The Neo-cons wanted a war and saw 9/11 as an opportunity to declare war against the nebulous al Quida enemy and thereby the Arab oil-states, whichever Arab oil-state they chose. There is no country of al Quida and therefore no country to declare war upon. The War On Terror was a fabricated frame to enable BushCo to proceed with their imperialistic agenda in Iraq.

The al Quida terrorists are mass murderers, not enemy combatants. Granted, mass murderers on an unprecedented scale but mass murderers nonetheless. They should be tried, convicted and executed. NOW. We’ve been dithering around with the BushCo war frame long enough. It is time for pure and simple American justice, swift and mighty, to prevail.

I think the Bush Justice Department was such a departure from justice that recovery from it may not be complete. Holder/Obama have not yet had time to establish their footprint, so we are going on faith, so to speak.

Justice aside, security is an important issue, especially with regard to consideration of the sophistication of the 9/11 operation. Or, could another Nidal Hasan have his/her way. How easy is it for a suicide bomber to do his/her thing? You can bet there will be a number of volunteers. It may be easier for us, not being NYC residents, not having witnessed 9/11 up close, to pass on the fear factor. On security, has Obama been tested yet?

Look, I’m trying to work my way through this issue. I know what I want to believe!

NY citizens lived through the trial of the 1993 WTC bombers and one of the reasons they decided to do this in NYC had to do with the fact that they already have the security protocols.

Really, I wish I could understand how it is that so many of us could have so little confidence in our justice system.

My main point is that since KSM is an alleged war criminal, or as the Bush people put it, an [alleged] enemy combatant, he therefore can be tried in a military tribunal. That’s the alternative. Moreover, he is not an American Citizen. For these two reasons, unless I am mistaken, KSM does not, strictly speaking, come under the jurisdiction of the Constitution.

I still cannot help but wonder if it is worthwhile putting NYC citizens through this process, including the cost for the trial and of the security, to procede with the Holder/Obama recommendation.

Is there some higher principle, like due process, at stake in which it is worth this tortuous path to justice? In this case, isn’t justice served with a military tribunal?

And regarding your 3rd category, UI, the military tribunal route is the only alternative for their trials.

I thought I wanted Bush, Cheney, and Gonzo to be charged with something for their role in torture.

But this is way better.

I think the reason there’s also a military tribunal is that there are some detainees who can’t be tried in the U.S. courts because the evidence is so tainted by torture.

It is something of a shame, isn’t it, that AG Holder has to push back on repubs to explain that Due Process is sorta the name of the game.

Didn’t we all of this handwringing for Zacarias Moussaoui? And he is in jail forever.

Perhaps Lynne Stewart should have quit while she was behind. Convicted of abetting terror while acting as an attorney for the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, Stewart had remained free on bail while appealing her conviction. Today, the federal appeals court not only upheld her conviction and revoked her bail, but they also sent the case back to the district court for reconsideration of the shockingly light 28-month sentence Stewart initially received

Disbarred radical lawyer Lynne Stewart is going to jail – maybe for a lot longer than she thought.

A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld her conviction for smuggling messages to her jailed terrorist client, and said she deserves more than the 28 months she got because she may have lied at her trial.

Stewart, 70, is to surrender to U.S. Marshals immediately. The Brooklyn resident has been free on bail since 2006.

It does answer most of my questions, however, I have a problem with the comment about military tribunals, that Bush & Co. were not able to configure them such that they would be consistent with Constitutional requirements. Since Holder/Obama sent some of the detainees for trial by military tribunal, that argument makes no sense.

I don’t know author Andrew Cohen, except that he is identified as CBS Chief Legal Analyst. Wiki has nothing on him, only on some spiritual leader with the same name. The reason I mention this is that some of Cohen’s ‘facts’ are speculations based mainly on the earlier NYC terrorists’ trial. That was over ten years ago, times have changed, so I hope it is still a reasonable foundation.

I realize that the Repubs are fear-mongering this issue, making it tempting to support Holder/Obama on this, knowing the low quality of Repub objections to everything.

For me it is not a question of incompetence, rather a question of unintended consequences in which case the authorities are overwhelmed, as in 9/11 itself.

It would be helpful if Holder and/or Obama pushed back at the Repubs, as this would help to further clarify the foundations for their decision on this case, and on the other cases headed for a military tribunal. I remain concerned about this, as well as about the impact of the trial on NYC. I will stay tuned.

I don’t think it’s weak to have faith in the judgment of Obama – he’s a Constitutional scholar and he has appointed smart people. He’s also a politician. He knows it would be a disaster to have an acquittal of KSM. That’s why I feel completely confident that a cautious politician like Obama knows what he is doing in this regard.

I think it’s only people who don’t have faith in our Constitution that want to invent a new way to try terrorism suspects. Especially considering that we’ve tried terrorism suspects before successfully. Conservative opposition is all about scoring points and not about actual issues. Just look at former federal prosecutor Rudy 911iuliani fear-mongering if you don’t believe me. Republicans would have me believe that either KSM and other terrorism suspects are supervillians or that our courts, law enforcement and jail personnel are incompetent.

Moreover, you have not answered my other questions in 1:11 above.

And, what about jury selection? There’s a big challenge in itself.

I’m open to being convinced otherwise, but have not seen a persuasive case made yet, by Holder or anyone else.

All Holder is saying is that under careful consideration here is the plan of action. No, these other issues have to be addressed and explained in public.

Bush wasn’t proposing military tribunals, he was trying to put together something completely else. He was trying to invent a whole new way. KSM’s crime was actually against mainly civilians and DoD employees, so I think it’s appropriate that he’s tried federally. He won’t ever be free because of AUMF and the Patriot Act:

Look, Khalid Sheik Mohammed has confessed — I have little doubt that he’ll be convicted. The Obama administration wouldn’t be bringing him to trial in civilian court if they thought there was a chance of his being let go. The same legal rationale that could have been used to hold him indefinitely will be used to hold him in case of an acquittal. As I reported a few months ago, because the U.S.has declared war against al-Qaeda — and KSM is quite obviously a member of al-Qaeda — they can claim legal authority to detain him even post-acquittal, until the end of hostilities, under the authority granted by the Authorization to Use Military Force. The Bush administration considered doing this briefly with Osama bin Laden’s limo driver, Salim Hamdan; but because it makes a mockery of the American system of justice, they decided against it. But the options don’t actually end there.

“They have three sources of authority that would allow him to detain [KSM], one of which is the AUMF, because it directly cites the 9/11 attacks in its language — the people who planned the 9/11 attacks are combatants and are detainable under the AUMF,” explains Ken Gude, a human-rights expert at the Center for American Progress. “Under the .000001 chance that they are acquitted, they will have that authority to detain them.”

The attorney general could detain him as an “international terrorist” indefinitely, in renewable six-month periods, based on a provision in the PATRIOT Act. And if things really get desperate, they could detain him as someone who is in the United States illegally, pending deportation. Since no country is going to take a mass murdering terrorist, that detention will essentially be indefinite.

On the prospect of KSM being released, Gude shrugs, “It isn’t even in the realm of possibility.”