Nadler Responds to the Fear-Mongerers on NYC Trials
There are a lot of Dems–particularly from NY–telling fearful Republicans that we can try the 9/11 murderers at the scene of the crime.
Among those is Jerry Nadler:
I thank the Department of Justice and Attorney General Eric Holder for their diligent efforts to bring to justice those who have committed acts of terrorism against the United States. In particular, I applaud the decision to bring those individuals responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center to New York to face trial in our federal courts. New York is not afraid of terrorists, we want to confront them, we want to bring them to justice, and we want to hold them accountable for their despicable actions.
It is fitting that they be tried in New York, where the attack took place. On that day almost 3,000 innocent men, women, and children were murdered, and New York has waited far too long for the opportunity to hold these terrorists responsible. We have handled terrorist trials before, and we welcome this opportunity to do so again. Any suggestion that our prosecutors and our law enforcement personnel are not up to the task of safely holding and successfully prosecuting terrorists on American soil is insulting and untrue. I invite any of my colleagues who say that they are afraid to bring detainees into the United States to face trial to come to New York and see how we handle them.
Trying these alleged terrorists in New York also will allow family members of 9/11 victims to see these trials and confront these defendants in open court. These families deserve that opportunity, and I thank the Department of Justice for providing it.
Finally, I am disappointed that the Attorney General has decided to pursue cases against other Guantanamo detainees in military commissions. While Congress has reformed some aspects of that system, the military commissions are no substitute for trials in our federal courts or through courts-martial. We must ensure that these commissions are not simply used as a lesser vehicle for cases in which the evidence is not sufficient. [my empahsis]
Why is it that Republicans are such scardey-cats?
pants pissin’ scardey-cats
Seconded. Good week to buy stock in Depends.
I just sent a message to my beloved Senator suggesting that he get himself a package of double thick Depends and another gross for his buddies. I also suggested he go back to growing pansies. Sam Houston would be thoroughly ashamed to know that such a wimp is a senator from the Republic.
Manly, chicken shit, scardey-cats.
Good for Nadler.
May I be a dissenting voice here? I love Nadler, but that statement shocks me, not quite so much as Holder’s presentation did, but for the same reason.
I understand that Nadler feels he has to be fending off wingnuts droning in from the right. But the presumption of guilt is right there on the surface, in every sentence. This is making me very sad.
The truth might get out. Americans will realize that there is nothing to fear but the fear mongering itself.
That it is good to use the system of laws and judicial process built up over 200 years, no matter how bastardized it’s been lately.
This is a meme that needs to be repeated, often, in every appropriate context. It will help counterbalance the oft-repeated allegation that Dems are weak on defense.
The Republicans are scaredy-cats. They are so fearful that they would sell our birthright (our Constitution) for a few seconds of faux-security. They have no confidence in our system of justice.
Bob in AZ
This isn’t about Republicans being Scaredy-Cats or the NYPD not being able to handle a terrorism trial. I’m a lifelong Democrat and New Yorker. This is about me not feeling like having an additional unnecessary target on me in my city where I live and work.
This is partially about our Federal Government not being able to defend my city from plane attacks, nuclear attacks, or some other kind of WMD that could be shipped here in a shipping container, a truck or a backpack.
This is about the US Army paying the Taliban now for protection. This is about (the Afghanistan Minister for Counter-Narcotics and the former Pakistani Intelligence Chief’s allegations that) the US military is using military aircraft to fly drugs out of Afghanistan!
This is about Al Qaeda being homicidal. They don’t submit to our concept of justice. They do jailbreaks around the world. They bust into jails around the world to free their fellow terrorists.
I don’t see that happening in NYC, but let me share with you a little history that has affected us locally here in NYC:
The African Embassy Bombers of 1998 were supposed to be tried here in NYC, but their trial was postponed for weeks due to the World Trade Center collapsing five blocks away on 9/11/01. Was it pure coincidence that the attacks happened on the opening day of the African Embassy Bombers’ Trial, the only crime for which Osama Bin Laden is indicted for?
The World Trade Center was attacked before in February 1993 by the largest truck bombing in US history up to that point, and had the terrorists had 10% more explosives (which the FBI helped them get and allowed them to keep), or had they had a better (for them) parking spot, then they would have successfully brought Tower One toppling into Tower Two into the surrounding buildings. Their goal: killing 250,000 people in NYC.
