The Candidates
After all, no judge has said so.
By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
The Democratic Party and their presumptive presidential nominee have been claiming for years that President Bush mislead us into an illegal war against Saddam Hussein when he should have “stayed focused” on capturing Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Barack Obama has even suggested that we invade our ally, Pakistan, to capture the man “deemed” responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Why do I put quotation marks around the word “deemed.”? Why, for the benefit of the Democrats. Surely they would hold to no less a standard for killing a man than for holding him as a prisoner of war?
No court of law has tried and found Osama bin Laden guilty of bringing down the Twin Towers in New York City. No judge has declared him responsible for blowing a hole in The Pentagon. No jury has determined his conspiracy led to the hijacking of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.
Yesterday, the would be Commander in Chief cheered a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that essentially downgraded the job description he seeks by making federal judges the Commanders in Chief of POW camps.
Today, Obama’s foreign policy advisors declared that should a President Obama fail in to kill OBL during an invasion of Pakistan, the man who declared war on America in 1998 would be entitled to an O.J. Simpson trial if captured, with Obama willing to have him released by a Judge Ito to kill again or, presumably to rob the current possessors of any of his soccer career memorabilia.
At no time has Obama declared that federal judges should determine if he should be allowed to wage war against Bin Laden and try to kill him.
So, why is he sure Bin Laden is guilty enough to kill without the approval of from one to five lawyers, but not guilty enough to hold as a prisoner if captured?
How do we “know” he is responsible for 911 after all, not to mention the attacks on the USS Cole, Khobar Towers, or African Embassy bombings in the 1990’s?
ANSWER: The same way we knew Saddam Hussein was guilty of violating the America blood bought ceasefire that suspended the Kuwait War.
Our President and his administration told us.
Both Presidents Clinton and Bush 43 told us Saddam was guilty, both in 1998-2000 and 2001-3 respectively. Both told us that OBL was guilty of acts of war against the United States.
Neither was tried in a court of law before the bombs started falling in Kabul and Baghdad, by Clinton in 1998 and Bush 43 in 2001 and 2003 respectively.
Ironically, while Dems cry Bushlied re the Iraq War, Saddam Hussein was tried, convicted and executed after his capture.
Yet OBL remains presumed innocent under the 910 Democrat rose-colored glasses view of the world.
Would Obama agree that if Bin Laden is captured and then released by a federal judge, that bin Laden be released in the Oval Office free to seek out and punish those the Koran deems to have been born Muslim that have violated same by following another religion?
Or would Obama prefer that Osama be released among blue-collar whites that cling to guns, God and antipathy towards people unlike them, in say, NYC, VA and PA?
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Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson
June 17th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
If you are concerned that OBL would be found not guilty and released, may I have some of what you’ve been smoking?
June 17th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Really, this just made me laugh. Not to mention that the detainees we have now are manifestly NOT Prisoners of War, so saying that the Supreme Court is “making federal judges the Commanders in Chief of POW camps” is just not true.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
MiddleSnu, while I agree that they are not POWs, the same general rules should probably apply (though they aren’t entitled to nearly as many rights as a POW would be, imo). Efforts by the SCOTUS to take control of cases where our military (which is VERY different than our police force) acquires a MILITARY target (such as KSM) just further weakens our military’s position in ANY combat missions in the future (which is exactly what they’ve done, and the Bush Admin has meekly acceded to). What’s next, requiring our military troops to read these combatants their Miranda rights, or else face having them released? Give me a break!
June 17th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
#3 exactly, I let #2 bury hisself.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
You say Obama sometimes when you mean Osama and vis versa, and it’s confusing.
But yeah, I’m with Richard. Sure, they aren’t POWs. They’re less than POWs.
1 - That’s exactly the ultimate problem with the ruling. Just get the right judge… maybe find one with a Che poster hanging on his wall… You’re laughing now that noone in their right mind would ever deliberately swing the case in OBL’s favor because the public would eat him/her for lunch. So what about Kalid Sheik Muhammed? What happens if some civilian court decides he’s been treated unfairly and should be let go? How much of the US knows who he is? What about the next person down the rung, who I don’t know the name of?
June 18th, 2008 at 6:47 am
PnGrata, as KSM was (gasp) waterboarded, why wouldn’t some leftwing judge somewhere release him? The ACLU can complain he wasn’t read his rights, and as he was tortured, why shouldn’t the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks be set free? I mean, all he’ll do is plan to kill more people. We would be killing his “rights” to keep him!
June 18th, 2008 at 10:23 am
#5 fixed, thanks
June 18th, 2008 at 10:25 am
#5 Yes, less than pows. My point in calling them pows and they are technically prisoners of a war, they just don’t fit the term or art in Geneva, was to point out that even POWs, LEGAL pows, didn’t get access to civilian US courts.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:25 am
#5 Yes, less than pows. My point in calling them pows and they are technically prisoners of a war, they just don’t fit the term or art in Geneva, was to point out that even POWs, LEGAL pows, didn’t get access to civilian US courts.