Terrorist Trials in Military Courts? Holder Ignored Sense of Congress: DOJ Attorneys Tainted?

"The President's advisers," whomever they may be in this case, are preparing a turn-around on Eric Holder and Barack Obama's decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four others, in civilian court. Once again, the country has slogged through high-pitched drama simply because our president made a willful misjudgement. See a video below.

Eric Holder and Barack Obama

The Washington Post today said "the president's advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York...." The writers admitted that opposition to civil trials in New York City is "bipartisan," yet theorize if Obama bows to the demands of "Republicans," he might get the needed funding and legal authority to close Guantanamo Bay.

A Sense of Congress was attached to the 2010 National Defense Authorization to make it clear that Congress wanted military tribunals for terrorists, and while a Sense of Congress is not binding on the President, the amendment was written by Democrat Carl Levin (MI) who is the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Through a Sense of Congress, the preferred forum for the trial of alien unprivileged enemy belligerents [terrorists] is trial by military commission. 

Unprivileged enemy belligerents will not be read Miranda rights, unless an "unappealable court order requires it.

About two weeks after the bill was signed into law, with the Sense of Congress attached, Eric Holder publicly thanked Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-NC) for their work on the amendment - and announced he would bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed to New York City anyway, (then to make his point clearly, he repeated it: "New York City") for civil trial.

In less than two weeks time, Holder and Obama had verbally whacked Congress in the jaw with the equivalent of an iron girder straight out of the ruins of 9/11, and here is why: Military commissions have a distinct and purposeful differentiation from civil courts. A military court's first responsibility is to protect national security. The first responsibility of a civil court is to protect the rights of the defendant.

As the administration now floats the idea of moving terrorist trials to military courts at some "new, but unannounced location," Obama is surely trying to gauge the blowback of his Leftist followers. The ACLU has already released their statement lamenting that "this regrettable reversal under political pressure will strike a blow to American values and the rule of law and undermine America's credibility."

If this stunning reversal comes to pass, President Obama will deal a death blow to his own Justice Department, not to mention American values.

The ACLU didn't get the memo, evidently, that the first responsibility of a military trial is to protect America, as opposed to civil trials with the first responsibility to protect the accused's rights. Terrorism should lead to defending the national security of the country, first, foremost and always. The ACLU has other ideas and a long history of jihadist activism. And more.

The Obama-Holder partnership once again dumped chaos on this country, and they did it needlessly, and with heaped angst on the people of New York City, and most of those left behind when 3,000 died on September 11, 2001.

It's reasonable to wonder if the agenda is to get terrorists into civil courts and then allow, at the least, nine new Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys, who in the past represented terrorists in civil courts, to now try them in some limp-wristed manner. It's an evil thought. Just sayin'...

AG Eric Holder, with the approval of President Obama, has now awarded KSM his lawyer, his day in court and the full protection of the US Constitution.

Yet while Holder’s decision should infuriate us all, it also should come as no surprise.  His continued record of transnationalist legal activism makes any card holding member of the ACLU blush and is illustrative of the drastic difference between the Republican and Democrat mindset on prosecuting terrorism.  While Fox News has covered the radical group of Czars that Obama has appointed, the public has frankly been left in the dark about the radical leftist that controls the Justice Department. A simple run through of Holder’s record as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration for three years and his first 10 months in the Obama Administration clearly shows that America is best served with Holder submitting his resignation effective yesterday. Read more at ParcBench.

We have those in America who believe it a crusade to defend and ultimately release terrorists, or influence reduced sentences, and some have lied to make it happen, because they believe American policy somehow instigated the 9/11 attacks. Attorney Lynn Stewart, sentenced to a mere 28 months in prison for providing material support to Islamic jihadists:

The verdict against Rahman left Stewart in tears -- in large part due to the close personal relationship she had developed with her client. As a September 2002 piece in the New York Times Magazine showed, Stewart's affection for Rahman was profound:

"As Stewart got to know her new client, she came to see him as a fighter for national liberation on behalf of a people oppressed by dictatorship and American imperialism. She came to admire him personally too, for his honesty, his strength of character, his teasing humor. 'I've made up my mind,' the sheik would say. 'I'm going to marry you, and that will solve everything.' 'And what do women get if they fight in jihad?' [Stewart] would ask.'"

Lest we think this was a one-time event, note that Stewart once said: 

"My politics are those of inclusion, and I hope that my politics are represented in the people I actually represent.

She represented Weather Underground bomber Kathy Boudin, Black Panther Willie Holder. She has been quoted saying, if given the opportunity, she would defend Osama bin Laden. Her "hope" is understood, and we understand her politics.

Holder, under extreme pressure, released the names of seven unknown attorneys, now Department of Justice employees, who have worked on terrorism cases in the past. We have to ask why Holder would not release the names when Senator Charles Grassley asked for disclosure. When public servants will answer simple questions, as Holder ignored Grassley's, we have to assume, he/they had something to hide.

Those attorneys are:

Jonathan Cedarbaum- now an official with the Office of Legal Counsel

Eric Columbus- Senior counsel in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General

Karl Thompson- Office of Legal Counsel

Joseph Guerra- Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General at the Justice Department

Tali Farhadian- now an official in the Office of the Attorney General

Beth Brinkmann- now Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Civil Division

Tony West- the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division

Two attorneys previously revealed are National Security Division attorney Jennifer Daskal, who worked for Human Rights Watch, an advocate for terrorist detainees and Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal. If you are familiar with Human Rights Watch, you know that Jennifer Daskal will have to make quite a psychological adjustment to now advocate against detaines for the American people.

But after all this, we come back to the point that the Senate Armed Services Committee attached an amendment to legislation that Obama signed into law declaring that the Sense of Congress is that terrorists should be tried in military courts, and it took less than two weeks for Holder to place his uncommonly elegant pair of well-shod feet on that legislation and kick it into the drainpipe of conservative thought.

Terrorist Trials in Military Courts? (video)   Others talking about the chaotic policy of the Obama administration:

ChicagoRay  - The Lamest Show on Earth