It Could Be Worse; We Could Be France

Here in the good ol' US of A, we give civilian trials to foreign terrorists responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. And we allow failed (panty) bombers the right to remain silent.

But it could be worse; we could be France.

On Thursday, a court outside Paris will rule on a claim lodged by one Ilich Ramírez Sánchez. Better known as Carlos the Jackal, the 60-year-old Venezuelan was the Osama bin Laden of the 1970s and 1980s. On behalf of Palestinian and various Marxist-Leninist causes, Ramírez organized and carried out a series of notable terrorist attacks. The French finally nabbed him from a Sudanese hospital in 1994 and jailed him for life for the murder of two French policemen and a Lebanese informant. Carlos the Jackal now spends his time invoking his rights under the French constitution.

In the case before the court in Nanterre, he and long-time lawyer Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who also married him, are suing a French production company for the right to review and "correct and edit" a forthcoming made-for-TV film about him entitled "Carlos." Ms. Coutant-Peyre alleges the filmmakers are out to "demolish Carlos." Her client wants to protect the intellectual property rights to his name and "biographical image." The court has taken this case seriously enough to hear it.

A lawyer for the film company, Film en Stock, asked the Libération daily in Paris, "How could we possibly tarnish the image of Carlos when he himself claims to have killed some 2,000 people?" There's also the small matter of a right to free press and speech that should, one would assume, shield the filmmakers from a litigious terrorist.

I suppose Carlos is thinking about starting a line of t-shirts in the mold of mass murderer, Che Guevara. You know the ones, with Che's "iconic" image, worn by idiots and hipsters everywhere.

These "revolutionary" shirts are like the Nazi Swastika and Soviet hammer & sickle to me--symbols of murder, terrorism, & tyranny. I resent anyone and everyone who wears such things--whether they do so in be-clowning ignorance or knowing full well the murderer Che was or, alternatively (in the case of the hammer & sickle), the many millions who died as a result of communist ideology, thus revealing themselves to be mentally sick.

Words and symbols matter, dear reader. Look through your clothing and be sure you're not unknowingly wearing & espousing belief in a system or person responsible for death and destruction.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Bret Stephens On The Circus Trial Of KSM, 'A Third Look At Ground Zero'

Wake up, folks. It's time to pay attention to what's happening with the Obama administration's politicization of American prosecution of the war on terror and intelligence gathering. Trying KSM & co. in NYC is just the latest example, not the only one.

The third way to consider the trials is to look at Ground Zero itself. After eight years of deliberation, planning, money and effort, what have we got? The picture nearby is the answer.

Let me be more precise. After eight years in which the views and interests of, inter alia, the Port Authority, NYPD, MTA and EPA, the several governors of New York and New Jersey, lease-holder Larry Silverstein, various star architects, the insurance companies, contractors, unions and lawyers, the families of the bereaved, their self-appointed spokespersons, the residents of lower Manhattan and, yes, even the fish of the Hudson river have all been duly consulted and considered, this is what we've got: a site of mourning turned into a symbol of defiance turned into a metaphor of American incompetence—of things not going forward. It is, in short, the story of our decade.

Barack Obama, energetic and smart, was elected largely to change all that. But the thrust of his presidency so far has been in the direction of bloated government, deficits and health-care bills; paralysis over Afghanistan and Iran; the convulsions over Gitmo and the CIA torture memos. And now this: An effort to demonstrate the purity of our methods and motives that is destined, as all these things have been, to wind up as the legal equivalent of Ground Zero. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for whom no real justice will ever be meted, understood his targets well.

Taken together with Holder's (read: Obama) decision to investigate intelligence officials who carried out interrogations under the Bush administration (already cleared of wrongdoing once), this is Obama appeasing, as I said yesterday, the bloodthirsty, Bush-hating crowd.

They'll never get at President Bush or Dick Cheney, but they'll crow like they crowed when they got Scooter Libby for... what? For supposedly obstructing justice when there was no crime committed in the first place.

In the United States, when we don't like the policy of one administration, we replace that group of idiots with another group of idiots. We do not have show trials and kangaroo courts and prosecute people. That's the sort of thing they do in autocracies when they go from one corrupt & murderous regime to the next. If you read that sentence and thought, "but that's exactly what the Bush administration was!" then you must be a moonbat.

Clearly the leftists looked at Afghanistan, Iraq, & Iran and learned the wrong lesson.


If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

John Yoo: 'KSM Trial Will Hurt US Intelligence, Be A 3-Ring Circus'

John Yoo worked in the Justice Department from 2001-2003 and is currently a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Now, however, KSM and his co-defendants will enjoy the benefits and rights that the Constitution accords to citizens and resident aliens—including the right to demand that the government produce in open court all of the information that it has on them, and how it got it.

Prosecutors will be forced to reveal U.S. intelligence on KSM, the methods and sources for acquiring its information, and his relationships to fellow al Qaeda operatives. The information will enable al Qaeda to drop plans and personnel whose cover is blown. It will enable it to detect our means of intelligence-gathering, and to push forward into areas we know nothing about.

President Obama is subordinating American security & intelligence to the demands of the extreme left wing of his party.

This is foolish & stupid in the extreme--just the latest example of President Obama putting politics before what's good for the country.

You might be saying to yourself, especially if you're a knee jerk Obama apologist like some of my friends, 'What's political about this move?'

I'm glad you asked. Here's Andrew McCarthy:

The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies coupled with the 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. The defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and -- depending on what judge catches the case -- they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets.

The bloodlust of leftists afflicted with Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) will not be sated until Bushitler is put on trial for his crimes against humanity!!1!!!eleventy!!

Well, they'll get their wish and the rest of us will add this to the list (of examples where Obama put party politics before country).

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.