9/11 Families Rally Blasts Obama’s Show Trial Travesty

Who are Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s “peers” for Jury Duty?

New York City, (in spirit), Dec. 5, 2009  –  by El Marco

Today 500 protesters rallied in the pouring cold rain at Manhattan’s federal courthouse where the recently announced Terrorist vs America, circus trials will take place. Two weeks ago, the 9/11 Never Forget Coalition sent a letter signed by 300 family members of 9/11 victims to President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking them to reverse course. The letter has now been signed by over 135,000 Americans.

We adamantly oppose prosecuting the 9/11 conspirators in Article III courts, which would provide them with the very rights that may make it possible for them to escape the justice which they so richly deserve. We believe that military commissions, which have a long and honorable history in this country dating back to the Revolutionary War, are the appropriate legal forum for the individuals who declared war on America. With utter disdain for all norms of decency and humanity, and in defiance of the laws of warfare accepted by all civilized nations, these individuals targeted tens of thousands of civilian non-combatants, brutally killing 3,000 men, women and children, injuring thousands more, and terrorizing millions.

photo: P Hall

It is morally offensive to offer Constitutional protections to individuals charged with murdering 3,000 individuals, in essence, to jeopardize justice for war crimes victims, in order to make an appeal to the Muslim world. The use of Article III courts after the 1993 World Trade Center attack didn’t stop any of the subsequent terrorist plots, including the attack on Khobar Towers, 19 Americans killed, the 1998 East African Embassy bombing, 212 killed, the USS Cole bombing, 17 sailors killed. The attacks of 9/11 were a resounding rebuke to the view that federal courts were an appropriate counterterrorism strategy. Afterward, we didn’t send law enforcement personnel to apprehend the perpetrators, we sent the United States military, who captured them and held them pursuant to the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF).

The American people do not support the use of our cherished federal courts as a stage by the “mastermind of 9/11″ and his co-conspirators to condemn this nation and rally their fellow terrorists the world over. As one New York City police detective, who lost 60 fellow officers on 9/11, told members of the Department of Justice’s Detainee Policy Task Force at a meeting last June, “You people are out of touch. You need to hear the locker room conversations of the people who patrol your streets and fight your wars.”

photo: P Hall

On Tuesday New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly stunned the nation when he revealed that city officials were not consulted, prior to the recent government announcement, of the decision to bring the 9/11 terrorist conspirators to trial in a New York City civilian court. “There was no consultation, no consultation with the police department. That decision was made. We were informed.”

Debra Burlingame, rally organizer and co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America said Tuesday, “This shocking revelation makes it crystal clear that the Attorney General’s decision to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) to New York City was pre-ordained, and he wasn’t about to ask for input that would have resulted in his having to defend the indefensible.”

UPDATE: A 9/11 TRUTHER with a thick Greek accent, interrupted the rally speakers by climbing barricades and the stage and yelling truther garbage to the assembled crowd. Although he was ignored by everyone except security who removed him, the police didn’t look so kindly on his performance. After fleeing to a nearby Starbucks a heartwarming New York drama unfolded.VIDEO Hat tip: P. Hall

I photographed the “Danish cartoon protest” in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in 2006. These “New Yorkers” were participating in the worldwide Islamist protests against the publication of cartoons in Denmark.

Some say Al Qaeda mastermind KSM has no peers in New York since he is not an American. At the cartoon rally I suspect that he had more than a few sympathizers and even “peers”. Moderate moslems do not protest harmless cartoons or western free speech traditions. Only Islamists and their leftist enablers do. Just as International Communists renounce nationalism, Islamists proclaim that they are moslems first, above and before they are nationals of non-moslem countries.

Obama, in gifting a civil trial to KSM, has entitled him to a trial by a jury of his peers. But who in New York City are KSM’s peers? Christians? Jews? Hindus or Sikhs? Atheists? These are KSM’s prey not his peers. Only Islamists are KSM’s peers, with the addition of some far leftists who regard terrorism as a revolutionary virtue.

Oooops, we can’t forget the 35% of democrats that believe that G. W. Bush played some role in the 9/11 attack. They say that the Arab people were framed and Bush-Hitler did the attack on the twin towers to get oil for Exxon by making a really big war for oil and torture and prisons for everybody run by a secret society of Jews.

In 2006 during the huge 5th anniversary, family memorial at ground zero about a thousand “Truthers” showed up and confronted mourners with signs, investigate 9/11 T-shirts and bullhorns. Wouldn’t leader Alex Jones (center) make quite a juror? What a jury cesspool!

