The main reason that supporters of Bush’s anti-terror policies are wetting their pajamas is pretty clear from a look at National Review Online:
We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda’s case against America. Since that will be their “defense,” the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America’s defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.
No doubt the defense attorneys will try to exclude evidence obtained while these defendants were being tortured in black prison sites. But, the DOJ isn’t going to rely on any of that evidence. No judge is going to allow a self-defense argument, so our policies are not going to be on trial. The indictments will be based on information obtained legally. The right is afraid that these folks will be convicted and sentenced to death for a crime that can proven without resorting to torture. And, then, what will be left of their justification for despoiling our country’s reputation for upholding human rights?
Their continued expression of fear at the prospect of having these terrorists present on American soil is pathetic. They ought to spend the rest of their days huddling in their 1950’s-built nuclear bombshelters. The only thing they fear more than terrorist attacks is having to face up to the pointlessness of what has been done with their support.
Best comedy. Look at the first comment in this thread.
Heh.
that’s awesome.
Ann Althouse is another bedwetter.
NSA warantless electronic surveillance = protecting our freedoms
Health Care Reform = Violation of our Fourth Amendment rights by government making the most extensive power grab in history.*
* From forwarded email I received:
This is what they believe. Bush and his theory of a Unitary Executive Branch is fine and dandy when a Republican is President. But “poof” it vanished the minute a Democrat took office, so that even legislation properly passed by Congress and signed into law is a massive power grab of unlimited and frightening scope. These same people no doubt take the money from Social Security and the health care coverage provided by Medicare without blinking an eye.
So now “interrogations [read torture], renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques” are “our defense secrets”? And the truth, however it falls, will “make our enemies more efficient at killing us”? What an incredibly venomous indictment of our country — in the minds of the posturing “patriots” at the NR, keeping our human rights violations and potential war crimes hidden from view is our only hope for survival? Are we now officially the spiritual descendants of Hitler, Stalin, and Pinochet?
It’s clearly still politics above all with them: it’s more important to protect Bush/Cheney than to risk letting out some truth about what has been done in our name. These “patriots” paint a picture of America as a place that is not even worth defending. Even Buckley must be spinning in his grave at how poisonous to America his legacy has become.
I love this assumption:
They automatically assume that the real revelations of crimes will be those committed by Bush and Cheney. I admit that that would be a nice side benefit, but it won’t happen.
For the history-impaired:
LMAO
LBJ
Who knew he was the power behind the FDR Presidency?
I’ve got a bit of advice for these folks: Put the TV on the floor and the channel on Fox. Gather up all your guns that Obama plans to take away and crawl under your bed with them in your arms while sucking on a tea bag and playing with yourself thinking that Sarah Palin was actually winking at YOU.
lol….ugh….LMAO…
what a hilarious, scary, confusing, wierd set of images…..
Love it!
Why are the tea baggers et al so afraid of the Bill of Rights? Could it be that they secretly hanker for a dictator to solve all their problems and relieve them of the necessity for some good, hard thinking. Time for them to grow up and start acting as responsible citizens.
Take the sucker out of your mouths, folks, the wadding out of your ears and the blind folds off of your eyes. The world, really, isn’t all that bad. Really.
check out ancestry.com…. a lot of teabaggers are descendants of Tories who lacked the balls to go back to England when they lost the Revolution, then forgot why they forgot…
sad group, I mentally turn down the volume and keep the eye open for weaponry, as I go my merry way…
The Right is afraid that that wussy law enforcement might turn out to not be so wussy after all.
And that history’s judgment of the Bush-Cheney folly might come sooner instead of later.
There is the possibility that some of the defendants might plead guilty in exchange for life imprisonment.
Now if troops are out of Iraq and Afghanistan before the trials are concluded, the “during a time of war” crap might not stand up anyway.
A $1 trillion foolish mistake laid at their doorstep: that is what they are afraid of.
In the play “A Man for All Seasons” the question of the law was discussed, and it has guided me often when I think the law unjust, and when I have wanted to tear it to pieces.
The following is an excerpt of a dialogue among Thomas More, his daughter and her suitor, William Roper, in Robert Bolt’s two-act play
.
More There is no law against that.
Roper There is! God’s law!
More Then God can arrest him.
Roper Sophistication upon sophistication.
More No, sheer simplicity. The law, Roper, the law. I know what’s legal not what’s right. And I’ll stick to what’s legal.
Roper Then you set man’s law above God’s!
More No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact – I’m not God. The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can’t navigate. I’m no
voyager. But in the thickets of the law, oh, there I’m a forrester. I doubt if there’s a man
alive who could follow me there, thank God….
Alice While you talk, he’s gone!
More And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
Roper So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, not God’s – and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
These people want to roll back the Enlightenment. I curse and damn them for it.
Nicely done.
So now there is no need for any of that democratic stuff like right to trial etc. Ignoring that brings us down to their level and as we have seen for years that only wrecks our international standing.