Terrorism

The Worst Kind of Trial

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“Men, we’ve got to give this man a fair trial before we hang him.” — attributed to Judge Roy Bean.

Finding an impartial jury for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) is the least of our worries in President Obama’s decision to try him in a civil court. Our greatest concern is that it will be a shambles of a show trail that ignores all established legal precedent. The ramifications of that could be worse than terrorism itself.

What Obama the law professor fails to grasp is that none of the prerequisites exist for a fair civil trial in the case of terrorist captured overseas by intelligence agents.

For example, just for starters, what objective proof do we have that the individual who will show up in the courtroom is actually the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who planned 9/11? What do we do if he simply asserts he is not the person the government claims he is?

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Coincidence?

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It is pretty well established that Maj. Hasan, the person captured while engaging in a murderous shooting spree at Ft. Hood, was well known to coworkers and the FBI as a potential terrorist. He was trying to contact al-Qaeda and members of other terrorist groups, but nothing was done about this. It would be accurate to say that a fair amount of pressure is going to come to bear on the authorities for their inaction.

Federal prosecutors moved to close down four mosques and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper that is allegedly a front for Iranian organizations that funnel funds to terrorist groups. Big money is involved, and there should be headlines for weeks.

When it comes to operations of this scale, it obviously takes a great deal of time to investigate and collect enough evidence to prosecute. It isn’t like some cop on the beat who stumbles across a jimmied lock and catches a thief red-handed. But I do wonder if things weren’t speeded up a bit in order to provide some good press for the Feds in the midst of their performance with Maj. Hasan.

Quote of the Day

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From a comment by Brock at Belmont Club:

I’ve been saying this for some time. The American people are (largely) not suicidal, and will demand to know who is responsible, and they will therefore seek out the variable with the highest degree of correlation. But if some of the variables are hidden by law, they’ll use the (less precise) visible ones: race, ethnicity, gender, religion, national isotretinoinofficial origin. Every Leftist and Imam professes to be afraid that Ethnic Profiling or Religious Profiling is coming, but if they continue to prevent the rest of American from engaging in Ideological Profiling, then Ethnic Profiling is what we’re going to get. Lots of innocents will be harmed, but Americans will feel safer and think “It’s the best we could do in a bad situation.”

If Major Hasan had been Gay, would he still be in the US Army?

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Had Major Hasan made as much public about having gay lovers as he did about being an Islamist, would he have been discharged from the US Army before the recent FT Hood shooting?

If the US Army has a “watch list for gays,” then why doesn’t it have one for potential uniformed Islamists, to prevent terrorist attacks or “Sudden Jihadi Syndrome?”

This particular question has been all over conservative web sites and talk radio (The Glenn Beck show for one) this morning.

After all, TIME magazine reports 2/3 of Muslims enlisting in the US Military are resident aliens. A “Uniformed Islamist Watch List” would seem a basic counter-intelligence security precaution.

If the speculation stemming from British newspapers is true, the US Army seems to have known enough to move Major Hasan from Walter Reed hospital to FT Hood to keep him from stalking the Israeli Ambassador.

I would lay in a supply of microwave popcorn to see Senator Joe Lieberman ask Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey Jr. the questions of “What did the Army know, and when did they know it?” and “How does removing possible Islamists in the ranks differ from ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ procedures to remove suspected Gay soldiers?,” in front of the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee, under oath.

Are We Surprised?

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Although I suspect it is the BBC they mean, I often hear that American news is not as accurate as British news. I have my doubts. However, not too far from Fort Hood, I find this article that seems to give us more insight than the local or even the national. Not that, of course, that insight wasn’t what we expected. It describes the Iman of the mosque at which Hasan had worshipped as he counseled soldiers at Walter Reed. (Of course, thanks to Instapundit.)

Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother’s funeral was held there in May that year.
 
The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.
 
Hasan’s eyes “lit up” when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki’s teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday’s horrific shooting spree.
 
Charles Allen, a former under-secretary for intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, has described al-Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen, as an “al-Qaeda supporter, and former spiritual leader to three of the September 11 hijackers… who targets US Muslims with radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home in Yemen”.

I’m quite willing to acknowledge that the charming friend of my daughter from Pakistan and the guys who ran the filling station with the best hamburgers in town or my thoughtful & cheerful Egyptian student are not terrorists. That doesn’t mean that Hasan’s religion had nothing to do with his actions nor that this act was unconnected to terrorism. Perhaps that is true only in the broadest terms or perhaps he was a one-man (or more) sleeper cell. I don’t know. I care. But I care more about the fact that an unwillingness to face uncomfortable facts is part of the reason that people in Fort Hood and across the country are mourning their dead and praying for their wounded.