Tuesday, November 17, 2009

In response to Andrew Sullivan's article

Thanks Chris for bringing this to my attention.

AS brings up in his article something I have been feeling over the last two days listening to various right wing bloviators (e.g.on On Point with Tom Ashbrook (?)) argue against a fed trial - the elephant in the room that they fail to mention - they are afraid that most evidence will be thrown out or it be ruled a mistrial because of TORTURE. As someone arguing in favor of a fed trial pointed out, those on the right who want the trial to take place in the deeply flawed, ineffective and inexperienced US Military court (3 terror cases tried in 8 years, Vs. ~ few hundred in fed courts with a 93% conviction rate) are simply afraid that KSM could walk free. They want a trial that will guarantee conviction, but that is nothing other than a kangaroo court - you might as well just lynch KSM on the Glenn Beck show.

The other nonsense spouted on On Point, that went unchallenged, was that somehow the trial would damage the federal court system and that it would set a dangerous precedent. This was repeated numerous times, without any other explanation of why or how the fed system would or could be damaged nor any clarification of what exactly the precedent was going to be. Then there is the national security issue, "We will have to disclose various unconventional classified "information-gathering" techniques (probably illegal!) and hence they will become ineffective, because the "terrorists" will train themselves to withstand them (which is why KSM was water-boarded 183 times - "Oh it didn't work a 182 times, let's do it again" - this is the mark of what?), and also we will be stopped from using them, not that we did ever did use anything of the sort."

What balderdash, the CIA is capable only of grasping "micro-intelligence" (so-and-so is at a wedding party  let's do the predator kowabunga!, or evidence that some handshake somewhere took place or not) and is fundamentally incapable of seeing macro-intelligence on a societal or historic scale. So they can be trusted to big time EFF UP Pakistan!