RUSH: Before I get into this disgusting travesty perpetrated here by Barack Obama, who, you notice how this guy is always out of the country when bad news hits? Unemployment 9.4%, flies off somewhere, 9.7%, flies off somewhere, 10.2%, flies off somewhere, sends Holder out there today to announce they’re bringing the Gitmo detainees up here for trial, he’s over there in Japan. They asked him about it over there and he pulled a Bill Clinton, Janet Reno. When the Waco invasion happened, asked Clinton about it, (imitating Clinton) ‘Yeah, I don’t know anything about that. You gotta talk to the attorney general, Janet Reno. You need to go over her office and ask her about it. I’m sitting here stupefied as you are.’ Obama was asked, ‘What about this business of bringing these people up here to try them in New York?’ (imitating Obama) ‘Ah, the attorney general made that decision.’
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Now, this trial business, folks, I went to the National Review Online Corner blog to see what my good friend Andy McCarthy thinks of this, ’cause there’s no better source. He tried the blind sheik. He was in the US attorney’s office at the Southern District of New York in Manhattan. He learned everything there is to know about militant Islam. He tried the blind sheik. He was on the team that convicted him. And he is not surprised by this. Nevertheless, is appalled by this decision. This summer he writes — and I remember this, he theorized that the attorney general, Eric Holder — and, by the way, did you see in the press conference today when Holder was making the announcement, they went to questions and all the media people were referring to him as General Holder. Did they ever refer to Alberto Gonzales as General Gonzales? General Holder?
Anyway, this past summer McCarthy theorized ‘that Attorney General Eric Holder — and his boss — had a hidden agenda in ordering a re-investigation of the CIA for six-year-old alleged interrogation excesses that had already been scrutinized by non-partisan DOJ prosecutors who had found no basis for prosecution.’ Do you remember when they brought this back up and it outraged everybody, prosecuting the people who had put their lives on the line to keep us safe. ‘The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies (i.e., the policies that kept us safe from more domestic terror attacks), coupled with the Holder Justice Department’s obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the ‘reckoning’ that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign.’ And I’ve got some audio sound bites that will back up what I’m about to say here.
‘It would be too politically explosive for Obama/Holder to do the dirty work of charging Bush administration officials; but as new revelations from investigations and declassifications are churned out, Leftist lawyers use them to urge European and international tribunals to bring ‘torture’ and ‘war crimes’ indictments. Thus, administration cooperation gives Obama’s base the reckoning it demands but Obama gets to deny responsibility for any actual prosecutions.’ Now, we mentioned this to you last summer, that that was the objective of this. They don’t want their fingerprints on it. Again, this is banana republic type stuff. This is Marxist type stuff. You go after your predecessors and you put them in jail or you do what you can to embarrass them, discredit them, and ruin their lives. And that’s what is on tap here.
‘Today’s announcement that KSM and other top al-Qaeda terrorists will be transferred to Manhattan federal court for civilian trials neatly fits this hidden agenda.’ Folks, stop and think of what’s going to happen here. ‘Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses — intelligence sources — must expose themselves and their secrets.’ But it’s even worse than this. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confederates have no defense. They have admitted this! They asked to be executed and martyred last December. They wanted to go meet Allah and the 73 virgins. They have no defense. What’s going to end up on trial here — and this is the insidious part — what’s going to end up on trial here is the United States, the CIA, and our interrogation techniques. All of this is being done to satisfy the rabid, radical, far left that hates this country; that hates George W. Bush; that hates the US military.
By the way, the Obama administration and Eric Holder are not doing this just to placate their left. They’re in on this, too. They’re the ones that kept talking about torture, torture is worse than the actual hijacking and taking down of the twin towers. That’s worse in these people’s perverted, polluted, corrupt minds. ‘Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confederates wanted to plead guilty and have their martyrs’ execution last December, when they were being handled by military commission. As I said at the time, we could and should have accommodated them. The Obama administration could still accommodate them. After all, the president has not pulled the plug on all military commissions.’ See, this is another part of the hideous nature of what happened today. The terrorist, Nashiri, the bomber of the USS Cole, is not going to be brought here for trial. He’s going to face a military commission. Why? What is the difference here?
They want this show in New York. They want the United States on trial. Folks, this trial may not start for four years. It may not start for two years. Do you realize these guys are going to be given lawyers, they have no defense; they’ve admitted it; they wanted to be executed. So what’s going to be put on trial is not these guys. Your country is going to be on trial, and your country will likely be found guilty. I saw a former federal prosecutor being interviewed on Fox today and he said, ‘I wouldn’t worry, there’s no judge, these judges, they’re lifetime appointments, and they have full independence, but no judge, no judge wants to be responsible for any decision that lets these guys go scot-free.’ You do not know who’s on the federal judiciary any more, sir. We’ve got judges in this country who have gone on record saying these guys should be released. If you don’t think they can find a judge somewhere that would be happy to find this country guilty, you don’t know the American left.
