WH to Justice Dept: Let’s move KSM’s trial out of NYC

Via the NY Daily News (hat tip: Tom Maguire):

The White House ordered the Justice Department Thursday night to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan.

The dramatic turnabout came hours after Mayor Bloomberg said he would “prefer that they did it elsewhere” and then spoke to Attorney General Eric Holder.

“It would be an inconvenience at the least, and probably that’s too mild a word for people that live in the neighborhood and businesses in the neighborhood,” Bloomberg told reporters.

“There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive for New York City.”

State and city leaders have increasingly railed against a plan to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Manhattan federal court since Holder proposed it last month.

Sen. Chuck Schumer said he was “pleased” that the administration is reconsidering the location of the trial.

Earlier in the day, Schumer spoke “with high-level members of the administration and urged them to find alternatives,” said the senator’s spokesman, Josh Vlasto.

The order to consider new venues does not change the White House’s position that Mohammed should be tried in civilian court.

“President Obama is still committed to trying Mohammed and four other terrorist detainees in federal court,” spokesman Bill Burton said Thursday.

I feel so much safer, don’t you? 8-|

This administration doesn’t get it and never will. It wasn’t just the idea that KSM would be tried in NYC that was so bloody offensive; it was the fact that he was/is going to be tried in a civilian court when he 1) is not an American citizen, 2) is part of an Islamofascist outfit, one that has declared war on and are determined to make westerners either submit to radical Islam or die, and 3) has already admitted his guilt. We already know the whole “fair trial” excuse by the admin is a complete sham, and that the real reason the admin wants these trials held in the US rather than via a military tribunal at Gitmo is in hopes that it will reveal secret Bush admin counterterrorism practices in order to try and put the evil BushCo on trial. It’s their little way of appeasing the left without actually having any Bush admin official do a perp walk.

Luckily, a few of the adults still left in Congress are trying to stop this farce before it starts:

In Washington, Congressional Republicans who have long opposed criminal trials said they hoped to use the debate over trial locations to steer the cases back to military commissions.

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, introduced legislation on Wednesday that would block financing for civilian trials for those accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said he would introduce a parallel bill in the Senate next week.

Mr. Graham, an experienced military prosecutor who has long argued that foreign terrorists should be treated as enemy combatants, proposed a similar amendment in November but it failed to pass the Senate by 54 to 45. He said he believed the same measure could pass today.

More power to ’em.

Comments are closed.