And bumbles is being kind!
In his ABC interview last Monday, for example, Obama attacked the Bush approach on fighting terror. He claimed that, in the case of “the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in US prisons, incapacitated.”
As an assistant US attorney, Andrew McCarthy prosecuted the perpetrators of the 1993 WTC attack. He calls Obama’s statement “a remarkably ignorant account of the American experience with jihadism.”
Writing for National Review Online, McCarthy notes: “While the government managed to prosecute many people responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing, many also escaped prosecution because of the limits on civilian criminal prosecution.
“Some who contributed to the attack, like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, continued to operate freely because they were beyond the system’s capacity to apprehend. Abdul Rahman Yasin was released prematurely because there was not sufficient evidence to hold him – he fled to Iraq, where he was harbored for a decade (and has never been apprehended).”
Pointing to the later terrorist attacks on Americans and US assets, culminating in 9/11, McCarthy concludes that the law-enforcement approach to combating terrorism was futile.
But Obama’s comments fall short on other grounds, too.
The convicted spiritual mentor of the 1993 WTC bombers is Omar Abdel-Rahman (“the blind sheik”). By Obama’s logic, the blind sheik was “incapacitated” and therefore rendered harmless by his conviction and imprisonment. In fact, Abdel-Rahman continued to wage jihad from behind bars, issuing instructions to his followers in Egypt.
Attorney Lynne Stewart was convicted in February 2005 of conspiracy and providing and concealing material support of terrorism for her actions in smuggling messages from Abdel-Rahman to his followers in the terrorist group Gama’a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group).
The jihadist activities of Abdel-Rahman from behind bars, plus the collaboration of his attorney, illustrate the challenges President Bush sought to confront fairly with the arrangements for the detention and isolation of captured enemy combatants in Guantanamo.
Of course, the Supreme Court just upended those arrangements with its controversial ruling in the Boumediene case, which gave Gitmo detainees the right to challenge their confinement through habeas corpus proceedings in federal court.
Obama approves: He recently asserted that the “principle of habeas corpus, that a state can’t just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process – that’s the essence of who we are.”
He explained: “I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are, but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle.”
Oops. At Nuremberg, an international military commission composed of representatives of the victorious Allies put the top surviving Nazi leaders on trial starting in late 1945.
Yet, in Boumediene, the Supreme Court disapproved of the system of military commissions that Congress had adopted for Gitmo (at the high court’s previous urging). Thus, the Nuremberg defendants’ “day in court” came before a kind of tribunal found constitutionally inadequate in the decision Obama was praising.
The Nazi war criminals had no access to US courts. The fair-trial provision of the charter governing the trial was relatively skimpy – and the provision on appeal rights was even shorter and sweeter: The defendants had no right to appeal. The procedures the court found deficient in Boumediene, by contrast, provided for appeal rights to the DC Circuit, the most prominent US bench below the Supreme Court.
In short, the procedural protections for Gitmo detainees under the statute before the Supreme Court in Boumediene exceed those accorded the Nuremberg defendants.
Obama’s unfavorable comparison of the legal treatment at Gitmo with that at Nuremberg suggests either that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about – or that he feels free to exploit the ignorance of audiences that don’t know the truth of the matter.
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Perri Nelson’s Website, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, Right Truth, Stuck On Stupid, , Phastidio.net, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, third world county, DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Dumb Ox Daily News, A Newt One, and Stageleft, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Obama makes Dan Qayle look brilliant, and GW Bush a gifted orator by comparison.
Some foreign pig owns that little rat Obama, and I still say he is one evildoer and he is a muslim; see what his brother said about Obama?
I think the guy who owns him is some well-known Muslim, Robert is right.
‘We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK’…
— Barack Obama, May 18, 2008
YES!!! Forget the Constitution, forget tradition, forget Freedom! What you do, what you spend, how you live your life should be determined from International consensus, not you!
And to think there are people who would vote for him…
Couldn’t have said it better myself Robert.
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The scariest part of your whole post though is that there are alot of sheeple in this country who will vote for him.
Obama keeps showing his ignorance, extreme hubris and naiveté. Unfortunately there are many Democrats who blindly follow their Obamessiah without question and with full and complete loyalty although he is leading them like lemmings off a cliff. At this point, some polls are showing him ahead of McCain by double-digit figures however in comparison, Dukakis was ahead by double-digit figures when he ran for President but self-destructed along the way. With Obama’s hubris unchecked and his lack of experience on constant display it would not surprise me if he self-destructs along the way like Dukakis. One constant of the national Democrat party in the last couple of decades: they do not learn from their past errors. Unfortunately on the conservative side, neither have the Republicans of late.
He can’t talk without a script or without an ear-piece, with his puppet-master whispering in his ear. The really sad thing is that America will pay the price if he gets elected
McCain calls for solving our energy crisis, recognizes that energy security is as important as any other security, and calls for bipartisan cooperation.
In response, Obama the “uniter” criticizes McCain, then repeats the Obama mantra that we need to change to alternate fuels (that do not exist in any practical measure).
McCain gets it, Obama doesn’t.
But it’s CHANGE! Change we can BELIEVE in!!! No, it isn’t isn’t. It’s ignorance mixed with bullshit.
Obama…FLUSH…
Robert, I added a visual for your entertainment
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The message is we are all supposed to ride bicycles? Except I’m sure Obama and his Limousine Liberal cronies will be in their Limos.
No Robert, but that’s a good one..keep trying;)
I have to admit that McCain’s speech today was quite substantial. At least it had specifics, which is what’s been lacking all along. I’m not a fan of nuclear because of the waste issue, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be at least part of the equation.
NYD
NY-David: There is NO nuclear waste issue. That’s a red herring argument. Spent fuel rods can be reprocessed to recover most of the Uranium, which then goes into new rods. The very small mass of fission by products can be stored on site for about 50 years after which it is no problem.
We had that technology until Al Gore/Hazel O’Leary dismantled it in the 90s. But it exists and is being used elsewhere.