Every bit of intelligence that was used to track these guys down, the world is gonna know about it. The people who did it are going to have to testify. They are going to be the ones asked about the legality of what they did. Folks, the people running this country do not like it as it was founded and constituted. In their mind this country is guilty. Obama was asked about the A-bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki today. First president in history to duck the question, to not say that it was the right thing to do. He ducked it, he ran for cover, he was asked twice. He’s the first president to go around the world apologizing for this country, and now he’s even ducking responsibility for making the decision to bring these terrorists up to New York for this trial.
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RUSH: Andy McCarthy again here. ‘So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense.’ That is key to understand what’s happening here, folks. They have no defense. They have asked to be executed. They have admitted doing this. They take great pride in having blown up the World Trade Center. And as I said when defendants have no defense for their action there’s only one thing for their lawyers to do, and that’s put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury and the media spun up over government errors, government abuses, government incompetence. That’s what’s going to happen at this trial. It will be a soapbox. Folks, it’s going to be a soapbox for Al-Qaeda’s case against America!
And if you don’t think that they can’t find some pro bono ACLU lawyers to go in there and make the case that the United States of America is guilty, you have another think coming. And since that will be their defense, quote, unquote, ‘that the government of the United States is corrupt, unfair, unjust, and guilty;’ the defendants and their lawyers will demand every bit of information they can get about the interrogations, the renditions, secret prisoners, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques — and, depending on what judge catches the case, they’re likely to be given a lot of it! Because ‘fairness,’ you see, has become the new foundation of the new America; fairness as defined by a bunch of radical leftists.
‘The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets.’ There won’t be any fingerprints on Holder; there won’t be any fingerprints of Obama’s attached on this. It’s all going to fall on the judge. The judge is going to take the heat and depending on who the judge is, he might enjoy it. I mean there are a bunch of radical leftists on our federal bench as we sit here today. And this circus is going to be played out for all to see. Holder said, ‘Oh, yeah! We’re going to have TV cameras on this, all of this.’ In the middle of a war we are going to televise to the world exactly how a bunch of leftists lawyers and terrorists think the country sucks.
And before it’s all over, their lawyers are going to end up making the case that these guys had cause for hijacking airplanes and bringing down the twin towers. At some point, that’s where this goes. We’re going to have so much sympathy for the discrimination against people from the ‘religion of peace’ that they were driven to this, why, our association with Israel. And before it’s all said and done you’re going to find some whack nut jobs on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that are going to be on this jury and who are going to end up thinking, ‘You know what? We did deserve it. Now we know why they don’t like them and maybe we can set the record straight here and grandfathered in peace if we just admit this was our fault.’ McCarthy: ‘It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America’s defense are violations of international law,’ and this is going to be destroy the CIA. It will destroy the CIA, exposing virtually everything they’ve done and the people who did it. It’s not good, folks.
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RUSH: Folks, in a federal court, all bets are off. All these pro bono, leftist lawyers are going to line up to volunteer their time to defend these guys. They’ll use every legal maneuver they can come up with to drag the CIA officers who conducted the interrogations before the jury. They’ll put the CIA on trial, along with the rest of the country. And it’s going to be televised all over the world. And it’s just something that need not happen. It is like everything else happening from this administration: By design, and on purpose, with a specific motive. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. This morning in Tokyo, Obama and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama held a press conference. An American reporter says, ‘President Obama, how can you assure the American people that a trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York will be safe and secure but also not result in an innocent verdict for him?’
OBAMA: With respect to, uh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, I believe that the attorney general’s going to be making an announcement this morning in the United States, this evening here. I don’t want to preempt his news conference. This is a prosecutorial decision as well as a national security decision. Uh, here’s the thing that I will say. I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting, uhhh, demands of justice. The American people insist on it, my administration will insist on it. Uhh, and I’m sure we’ll have additional things to say, uh, after the attorney general’s press conference.
