Monthly Archives: October 2012

Recall President Obama’s foreign policy; Constitutional rights to 9/11 war criminals

Between now and Election Day 2012, 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America will take a look back at President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Today, we remember this:

November 2009:

Attorney General Eric Holder wants to fly Khalid Sheikh Mohammed into New York City, cloak him and his four “co-defendants” with liberties they would deny every American, and gamble he can get the worst of the worst past a gauntlet of federal judges and Supreme Court Justices.

Lower Manhattan is hallowed ground. … Twelve days after 9/11, [my family and I] attended a meeting of families and firefighters near Ground Zero. As I stepped from the car, my shoes sunk down into perhaps inch-deep pulverized concrete. It was seeded with the molecules of several thousand precious souls and the blood of hundreds of heroes; that dust also covered nearby Foley Square and the same federal courthouse where Eric Holder wants to give war criminals due process.

In the air and on the ground, those were all war crimes. Military Commissions were created by Congress to prosecute them and protect national security, both Presidents Obama and Bush have signed the Military Commissions Act into law, and the Supreme Court has recently confirmed them as Constitutional. 9/11 was not a tragedy or homicide; it was an act of genocide committed by war criminals.

It is also worth recalling that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has freely admitted his war crimes. Stark evidence proving his assertions was found with him when he was captured:

March 15, 2007: WASHINGTON (CNN) — Admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told a U.S. military tribunal he personally beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, the Pentagon revealed Thursday.

“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” said a Pentagon transcript of Saturday’s hearing. “For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.”

The admission was part of testimony that was originally removed from a Pentagon transcript of Mohammed’s tribunal at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He also said he was the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, attacks.

“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” Mohammed said through a military representative.

According to the 26-page transcript, a computer hard drive seized during Mohammed’s capture contained photographs of the 19 hijackers and a paper listing the pilot license fees for Mohammed Atta. Atta, the alleged ringleader of the attacks, flew one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

9/11 Families: Thomson Prison Purchase First Step to Bring Gitmo Detainees to U.S. Soil (Updated with DOJ filing)

Updated 6:05 PM EDT, Oct 2, 2012: The Department of Justice filed a notice of condemnation in U.S. District Court today to take possession of Thomson Prison. In part, the purpose of the acquisition reads as follows:

“… as well as to provide humane and secure confinement of individuals held under authority of any Act of Congress, and such other persons as in the opinion of the Attorney General of the United States are proper subjects for confinement in such institutions.”

The detainees at Guantanamo are being held under an Act of Congress, the Authorization to Use Military Force of 2001.

9/11 Families: Thomson Prison Purchase First Step to Bring Gitmo Detainees to U.S. Soil

Oct. 2, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America
Debra Burlingame media@911familiesforamerica.org

New York, NY, October, 2, 2012 — 9/11 families strongly object to the Obama administration’s plan to purchase Thomson Correctional Facility in Thomson, Illinois without Congressional approval. As stated in our July 27 letter, signed by more than 100 family members, to House Speaker John Boehner, 9/11 families believe this purchase is a back door effort to circumvent Congress and the will of the American people. Though Senator Dick Durbin and Attorney General Eric Holder have denied that the prison would be retrofitted to receive Guantanamo detainees, this would not be the first time the Department of Justice defied Congress in an effort to bring terrorists inside the Homeland.

Recent news that the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi was led by a former Guantanamo detainee has underscored the dangerous profile of current detainees. They continue to pose a serious national security threat to the U.S., and should not be viewed as political pawns which can be moved from a safe, secure off-shore military installation to the heart of America in order to satisfy a small, left-wing political constituency. This is the same constituency that agitated for the release of prior detainees who have returned to the battlefield and who engage in anti-U.S. propaganda and terrorist recruiting.

Mr. Durbin admitted in today’s announcement that the purchase, made in open defiance of the House subcommittee which overseas federal prisons, was unprecedented. Coupled with President Obama’s 2011 signing statement on legislation barring funds to transfer Gitmo detainees to the U.S. — calling the legislation “an extreme and risky encroachment on the authority of the executive branch” — we have no confidence that the Obama administration will defer to the wishes of the American people and their elected representatives on the matter of Guantanamo.

This misappropriation of funds and flouting of Congressional authority goes to the very heart of the public’s distrust of the Obama administration and the ever-widening gap between what it says and what it does.

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