You seem to be obfuscating the point that his campaign promise didn’t say a peep about releasing acquitted terrorists.
But let’s get real: there is no chance whatsoever that KSM is going to be released. Zero. I think the most plausible scenario that doesn’t involve his conviction would be defense motions to the inadmissibility of crucial evidence, whether due to it being the result of waterboarding, or sensitive intelligence that cannot be released to the court, or hearsay, or a million other reasons.
If that were to happen, and he was found not guilty of his 9-11 crimes, I have a hard time believing that the President could not continue to hold him as a danger to the country because he is part of an organization that the US has essentially declared war on. I have a hard time seeing the courts suddenly becoming so active as to repudiate the ability of the President to detain members of Al Qaeda, even after a criminal trial.
As much as I support putting these types of guys on trial for their specific crimes related to 9-11, I see this as a “heads: the government wins and convicts you of your crimes; and tails: you lose because you’re a member of Al Qaeda.” This may not apply to every single person who had been sent to Guantanamo, but I bet it does to the principals like KSM.
What are you basing this on, precisely? It seems pretty obvious to me that any “outrage” in the OP is because Gibbs is refusing to explicitly state that they do have a commitment to following the law.
I don’t speak for Bricker, but I read his concern as being that the POTUS might not release KSM or other gitmo detainees if they are found not-guilty. That’s a concern many lawyers share, on either side of the aisle. We are either a nation of laws, or we are not. If we are, then defendants found not guilty get to walk.
He should have just said “Yes. We’ll let him go. We’re a nation of laws. If he’s found to be innocent, he should not be held.” Who cares what hay Fox makes out of it?
I somehow doubt that if the question were asked, “What will happen to KSM if he’s found guilty?” that Gibbs would have dodged it as a hypothetical.
Tapper is just a douchebag looking to create a scare headline. Garrett too.
It’s not like it would be the Press Secretary’s decision to make about how to handle an acquittal anyway, but there is no chance whatsoever of an acquittal, so the question is disingenuous.
The answer to the question, by the way, is that if they were acquitted, they could still be tried in other jurisdictions or held for other reasons. It’s a bullshit question not to designed to elicit information, but to scare whitey into thinking there’s going to be terrorists walking the streets.
Two things, though:
If they were “set free” (which is about as likely as Charlie Manson getting paroled), it wouldn’t be in the US, they’d be shipped out somewhere else. Even if they were turned loose in the US, they’d last about as long as an ice cream cone in an Iraqi sumer.
If they’re acquitted, it will be because the government couldn’t prove they were guilty. If the government can’t prove they did anything, then why SHOULDN’T they be set free?
Do Jake Tapper and Fox News have a problem with the Constitution? If they don’t like America, they’re free to leave.
That’s the hypothetical he’s manufacturedly-outraged over - “If he were to do that, he’d be BREAKING the LAW!” Obama’s spokesman does not, as several have pointed out already, have any responsibility to give the creators of RNC/Fox talking points, or the habitual repeaters of them, anything to work with. Gibbs’ refusal to do so is the real source of this “outrage”, apparently.
Seriously? He’s just playing the game. Gibbs would loose his job if he answered that question. Sure he should have answered the question with an ‘of course we will you dip-shit’. But you know the minute he did the press would run headlines such as “Obama Administration Commits to Releasing 9/11 Mastermind” etc. It’s juvenile and playing to the lowest common denominator. They should be willing to take that BS on instead of playing the game, but unfortunately they’re not willing to fight everything that’s stupid.
Obama does, however, have an obligation to follow the law. And hell, he oughta be good at it. The guy used to teach Con Law. The question of what happens after a not guilty verdict is entirely legitimate, and deserves an honest answer.
It isn’t bullshit, the bs is the GOP/Fox News nonsense, what I sais is a factual statement that he’s going to plead guilty and that nobody being put on trial in court has an chance of avoiding a guilty verdict.
And Obama isn’t remotely going “all in” either.
Holder will also announce that a major suspect in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, will face justice before a military commission, as will a handful of other detainees to be identified at the same announcement, the official said.
It was not immediately clear where commission-bound detainees like al-Nashiri might be sent, but a military brig in South Carolina has been high on the list of considered sites. *
So what we have here is not an announcement that all terrorism suspects are entitled to real trials in a real American court. Instead, what we have is a multi-tiered justice system, where only certain individuals are entitled to real trials, those whom the Government is convinced ahead of time it can convict. Others for whom conviction is less certain will be accorded lesser due process.
Spain, Britain, India all managed to put their terrorists on trial without half their populations wetting the bed over the prospect of doing it, I think some Americans could do with showing some European-style moral fortitude and faith in their democratic institutions.
It’s a legitimate question, however obvious the answer, in a court or other *legal *environment.
In the White House press room or on Fox, the “legitimacy” of questions and the “honesty” of the presentation of the answers are, shall we say, very different concepts.
During the previous administration, it seemed that the Left was the side outraged by the failure to try the detainees. This admission that a trial, if permitted, would only be a show trial seems extraordinary.
No, there’s zero chance any of the four will be found innocent, it’s just the right wing noise machine using terrorist tactics on their own people. They’re targeting the same people they got to wet the bed over Saddam Hussein and his fearsome WMD.
The ones that aren’t going to plead guilty (maybe they all will) have cast-iron evidence against them, to the extent that they’re safe to put on trial. Anybody not certain of being convicted won’t be put on trial.