The FBI used the same informant to actually stop an attack in June 1993, while the conspirators were mixing up enough bomb chemicals to blow up every bridge and tunnel into and out of Manhattan. The attack was to start by employee-infiltrators in the Waldorf Astoria, shooting the hotel up and bombing it. Then they were going to bomb all the exits (the bridges and tunnels) from our 23 square mile island of 1.5 million residents and an additional 2 million commuters. Does this plot of mayhem sound familiar? It was last year’s Mumbai November 2008 attacks which killed hundreds. The 9/11/01 attacks were a rehash of the (accidentally) foiled Bojinka Plots of 1995-96 which involved the hijacking of multiple aircraft, blowing some up simultaneously, while others would be crashed into skyscrapers and federal facilities. When Condi Rice said that ‘no one could imagine that terrorists would use planes crashing into buildings as bombs,’ either she was lying or had no idea of history. When she was confronted with the 8/6/01 PDB “Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the US” and it mentioned planes, flight schools, bombings and federal buildings, she said that she didn’t do anything about it because no one told her what to do about it. And she was in charge of National Security.
Some of the 1993 plotters stabbed a NYC resident, a federal prison guard deep in the eye with a pen, giving him brain damage and motor control loss. It was an attempt to foment a jail break for the conspirators. This psychopath was subdued. The guard attended their trial against all odds to show that he could walk again. Bravo to him. That maniac is in a SuperMax prison in Colorado now.
Let’s remember the other part of the 9/11/01 attacks: Despite a forty year missile stand-off with the Soviet Union, the military couldn’t defend its own headquarters over an hour after the hijackings began, around a half hour after the planes hit the WTC. I’m sure that the Pentagon has anti-missile defenses. Missiles are much smaller and faster than commercial aircraft, yet the Pentagon was hit by a plane! That was a bigger shock to me than the WTC being attacked. Since 1993 I expected that the WTC’s time was going to come one day or another, but I never thought I’d see the Pentagon attacked after the USSR collapsed. Washington DC and NYC couldn’t even get it together enough to evacuate their buildings on 9/11/01. Even President Bush stuck around the elementary school, which could have been a target, and then Air-force One circled around a half hour without Air-force escorts. We have troops garrisoned in 200 bases around the globe. We have the largest military in the world, about as large as every other military combined. Talk about bubbles. We have a military bubble. We have bubble heads in the FBI and the National Security Council.
On 9/10/2009 the NYPD foiled a plot involving a truck, nine identical backpacks, and mixed bomb chemicals. The FBI wanted to let the plot unfold more so they could get a better prosecution or something. Luckily, the NYPD works here in NYC and the President was visiting that week, so the plot was foiled. I have no problem with the NYPD and the Federal Security forces, but I don’t think we have the national capability to handle an international terror trial in NYC. I live on the edge of mass horrific destruction every day in NYC. Plastic sheets, duct tape, potassium iodide pills for a certain kind of nuclear attack, filter masks — I’ve got them. I doubt they will save my life. I love my life here in NYC and I’m willing to die here in an attack, but I don’t want my city to be a further target with a high profile attack. This justice issue is the Federal Government’s problem. If they had defended my city and my country in the first place, then the WTC wouldn’t have been attacked in 1993 or 2001. I am fine with this trial happening via the Southern District of New York’s Federal court, but the prisoners and the trial should be in a Navy ship going to random undisclosed locations a couple of miles out of New York Harbor. The family members of the victims, the reporters, the lawyers and the judge can be picked up by a Naval vessel to take them to the trial. Loath him as much as I do, I’d be fine with Rudolph Giuliani’s ghoulish face being the last thing these terrorists see as they are executed by him on that Naval Ship a few miles away in a secret location, and then dump them overboard. I don’t want those creeps drawing an additional attack to where I live and work. The Federal Government cannot handle protecting my city in general, much less in a crisis situation, and this trial is going to require vigilance.
If you would like to check my references, visit History Commons’ Complete 9/11 Timeline and you can search them. The reference to the US military running drugs out of Afghanistan is here in Asia Times.