Andrew C. McCarthy addressed today’s 9/11 Families Rally in front of the courthouse where he successfully led the prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others responsible the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. He worked on the African US embassy bombing cases as well. He also worked with Mayor Gulliani to rescue New York City from a horrendous crime problem, turning it into the safest large city in America. Here is what he wrote on Nov. 13 about Obama’s motives for granting KSM civilian constitutional rights:

“This summer, I theorized that Attorney General Eric Holder — and his boss — had a hidden agenda in ordering a re-investigation of the CIA for six-year-old alleged interrogation excesses that had already been scrutinized by non-partisan DOJ prosecutors who had found no basis for prosecution. The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies (i.e., the policies that kept us safe from more domestic terror attacks), coupled with the Holder Justice Department’s obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the “reckoning” that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign. It would be too politically explosive for Obama/Holder to do the dirty work of charging Bush administration officials; but as new revelations from investigations and declassifications are churned out, Leftist lawyers use them to urge European and international tribunals to bring “torture” and “war crimes” indictments. Thus, administration cooperation gives Obama’s base the reckoning it demands but Obama gets to deny responsibility for any actual prosecutions.

Today’s announcement that KSM and other top al-Qaeda terrorists will be transferred to Manhattan federal court for civilian trials neatly fits this hidden agenda. Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses — intelligence sources — must expose themselves and their secrets.” cont.

Cartoon protesters are part of the New York City Jury pool  –  Dag Hammarskjold Plaza – 2006

“Let’s take stock of where we are at this point. KSM and his confederates wanted to plead guilty and have their martyrs’ execution last December, when they were being handled by military commission. As I said at the time, we could and should have accommodated them. The Obama administration could still accommodate them. After all, the president has not pulled the plug on all military commissions: Holder is going to announce at least one commission trial (for Nashiri, the Cole bomber) today.

Moreover, KSM has no defense. He was under American indictment for terrorism for years before there ever was a 9/11, and he can’t help himself but brag about the atrocities he and his fellow barbarians have carried out.

So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda’s case against America. Since that will be their “defense,” the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America’s defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.”  – Andrew C. McCarthy  (continued)

“Cartoon Protester”

“…even before anyone in America ever heard of al-Qaeda — even before there was a 9/11, or bombings of Khobar Towers, the U.S. embassies in eastern Africa, and the U.S.S. Cole — some of us realized that terrorists fueled by viscerally anti-American Islamist ideology, were at war with the United States. And guess what? There’s a statute for that, too: The Civil War–era seditious-conspiracy law makes the waging of such a terror campaign a 20-year felony. And there’s no carve-out for imams.”  (continued)

“How was the Blind Sheikh convicted? By presenting to the jury his fiery sermons and private meetings with the faithful, often in mosques where he urged barbarous strikes against America, swaddled in accurate quotations of the Koran and other Muslim scripture. Of course, he claimed that such exhortations were protected speech. That is, he made exactly the same arguments the Islamist Left has spent the last eight years beating into the country, including into the Justice Department and the FBI. But back in 1995, those arguments were seen for the nonsense that they were.”  (continued)

Militant fashion – Dag Hammarskjold Plaza – 2006

“There is no bar to the use of speech as evidence. The First Amendment generally prohibits the criminalization of speech itself — i.e., the act of communicating. But settled law holds that when prosecutors use your speech to prove crimes, there is no First Amendment violation. When the mafia boss tells the button-man “Whack him!” he doesn’t get to lodge a First Amendment objection to the introduction of that statement at his murder trial. He’s not being tried for saying “Whack him!” He’s being tried for murder. The statement is evidence.”  (continued)

“Nor does the principle change just because the speech happens to implicate religion. In America, you can believe whatever you want, but your actions must be lawful. Not surprisingly, the Blind Sheikh contended that his incitements to terror were beyond prosecution because he was practicing his religion: Specifically, he claimed he had simply been performing the traditional role of an Islamic cleric called on to determine whether proposed courses of conduct (in this instance, mass-murder plots) were permissible under Islamic law. Fourteen years ago, that contention was properly seen as frivolous. In America, we are not under sharia law — not yet. There is no religious exception for violent acts, conspiracies, and incitements to violence that violate American law.”  (continued)

Al Noor school students were bussed in to protest in front of Danish consulate.