RUSH: All right. So defer it and pass it on to Holder and let Holder take the whole show on this thing. Now, remember during the actual Iraq war when George W. Bush was president, the very fact we went to Iraq they said was going to create more terrorists. ‘It’s going to create even more hatred for the United States of America,’ and we have no business doing this. This is a personal war for Bush and all we’re going to do is create more terrorists,’ and then that torture, that waterboarding? ‘Oh, man when that gets out and flushing the Koran in the toilet,’ which didn’t happen, ‘Oh, yeah! That’s going to create more terrorists! That’s really going to create more terrorists.’ Now, they said they’re going to go for the death penalty here.
Is executing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed somehow not going to create more terrorists? Al-Qaeda’s going to say, ‘Oh, well, they gave him a fair trial. It’s cool.’ Is that what Al-Qaeda is going to say? ‘You win this one, infidels!’ Is that what they’re going to say? And the Arab Street, that’s not going to be ‘inflamed,’ either? They won’t ‘use this as a recruiting tool’? Execution won’t be ‘unilateral’ and ‘damage our reputation in the world community’ or any of the other BS standards liberals invent and then decide they only apply to Republican presidents? Do you realize what…? Try this. There have been all kinds of people on television today being asked, ‘Boy, bringing them in New York, doesn’t that make New York a bigger terrorist target?’
And they all say, ‘Well, no, no. New York’s always a terrorist target. Look at ’93. We tried those guys in 1993 and nothing happened.’ What do you mean nothing happened! You ever heard of 9/11? We tried these guys and convicted the blind sheik in 1993, and nothing happened, except 9/11. The security in New York, the inability to get around — and they’re going to still do the military tribunals for the guy that bombed the USS Cole. All right. You’ll have to excuse me here, folks. My audio feed is going in and out with lots of statistic. I don’t know why and I’ve been trying to fix it during the week. Let’s go to something I have a transcript for. Bill Hemmer, Fox News Channel’s American Newsroom, the co-anchor Bill Hemmer interviewing Joe Sestak. Sestak is a Democrat from Pennsylvania. Hemmer says, ‘Do you stand by the decision to try Mohammed in civilian court. Why?’
SESTAK: I will support this decision of the president to bring these individuals to trial. I am a strong believer that we need anti-terrorist types of efforts, including holding those accountable. I also believe you don’t break the ideals of not bringing people into their day in court.
RUSH: So Sestak says, ‘I will support this decision to bring these individuals to trial. I’m a strong believer we need to anti-terrorist types of efforts. … [Y]ou don’t break the ideals of not bringing people into their day in court.’ Let me give you a name: Nidal Hasan. Because the FBI was involved, they were treating Nidal Hasan as a criminal, and so with much tighter regulations. ‘First Amendment violations? Oh, we couldn’t really connect the dots here because our Constitution doesn’t permit us to connect the dots.’ But the guy was a terrorist. He was acting out terrorism. He was preparing for it! Everybody in the line knew it but because it was not being looked at as a terrorist act, an act of war; it was being looked at as your run-of-the-mill, average, ordinary, everyday crime. And so the guy couldn’t be stopped. Same thing is going to happen here. ‘Bring these people to court, give them their day in court. We have to make sure American values and ideals carry the day so the rest of the world will look up to us and not hate us and so forth.’ We are in the process of destroying American ideals. We are in the process of subordinating America’s greatness, America’s exceptionalism — and, my friends, it is not by accident. Bill Hemmer then says to Joe Sestak (Democrat-Pennsylvania), ‘Some of the evidence will not be brought up in the case. You are now taking a chance that they are brought to the US and set free. Is this decision made to appease the left?’
SESTAK: Absolutely not! This is to make sure that we stand up for our ideals. We tortured somebody! I got it. We also know that there’s other means of getting evidence. No one knows yet if we don’t have that evidence. I have no doubt, bringing him forward, he’s going to be prosecuted and the keys thrown away.
HEMMER: Fine and you can also do that in a military tribunal.
RUSH: ‘We tortured somebody.’ This is precisely being done to appease the left. Precisely, to give them their day of reckoning but it’s also much more than that. It is yet another internal assault on the fabric, the traditions, the institutions that have made this country great. We’re the bad guys. The terrorists are the victims. It’s about torture. Three thousand people died at the hands of this man, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Nineteen others flew the planes. Now we have to pay the price because we waterboarded, which is not and has not been found to be explicitly torture. It’s a complicated thing. This is going to make sure we stand up for our ideals? We tortured somebody? We also know that there are other means? No one knows yet if we don’t have that evidence? ‘I have no doubt bringing him forward he’s going to be prosecuted, the keys thrown away forever.’ ‘You could also do that at a military tribunal.’ Hemmer is exactly right about that. One more here. Hemmer finally says, ‘You mentioned the word ‘torture.’ Is that the administration’s way of laying that at the foot of the Bush administration?’
