Investor’s Business Daily debates the merits of “Kill Vs. Capture,” and notes, “The battlefield justice that befell Osama bin Laden begs the question — if he’d been captured alive, would he have been accorded the same legal rights we bestowed on his apostle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?”
‘I want justice,” President George W. Bush said after a meeting at the Pentagon days after passenger jets turned into cruise missiles by bin Laden, Mohammed and their circle of evil smashed into it and the World Trade Center towers. Speaking of bin Laden, Bush added, “And there’s an old poster out West that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.'”
Osama bin Laden is dead, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is alive, a poster child for the animus directed at Bush for setting up military tribunals at Guantanamo. He knew we were at war, a war that resulted in the justified death of the terrorist who declared it, bin Laden.
In the coming days we may find out just how much intelligence gleaned from those held at Gitmo, including KSM himself, contributed to the success of the current operation.
We do know that OBL, unlike KSM, was not read his rights, offered a lawyer or promised a civilian trial in New York City just blocks from Ground Zero.
President Obama deserves credit for continuing the Predator drone strikes against terrorist targets begun by President Bush and for continuing the campaign to find, and kill, bin Laden. But if OBL had been captured, what then? Would we have sent him to a Guantanamo the administration wanted closed?
Eric Holder wanted to try 9/11 mastermind Mohammed in a civilian court in New York City within blocks of where the World Trade Center once stood.
As former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was quoted earlier today:
“He did not send the FBI into Pakistan to retrieve Osama bin Laden as if he were a common criminal,” Gonzales observes. “He sent our military because this is a war. And Osama bin Laden is a military target; he’s a military leader.”
IBD adds that the recent events were a marked improvement over how the Obama administration had previously dealt with terrorists:
You cannot Mirandize enemy combatants when their information is critical to analyzing prior attacks and in preventing future ones, as we did with Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after his failed attempt to destroy Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit. You cannot let these monsters lawyer up or tell them they have the right to remain silent.
Oh, and before I forget, a dramatic artists’ recreation of recent events which may or not be entirely accurate. Probably the latter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiDyrkU0WAQ&feature=player_embedded
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