Well, this trial decision does reek of “atonement for Bush sins” drivel, as I have said. Yeech.

It also seems another clumsy maneuver by a play-pen elitist gang. They're trying whatever they can — now they want to house the terrorism suspects currently in Cuba, in Illinois. If it's good enough for the President's own state, it should put everyone at ease, I guess they may believe the public feels about it. (I think about the real-world implications, namely that all the other people in other states resisting any housing of suspects on NIMBY grounds — call it “safety,” “security threat,” whatever else, it's NIMBYism as well as political posturing for or against the two political parties' stance — will, if Illinois accepts the prisoners and gets federal money, reverse their stance and be angry that the federal government hasn't sent any prisoners to their states, too.) To what extent this is meant to be also “symbolic” [gag], I'm unsure.

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytim…

Good catch DDuck12.

Oh come on Jazz, you really want to set that kind of president?

There's no single, identifiable reason why he approved of this, either. PR stunt? Bush-laundering? Carterish “high-mindedness”? What?

This will be a huge PR/propaganda boost for radical Islam (and a possible recruiting tape), a slap in the face to moderate Islam, and we taxpayers in NY/NYC and Fed., will finance this Circus.
That said, I respect the desire of some of the murdered victims' families (I think they are split on this)
for a public trial, not a military one. I believe Obama's decision to reinstate the Military Commissions, was a good one. But, he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by letting the terrorists go from pleading guilty, in the Military Court, to a possible not guilty plea and the resultant Circus.

Well, they are the objects of abuse and the source, as well — and are being misused for PR stunt stuff this time. But I don't think there will be any kind of serious farce — all the concern about “backfiring” if things go wrong so far seems to be speculation on what could go wrong (PR-wise or otherwise) given things being conducted normally. (The most embarrassing scenario, for example, would be acquittals.)

It is accomplished fact, or is well on the way to being so, now.

This still doesn't address what will be done with people detailed after the war began, who were terrorists, i.e., war criminals, who could and probably should have been executed promptly in the field rather than brought to Guantanamo.

This show trial won't empty Guantanamo. What will be done to do that? (We're ages away from ceding the prison and the base someday back to Cuba, and greatly revising our Cuba relations and policy…one thing at a time)

The justification is the only thing that can be offered in defense of this stunt. It is a PR stunt, and a clumsy, stupid stunt. Holding it in New York City reeks of the most stupid childishness and basest appeals to emotion, as well as being an immediate basis for demanding a change of venue. That the suspects were tortured after the war started only compromises the situation. (Presumably there is so much other evidence, not obtained by torture, that the decision was made that the federal government could proceed nevertheless, despite the torture, that is.) This also reeks of a corrupt-Carteresque, clumsy attempt at trying to appear to seek a higher moral and behavioral plane, as remediation for the opprobrium the evil Bush-Cheney administration had wrought among the clucking PC cretins, so often in Europe rather than in left-extremist pockets here in the USA. If this was meant to appeal to the far Left and to fall back upon the Bush era, that only makes the Obama team look like bumbling elists again, once more clumsy and out of touch with the times and reality of the US public (which is what matters!).

Obviously this trial should be held elsewhere. I'd love to see it held on the West Coast, and while this trial has many a leftist anti-death-penality person hypocritically silent, what would be their response if the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals got involved later and somehow complicated or disrupted the show, which is what this show trail is being organized to provide, a show, Feeling Good, and bashing Bush?

Me too. Doesn't feel mean-spirited to me though. Feels human.