9/11

9/11, al Qaeda, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Gitmo, Guantanamo, Military Commissions, swift and certain justice alert

‘Swift and certain justice’ alert: Obama delaying Military Commissions for 66 but its all the ‘status quo’s’ fault

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On February 6, 2009, President Barack Obama promised 9/11 and U.S.S. Cole bombing families “swift and certain justice” for those who murdered their loved ones. A few mistakenly placed their faith in his words.

The Washington Times reported this morning on who the Obama administration blames for the delay:

Military lawyers at Guantanamo are prepared to go to trial with at least 66 terrorism suspects now held in extrajudicial detention on the U.S. Navy base, but Mr. Obama’s executive order two days after taking office has tied their hands, suspending all proceedings pending a detainee review that nearly seven months later is half-finished.

Proceedings last week for the five Sept. 11 suspects were mired in legalistic wrangling.

Still, the senior administration officials who briefed reporters pushed the blame back toward former President George W. Bush. “The status quo, incidentally, is not acceptable. Seven years, three prosecutions, endless litigation — that’s not what — that’s not the swift and certain justice that [Mr. Obama is] interested in making sure that we have.”

So, military lawyers were ready when President Obama took office to bring to trial those 66 detainees this year. Instead of concentrating on the future (what to do with those who could not be prosecuted by Military Commission and who need to be detained until they no longer are a threat to civil society), Obama is spewing platitudes and delaying trials. He continues to believe he can placate family members by blaming the “status quo” for why it might take years longer to bring al Qaeda’a killers to justice.

This has been a ‘Swift and certain justice’ alert. Expect many more similar alerts between now and January 20, 2013.

9/11, al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Gitmo, Guantanamo, Keep Gitmo Open, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Military Commissions, Pentagon, September 11, World Trade Center

9-11 families pressure Obama to keep Guantanamo prison open

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Writing for the McClatchy Newspapers, Carol Rosenberg further reports on the reactions of 9/11 family members who this past week observed the Military Commission hearings of high-value al Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo:

Heartbroken survivors of the 9-11 attacks have emerged as a key constituency in the campaign to stop Obama from making good on his Jan. 22 executive order to empty the prison camps and revise the controversial military trials within a year.

Obama argued that Guantanamo has become an anti-American recruiting tool in the arsenal of al-Qaida. Moreover, he said military commissions designed in the Bush years lacked fundamental U.S. guarantees of due process and were at odds with American values.

“There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world,” he said in a May 21 address to the nation on terrorism policy. “Instead of building a durable framework for the struggle against al-Qaida that drew upon our deeply held values and traditions, our government was defending positions that undermined the rule of law.”

But, three times stretching back to the candidacies of Obama and Sen. John McCain, who each pledged to “close Guantanamo,” the Pentagon has brought parents, siblings and children of 9-11 victims to watch the attack’s alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and co-conspirators defend themselves at a court designed by Bush administration officials to mete out military justice.

Three times, the court watchers described the antics of the confessed al-Qaida acolytes as making a mockery of American justice.

And three times, they held news conferences urging the White House to keep the prison camps open and war court here intact as the speediest, safest way to close the books on the former CIA-held captives accused of mass murder in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

“I did not come with a vengeful heart,” said Pompano Beach, Fla., mother Janet Roy, whose firefighter brother, William Burke, died saving others at the World Trade Center. “I came to see for myself … I know the right thing is being done here, in a carefully thought-out manner.”

Theirs is a powerful and emotional message from a sampling of victims’ kin, chosen by lottery, escorted to this base gingerly and with sensitivity to the families of the 2,974 people killed in al-Qaida’s coordinated hijackings that sent planes plunging into the Pentagon, Twin Towers and a Pennsylvania field.

READ THE REST, keep Gitmo open, and keep al Qaeda’s killers out the United States and our federal court system.