Moving trials to New York City is a terrible mistake

Now, eight years after Khalid Sheikh Mohammed masterminded the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City and the loss of almost 3,000 lives, he and four of his thuggish accomplices are to face trial — almost within a stone’s throw of the spot where the towers stood.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement this Friday of that startling decision came almost as a bolt from the blue — or maybe like one of the Plagues of Egypt. No wonder President Obama’s man chose Friday to announce this addle-pated decision — it’s the day that government decisions, statistics, etc., sure to raise hackles or controversy are traditionally made public, in hopes not as many people will find out about them.

Why couldn’t these men have been tried in military courts at the base at Guantanamo where they have been held for eight years? Did the Obamaites fear that conviction and death penalties would come too quickly and easily that way?

Americans should remember how Holder announced a few months ago that the Obama Administration plans to pursue an investigation of federal agents for allegedly “water-boarding” suspected terrorists during the Bush Administration. Was this shifting of the trials to a civilian court in New York City a “leg up” for defense lawyers so they can use the alleged torture against the prosecution in defending their clients? Holder said Friday that he is “confident” the evidence is sufficient to convict all five terrorists. Well, surprise, surprise! What prosecutor would have said publicly, “Well, the case against them is weak, but I’m going to take it to trial anyway”?  Sure, Mr. Holder; I’m confident the district attorney in the O. J. Simpson case said he had a slam-dunk, too.

So the defense attorneys get a break from the government by the moving of the trial not only to a civilian court, but to one in the very city where the main 9/11 attack took place. Massive publicity for the terrorists, who have seemed proud of what they did and may deliberately disrupt court proceedings.

And here’s another problem: I covered numerous murder trials in Jefferson Circuit Court during my years at The Madison Courier. At least twice, a case was venued to another county, or the jury pool was made up of citizens from another county, due to the pre-trial local publicity about the case. The defense attorney was able to convince the judge in each case that  his client or clients couldn’t get a fair trial in Madison — that the potential jury pool was tainted by the publicity.

So in the most spectacular terrorist attack of modern times, the government actually thinks it can pick a jury from the New York City area, where the attack took place, where hundreds of families lost loved ones to these Muslim murderers? Ha! Dream on, Mr. Holder and President Obama. What do you want to bet that either (a) the jury selection drags on for months and months, or (b) it becomes obvious that an impartial jury can’t be empaneled in New York, and the case has to be moved elsewhere? The terrorists could die of old age before they can be brought to trial! A military trial, at Guantanamo, would have avoided all these problems. But, no, Obama and Holder were determined not to do it the way George W. Bush would have done it.

Then there’s the matter of religion. The accused terrorists are militant, implacable Muslims, apparently believing that their faith commands them to kill those who are not Muslim and who refuse to convert. President Obama was born in Hawaii (but why won’t they make his birth certificate public?), of an American white woman and a Kenyan black man. His father came from a Muslim family, although he was apparently not a practicing member of the faith. After Obama Sr. abandoned his family, and his wife divorced him, Obama’s mother re-married, to an Indonesian man who was also a Muslim, as most Indonesians are. The couple and her son lived in Indonesia for several years while he was a child. He attended a “madrassa,” or school, there, and those are usually operated as Muslim institutions, although Obama’s defenders insist this one wasn’t. Then, many years later after he moved to Chicago as an adult, Obama became a Christian — in Rev. Wright’s church.

Was Obama once a Muslim? That apparently can’t be proved or disproved. But if he was, or if he was influenced by living in a Muslim nation for several years, might not that subtly bias him in favor of these 9/11 terrorists? I’m not saying it does, because I can’t get inside his head. But it’s possible. If so, it would give a bizarre explanation for the moving of the trials to New York City, to a civilian court.

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Speaking of Obama, did anyone watch him on TV this weekend, bowing deeply to the Japanese emperor as he had done earlier to the king of Saudi Arabia? Doesn’t he know that in international diplomacy, all heads of state are considered to be equal, so they don’t do such things (unless BOTH he and the emperor and the king had bowed, simultaneously; neither of the monarchs did, though.) When he met Queen Elizabeth II, however, he only inclined his head very slightly while shaking hands. And Michelle Obama violated protocol by patting the queen on the shoulder while towering over her.

Maybe Barack Obama only bows to non-white monarchs.

And finally, there was a photo published this weekend of Obama, posing with several Asian heads of state, about five across, all of them grinning and wearing — are you ready for this? — what looked like updated, stylishly cut versions of the old Mao suit! With Obama standing dead center of the others, the photo begged for a caption: “Nobody here but us Chinamen!”