Holder strikes a blow for the Constitution

US Constitution back in style?

Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department will relocate five Guantanamo Bay detainees to New York City to face trial in US civilian court rather than in a military tribunal. 

With this decision, Holder once again upholds the Constitution as the supreme law of the land.  At issue are the fates of individuals, including the alleged mastermind of the 911 attacks, who have been held in a facility in Guantanamo Bay for seven years.

Former Bush administration officials seem panic-stricken at the idea that there will be trials in civilian courts.

Pathetic Bush lapdog Michael Mukasey had this to say about the matter:  "The question is whether, not only that particular facility but the city at large, will then become the focus for mischief in the form of murder by adherents of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.  Whether this raises the odds that it will, I would suggest to you that it raises them very high."

And Dick Cheney's hideous demon-spawn daughter was on Fox News yesterday with these shrill words:  "[Obama]'s going to give them a public platform where they can spew venom, where they can preach jihad, where they can reach out and recruit other terrorists. And it is totally unnecessary."

And there you have it.  Bereft of any legal or moral grounds for their objection, the Bush gang reverts to hysterical fear to try to save its bacon.

First, Mukasey whines that New York City will become a terrorist target.  But, hadn't the Bush administration been shrilly proclaiming for its last 6 years in office that we were all in grave danger?  How much more grave can the danger become?

Then, repulsive Liz Cheney shrieks that the suspects will use their trials to win recruits to their cause.  But, does she imagine that the reports of water-boarding and illegal secret detentions have not already acheived that goal?

Junior and his gang, of course, kept the suspects in the off-shore prison facility precisely in order to avoid legal issues around the way they were handling these men.  Bush officials are already on record stating that at least one of the suspects, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was water-boarded (which is torture and therefore unconstitutional) up to 183 times.  And, therefore, the filthy Bush gang know that such trials will bring to light all the unsavory truth about their torture tactics, their secret off-shore prisons, their constitutional abuses.

Dick Cheney, Michael Mukasey, Alberto Gonzales, Don Rumsfeld, and Junior himself will all come out of it exposed as the medieval beasts that they truly are.  The trials will reveal exactly what Alberto Gonzales meant when he wrote that the "new paradigm" of the war on terrorism "renders obsolete [the Geneva Convention]'s strict limitation on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

The Bush administration used the 911 attacks as a pretext to create a special extra-constitutional system that allowed them to use detainees for their own ends.  I would not be surprised to learn, as a result of these trials, that Bush and Cheney kept the detainees in secret prisons in order to torture them into admitting a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.  They needed to justify their filthy war.

And it could well be that evidence presented in the trials will influence Holder's pending decision about whether or not to name a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration for constitutional abuses.  (Feeling the heat, Dick?)

For all their patriotic fakery, those who object to Holder's decision are showing very little faith in the Constitution and the vision of the so-called Founding Fathers.  The Constitution and the United States' system of justice is time-tested and meant to endure.  Most especially in troubled times.  And, even if it were true that the trials make New York City more of a target, what of it?  Are we to modify our behavior and our justice system because we're afraid of terrorists?

If that's the case, count me out.  I won't be intimidated by anybody.  Not by a bunch of bearded dicks with fanatical religious fervor; even less by Junior's political lackeys and apologists.

Bravo, General Holder.

(Happy birthday, Mom!)