AverageBro: The Problem With... Terrorists And Guys Named Rudy.

Monday, November 16, 2009

The Problem With... Terrorists And Guys Named Rudy.

Poor Rudy Guiliani. Imagine, if you will, for a moment how this guy must feel.

He does a generally good job cleaning up the streets and bringing money into NYC, but he's such a douchebag that nobody likes him until 9/11. He unsuccessfully tries to push for an end to term limits (something his successor actually gets passed) so he can milk the 9/11 cow a few more months, but by then, folks are handing him a one way ticket out of town. His ill-fated run for President doesn't even make it past Florida. And to make it worse, his own estranged kids actually voted for that Obama fella.

Yeah, that's gotta burn.

So it's no shocker that Rudy sees the possibility of another 15 minutes or relevance now that Eric Holder made the risky decision to try Sept 11th mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, in lower Manhattan.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, mayor of New York at the time of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said on Sunday that the Obama administration’s decision to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the attacks, in a civilian court in Manhattan would unnecessarily cost millions of dollars for security, create legal advantages for the defense and symbolically deny that the United States is at war with terrorism.

“It gives an unnecessary advantage to the terrorists and why would you want to give an advantage to the terrorists, and it poses risks for New York,” Mr. Giuliani said in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He also interviewed on ABC’s “This Week” and “Fox News Sunday.”

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced on Friday that the United States would try Mr. Mohammed in the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, just blocks from where the World Trade Center towers were brought down by the attacks, which killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Mr. Holder said that a military commission would try five other detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, because they are accused of committing crimes overseas.

Mr. Giuliani that said Mr. Mohammed and four other accused Sept. 11 co-conspirators should have also be tried by a military tribunal. But his criticism was shrugged off by Mrs. Clinton and David Axelrod, a top adviser to President Obama, in an appearance on the same program. He suggested that Mr. Giuliani was contradicting himself since he had on previous occasions voiced praise for trials for suspected terrorists in civilian courtrooms. “He may have changed his views but we haven’t changed ours,” Mr. Axelrod said.

Mr. Axelrod also pointed out that since 2001, 195 cases of terrorism have been prosecuted in civilian courts and 91 percent of them have resulted in convictions.

Also duly noted: terrorists have been tried in NYC since 2001, and 100% of them have resulted in convictions, so it's not like these guys are gonna get off scott free under any circumstances. Gucci Mane, Lil' Boosie, and Lil' Wayne have a better collective shot and avoiding jail time than these idiots. Besides, let's face it, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's trial is going to cause a big kerfuffle regardless of where it takes place. You could try him in Topeka, and folks there would complain too.

That said, I suppose I could see the potential for controversy here. I didn't have a relative die in the Twin Towers, but if I did, chances are I might not be too crazy about the guy who more or less planned the whole thing getting due process just a block away from the scene of the crime.

So, I guess you could play it both ways.

On a somewhat related note, the usual suspects are all up in arms over a plan to ship some Gitmo detainees to various prisons throughout the US.

Obama administration officials will visit a virtually empty Illinois prison this week as a possible location to house foreign terrorism suspects moved from the Guantanamo Bay prison President Barack Obama has vowed to shut, the state's governor's office said on Sunday.

"They are weighing their options and Illinois is among them," said Robert Reed, a spokesman for Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, a Democrat.

The plan being considered for the Thomson Correctional Center, pitched by Quinn in a recent meeting with Obama, calls for the Federal Bureau of Prisons to operate it as a maximum-security prison and lease a portion to the Defense Department to house fewer than 100 Guantanamo detainees.

A preliminary economic impact analysis found that federal operation of the facility could generate between 2,340 and 3,250 ongoing jobs. The analysis estimates that the overall injection of funds into the local economy would be between $790 million and $1.09 billion over the first four years.

Many Republicans have been harshly critical of the idea of moving Guantanamo prisoners to the United States, saying it could encourage further terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

"I can't imagine the people of Illinois would like to have these prisoners incarcerated in their state. There may be some local officials who are going to support it, but I expect it will be a huge issue up in Illinois, probably in the U.S. Senate race up there next year," U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told "Fox News Sunday."

Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and a facility in Standish, Michigan, were other sites officials have said were also being considered.

I don't particularly care for this specific plan to purchase a prison and house as many as 100 detainees in a single facility. Why? Sure, this might result in some jobs, but why not simply disperse a small number of detainees across several dozen facilities nationwide? Call me crazy, but it seems like these guys have strength in numbers. Why then, pool them together in facility that they'll more or less occupy by themselves? Isn't that somewhat counterproductive? I'm not counter-terrorism expert, but I'd say you want as few of these people fraternizing as possible.

Am I right, or am I right?

Besides, SuperMax prisons are secure enough as is, there's no need to buy a prison just to bring a few hundred jobs to your home state. If it smells like cronyism, then darnit, it prolly is.

I mean, c'mon, why isolate these guys from the rest of the criminals of the United States. Would you rather have some terrorists pooled together in rural Illinois, or would you rather have them sharing a bunk with this guy?