Apparently, all the 9/11 defendants will die of old age before the legal process can get its act together to put them on trial. It’s really impossible to exaggerate how badly the Bush administration screwed up the response to those attacks.
If the law was applied in any kind of normal sense, all the co-conspirators would have to be released because their habeas corpus rights were denied and because the evidence is tainted and because they were tortured and because they were denied counsel and because the FBI tried to recruit their counsel and because of ten other reasons I can’t even think of.
Of course, it’s unthinkable that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed or Ramzi bin al-Shibh would be set free under any circumstances. But that’s what would happen if we were willing to live with the consequences of the Bush/Cheney regime’s missteps. And that should be tattooed on the foreheads of not only Bush and Cheney, but Condi and Rummy and Stephen Hadley and Scooter Libby and Andy Card and Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of those incompetent lunatics.
