I see Dick Cheney is wading back into the pond again. I guess it’s worth remembering what’s always been the Cheney signature on terrorism: clinical level of paranoia leading to delusions and lying to the public (already causing the the deaths of thousands of Americans) and seeing terrorism primarily as a tool for use in American domestic politics.
Here’s my prize for the day. Who can be the first to get an answer out of Hoekstra, King, Ridge et al. about why they’re saying the Xmas bomber needs a military trial when they supported a regular trial for the “shoe bomber”. We don’t get many examples in politics where a perfect apples to apples comparison demonstrably shows a series of politicians as complete hypocrites and fibbers. Not that we don’t see that a lot, but seldom is it quite this straightforward. I’m going to put some reporters on it up here. But others must be asking too, right? When you see someone’s got an answer, please let us know.
At TPM HQ today, we’re digging into the question of what the thinking was in the 2001-2002 decision to try “shoe bomber” Richard Reid in a regular American court.
In some ways, though, I think the whole question is backwards. The truth is, until President Obama got into office and Republicans needed a new political attack angle, the idea barely occurred to anyone that you wouldn’t do a regular trial with someone you had plenty of evidence against. Read More
When does the story become the GOP’s unprecedented politicization of a terror attack? Three days before the first fund-raising letters go out? The obviousness of the point would seem even more obvious since the main complainers are demonstrably hypocritical on their basic arguments. Someone lemme know when this becomes the story.
From TPM Reader MF …
Thiessen’s explanation is preposterous even on its own terms. Per their respective Wiki entries, Reid was arrested on December 22, 2001, after trying to bring down AA flight 63. Padilla was arrested on May 8, 2002, and was (in Theissen’s words) “taken out of the criminal-justice system, declared an illegal enemy combatant, and transferred to the Charleston brig for interrogation” on June 9, 2002. Reid remained in the civilian criminal sytem through his January 2003 guilty plea in a Boston federal court.
Following Thiessen’s “logic,” the US had clearly “figured out that we had other options than handing [terrorists] over to law enforcement” as of June 9, 2002, the day Padilla was sent to military prison. Why couldn’t the government have likewise “taken [Reid] out of the criminal-justice system” during the seven months between June 2002 and Reid’s guilty plea in January 2003?
It just makes no sense.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) is airing a 30-second TV ad during tonight’s Holiday Bowl between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Arizona Wildcat to defend his support for health care reform.
Wow, this is getting pretty bad for the National Review and Marc Thiessen. Thiessen of course said that we tried Richard Reid in a regular American court since that was “long before we figured out that we had other options than handing him over” to law enforcement. But as TPM Reader RM points out, President Bush okayed military tribunals a month before Reid tried to blow up the plane. Read More
It’s pretty hard to find any part of the terrorism story that isn’t suffused and tainted by partisan politics. But one example that keeps coming back to me is this example of the “backscatter” body scanners which would dramatically increase security but also, allegedly, create unacceptable intrusions into personal privacy.
Now, I’m not sure, either on the privacy side or on the effectiveness side, whether we should be using these scanners on all flights or perhaps all flights coming into the USA.
But what is pretty clear to me is the disconnect on the question that I see in the public debate.
We’re willing to ethnically profile, do all sorts extra-judicial surveillance, maintain massive databases of hundreds of thousands of people who have some vague relationship to extremism, torture captives, condemn people to hours unable to go the bathroom on planes, even launch various foreign military adventures, but when it comes to submitting to a quick scan that might show a vague outline of boobs or penises (almost certainly no more than is exposed in most bathing suits), that’s a bridge too far.
Something about that doesn’t compute to me. And what I like about this is that there’s no clear partisan division on this one. Everyone seems to agree. It just tells me that at some level we’re not really serious about this.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who’s now running for Governor of Michigan, says that Abdulmutallab should be classified as an ‘enemy combatant’ and be tried in a military court, according to his spokesman Jamal Ware. But when we asked Ware whether Hoekstra thinks we should have done the same with “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, here’s the answer we got …
Asked whether Hoekstra believes the Bush Administration should have tried shoe bomber Richard Reid in federal court — where he was convicted in 2003 — Ware says he doesn’t believe Hoekstra has looked back at the issue in detail.
“The issue here isn’t to look at these things piecemeal,” Ware says. “It’s to figure out, how do you address situations where people like Abdulmutallab and Reid that are taken into custody after failed attacks on American soil.”
Here’s TPMMuckraker’s Justin Elliott’s interview with Ware, conducted a few moments ago.