“To concede this would be to concede the obvious but unspeakable fact that there is a nexus between Islam and terror. That would harpoon the lovey-dovey dream that Islam and Western democracy are perfectly compatible. It would upset Muslims — especially the well-organized, deep-pocketed Islamic grievance industry. Today’s hip, progressive FBI, like Gen. George Casey’s modern, slavishly “diverse” military, doesn’t want to upset Muslims. Besides souring State Department cocktail parties and drying up funding for presidential libraries, upsetting Muslims would put a damper on our government’s lavish “Islamic outreach” efforts. These initiatives are premised on the delusion that we’ll stop more terror by having unindicted co-conspirators like CAIR teach Islamic “sensitivity” to our agents than by turning our agents loose to investigate CAIR and its ilk.”  (continued)

“So the FBI ignores the significance of a terrorist cleric’s influence over an unabashed Islamist in our midst. After all, their contacts seemed to be religious in nature. We’re told, moreover, that we can’t do anything about the anti-American vitriol oozing out of Islamist mosques under the guidance of our friends the Saudis. After all, the vitriol hasn’t yet “crossed the line into material support.” By the time it does, you might have 13 corpses to tend to, but at least there will be lots to talk about at the next outreach conference — or the next time the attorney general decides to speak at a CAIR-fest.”  (continued)

“The post-9/11 era was supposed to be about knocking down walls that obstructed effective counterterrorism. But behold the new wall, more insidious than its suicidal Nineties forerunner: the arbitrary barrier separating terrorism from “protected” incitement — the cagey, generalized, non-specific jihadist rhetoric that is the Islamist cleric’s stock-in-trade. Aside from not being required by law, this new wall will usually mean you can’t go after the worst actors (the Islamic authorities and the terrorists they inspire) until after an attack has happened and Americans have been killed.In other words, be prepared for more Fort Hoods. We’re not in September 10 America. We’ve managed to land in a much more dangerous place.”  – Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review

The great Charles Krauthammer is a psychiatrist as well as a columnist and that makes him more qualified than other pundits to analyze what’s going on in the demented duo’s collective cranium.

“So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system, where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) “do not get convicted,” asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. “Failure is not an option,” replied Holder. Not an option?

Doesn’t the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

Moreover, everyone knows that whatever the outcome of the trial, KSM will never walk free. He will spend the rest of his natural life in U.S. custody. Which makes the proceedings a farcical show trial from the very beginning.”   Krauthammer (continued)

“Apart from the fact that any such trial will be a security nightmare and a terror threat to New York — what better propaganda-by-deed than blowing up the courtroom, making KSM a martyr and turning the judge, jury and spectators into fresh victims? — it will endanger U.S. security. Civilian courts with broad rights of cross-examination and discovery give terrorists access to crucial information about intelligence sources and methods.

That’s precisely what happened during the civilian New York trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. The prosecution was forced to turn over to the defense a list of 200 unindicted co-conspirators, including the name Osama bin Laden. “Within 10 days, a copy of that list reached bin Laden in Khartoum,” wrote former attorney general Michael Mukasey, the presiding judge at that trial, “letting him know that his connection to that case had been discovered.”  (continued)

Truther preachers in full regalia at ground zero

“Finally, there’s the moral logic. It’s not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, (accused) mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, to a military tribunal.

By what logic? In his congressional testimony Wednesday, Holder was utterly incoherent in trying to explain. In his Nov. 13 news conference, he seemed to be saying that if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, you get a civilian trial; a military target like the Cole, and you get a military tribunal.”  (continued)

“What a perverse moral calculus. Which is the war crime — an attack on defenseless civilians or an attack on a military target such as a warship, an accepted act of war that the United States itself has engaged in countless times?

By what possible moral reasoning, then, does KSM, who perpetrates the obvious and egregious war crime, receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom, while he who attacked a warship is relegated to a military tribunal?

Moreover, the incentive offered any jihadist is as irresistible as it is perverse: Kill as many civilians as possible on American soil and Holder will give you Miranda rights, a lawyer, a propaganda platform — everything but your own blog.”  Travesty in New York by Charles Krauthammer

………………..MORE  PHOTO ESSAYS  by  EL MARCO………………….

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NANCY and the ASTROTURFERS “Denver photojournalist El Marco was at the event and has an amazing pictorial essay detailing how Pelo-cchio’s Astroturf brigade had to be coached by professional organizers — including several day laborers who didn’t speak English and couldn’t tell what the signs they were holding read. And they accuse Tea Party folks of being puppets?!” –  **Michelle Malkin**

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Martin Luther King was hounded, beaten, and jailed by Democrats. Read what he had to say about protesting, in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

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