SESTAK: I do believe that what they did was wrong because most studies have shown that it does not give you evidence as readily or as credible as other means have brought them forth in the past. What I do know is this, is that all those years that I defended this nation, I didn’t defend just people, I defended our ideals. We don’t have to bend our ideals to defend them. So bring them into New York City where they struck us! I have strong confidence in our judicial system that the evidence will be brought to bear.
RUSH: This guy a dangerous, left-wing radical ideologue. They don’t have a defense. Evidence? These guys have confessed. They have asked to be executed. Last December, almost a year ago, they wanted to be fried. They wanted their martyrdom. Now, we could still do it. So, the evidence will be brought to bear? The only evidence that’s going to be brought to bear… The prosecutors will lay it out. I mean but then the government, the United States itself will end up being on trial, ’cause these guys do not have a defense. Now, my friends, before we go to the break here, what we’re doing here is this: We are turning 200 years of history on its head. We are treating terrorists like common criminals. We are conferring constitutional rights on them. We are denying ourselves the ability to interrogate and detain as they will lawyer up from now on, and because the policy was changed in the middle of the war.
Treating terrorists as criminal defendants and not war criminals. It’s hard to know how this due process issue is gonna work. This ‘undermines our national security’ is to soft-pedal it. It does war worse than undermine national security. But it is the bottom line. Obama says this is a prosecutorial national security decision? How does this help our national security, bringing these guys to New York for a trial that could go on months, perhaps into years? And, by the way, this decision was made by Obama, not Holder. Holder is carrying out Obama’s policies. Holder is Obama. Jeremiah Wright is Obama. Bill Ayers is Obama. Valerie Jarrett is Obama. Van Jones is Obama. And again, whether he’s being naive and just doesn’t understand and hasn’t been properly educated or whether it’s diabolical and on purpose, it doesn’t matter. The end result is the same.
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RUSH: This is Eric Holder today announcing the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his buddies in New York City.
HOLDER: After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice. They will be brought to New York, to New York to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood. I am confident in the ability of our courts to provide these defendants a fair trial just as they have for over 200 years. The alleged 9/11 conspirators will stand trial in our justice system before an impartial jury under long established rules and procedures.
RUSH: Yada yada yada. Confident in the ability of our courts to provide these defendants a fair trial just as they have for over 200 years? It gets better, though. Another portion of Holder’s remarks.
HOLDER: For the many Americans who lost friends and relatives in the attacks of September the 11th, 2001, and on the USS Cole, nothing can bring back those loved ones. Today’s announcement marks a significant step forward in our efforts to close Guantanamo and to bring to justice those individuals who have conspired to attack our nation and our interests abroad. For over 200 years, our nation has relied on a faithful adherence to the rule of law, to bring criminals to justice and provide accountability to victims. Once again, we will ask our legal system in two venues to rise to that challenge.
RUSH: Close Guantanamo. We are going to get involved here to bring forward our effort to close Guantanamo. Why? Because we are guilty; because we committed torture; the United States needs to get its comeuppance, and Barack Obama, through Eric Holder, is going to make sure that it happens. So a question after this announcement, a reporter said, ‘Mr. Attorney General, some critics have already spoken out saying it’s a very bad decision. Congressman Peter King has been quoted as saying this makes New York more of a target. How do you respond to that?’
HOLDER: New York has a long history of trying these kinds of cases. The person who bombed the World Trade Center I guess in 1993 was tried there. The blind sheik was tried there. New York has a hardened system. We have talked to the Marshals Service there. An analysis was done about the capabilities that exist in New York and I’m quite confident that we can safely hold people there, that we can protect the people who surround the courthouse area and bring these cases successfully. So I don’t think that that criticism is factually based.
RUSH: Now, this is what I was talking about a moment ago. This is the defense that all these people are making, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, New York, why, New York is always a target of terrorism, why, look at 1993, World Trade Center bombing, New York is hardened for that.’ Yeah, 1993 came before 9/11. We tried these guys in 1993, that would be Omar Abdel Rahman and his buds, and then 9/11 happens. They’re making New York an even larger terrorist target. These guys want to be martyred, folks. It is their religion. They want to be martyred. What could be better than to be martyred by their own people in the process of the United States ostensibly carrying out its wonderful system of justice?
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I just was reminded here that in the first Holder sound bite he said they’re being brought to New York to answer for their ‘alleged crimes.’ They confessed! Alleged crimes? Impartial jury? Who in the hell has not heard of 9/11? Well, maybe in New York it’s possible by now. I don’t know.