Ignore the comments in this post if you're having trouble controlling your blood pressure. But do read the post, because it discusses the Moussaoui trial and quotes Michael Isikoff as saying that it was a side show, which in my opinion, it was. But the author veers into some away from the thesis, that we have the real perpetrators (Khalid Shaihk Mohammad and Ramzi binal-Shibh) in custody. and that they should be put on trial.
However, instead of reasoning that the better use of these people is to get intelligence to stop further attacks, the author advocates putting the in the dock, and presumable, killing them. This would end all flow of intel, would it not?
Ah, but you see, we tortured them and the administration doesn't want that to come out in a trial, and besides:
Meanwhile, the Moussaoui trial may have been a side show, but it also served its purpose for the Bush administration by keeping 9/11 -- the falling bodies, the horrific fate and heroism of Flight 93 -- fresh in the public's mind, so it can be invoked anew in Iran and wherever else the voice of God steers Bush and his war machine in the coming months.
I am regularly frustrated that somehow, in the minds of many critics, the same people who can't get anything right in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, New Orleans, etc. turn into super manipulators when the need arises.
And by the way, the media has largely kept images of falling bodies out of the public eye and there are some who see the new film on Flight 93 to be a fiction and some gross nationalistic propaganda tool (okay, read the comments).
If the two terrorists mentioned above never come to trial, it may be because they serve a better purpose by being just where they are. The justice that the author demands wil come with winning this war. If somebody had to get rough with these two, we shouldn't care less.
-Daniel
Comments