Acknowledging Yet ANOTHER Mistake...

Yesterday the Obama administration acknowledged that scheduling the 9-11 Trials in downtown Manhattan was an ill-conceived idea.

It took a lot of doing, with NY Senator Charles Schumer and Mayor Mike Bloomberg having led that fight from New York.

Security concerns, cost concerns and the logistics of having to lock down America’s financial hub, all make lower Manhattan a very poor venue for such a trial.

On January 27^th, Bloomberg said that he wanted the trial moved, a change from November when he said he supported holding it in lower Manhattan.

In comments made earlier this week, he said security for a trial in lower Manhattan could cost as much as $1 billion!

Bloomberg said yesterday that he spoke with “high level” officials in the Obama administration, and told them it “would be better to do it elsewhere.”

“They understand and they’re trying to do something,” the mayor said yesterday on his weekly radio show. “I pointed out again, that it would be phenomenally expensive and very disruptive to people who live in the area and businesses.”

The original idea of trying the 9-11 suspects “within view of the scene of their crime” was a romanticized, emotion-driven decision...the kind this administration has made on the economy since it took office a little over a year ago.

You know what would be a good venue for these trials? The state-of-the-art court rooms they built at Guantanamo Bay!

Rolling the Dice With Terrorism......

By sending the case against Khalid Sheik Mohammed (pictured above) to trial in a U.S. District Court, in lower Manhattan no less, Eric Holder and Barack Obama have (1) made an outright acquittal of the "terrorist mastermind," far more likely, because the American criminal justice system's "rules of evidence" were not followed in the capture, interrogation and evidence gathering process, as they were carried out by Military NOT law enforcement authorities, thus none of the suspects were ever Mirandized and no warrants were ever procured...AND (2) it gives the jihadists the grand stage they've wanted all along. It's also likely that the government will forgo using classified evidence rather than risk exposing both the evidence itself and how that evidence may have been attained.

The 1993 trial over the first World Trade Center bombing was an unmitigated disaster, so much so, in fact, that James Fox, then Director of the FBI's NYC Office said, "America's criminal justice system is inadequate to the task of dealing with state sponsored terrorism."

Director Fox was, without question, right and that was the beginning of the shift away from viewing terrorism as a "law enforcement issue," and refocusing it as a military one.

Undoing that approach at this juncture is not only unwise and naive, it's recklessly and irresponsibly dangerous as well.