the underwear bomber was on watch lists, his dad turned him in, and they STILL LET HIM ON A PLANE!

Once he confessed, he should have been marched out and decently SHOT!!!

Now he stands a chance of going scott-free when he gets before the appeals court, just like the let Bill Ayers go free as a bird on a technicality...

The 911 Comission Report said that Bin Laden decared war by issuing a Fatwah. It also says that he is not qualified to issue a Fatwah. But he can still declare war, organize, etc.

Nowhere in the report does it declare that "terrorism is not a crime". Sure, Al Qaeda acts can be acts of war. But what about terrorists not linked to any entity that declared war? From what I'm reading those kinds of terrorist acts are not said to be acts of war.



http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/pdf/fullreport.pdf

 

[Karen Kraft]

Generous and caring neighbors, hmm?

"GERMANY, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, taking into consideration the agreement, which has been already reached in principle for the cession to Germany of the Sudeten German territory, have agreed on the following terms and conditions governing the said cession and the measures consequent thereon, and by this agreement they each hold themselves responsible for the steps necessary to secure its fulfilment: "

Hitler had every right to politely ask that the Sudetenland be returned to Germany, where it had been since before formation of the German Federation. This is a lesson not learned after The Great War, but was subsequently learned after WWII (return of lost Japanese Islands in the Pacific after the war). Chamberland's convincing the Czechs to release the area to Germany was a move of his choosing. By October 1, when German troops entered Sudetenland, it was not an invasion of a foreign power. It was Germany demonstrating sovereignty over lands legally acquired by her. Those who don't like the legal knit-picking should take it up with Chamberland, not Hitler.

The moral of the story is this: Be careful for whom you vote.

Hmmmm?

 

[phrodeau]

Um, you know it was the CIA's questionable evidence-gathering techniques that horsed up the trial, right?

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Terrorism is NOT A CRIME!




It is an act of WAR. That was the finding of the 9-11 commission, they were at war with us, we were not at war with them, we were treating it as a legal matter and they exploited that to hit us...

For Christ's sake, the underwear bomber was on watch lists, his dad turned him in, and they STILL LET HIM ON A PLANE!

Once he confessed, he should have been marched out and decently SHOT!!!

Now he stands a chance of going scott-free when he gets before the appeals court, just like the let Bill Ayers go free as a bird on a technicality...

The legal fact of the matter is that terrorism can be either a mere crime or an act of war. Hell, it can even be a "war crime" (remember those?).

All acts have legal consequences in the larger context of how, where and when they are committed. They're ALL "legal matters" and I seriously question your legal acumen if you believe that an execution without trial is warranted under ANY legal system upon the defendant's confession to INTENDING to commit an act of terrorism, that was nonetheless UNSUCCESSFUL and resulted in no injuries or death.

Even the defendants in Ex Parte Quirin, all illegal combatants and confessed spies, were tried and sentenced by a military tribunal.

Finally, what you call a "technicality" most certainly has to do with laws and procedures which we as a civilized society have instituted to curb abuses by law enforcement, preserve the integrity of evidence and generally guarantee the consistent administration of justice across multiple jurisdictions. If it was your ass on the line, I suspect you would have a different attitude about the nature of legal technicalities and probably reference them by their proper name: due process.