NY Daily News reported, late last night, and Fox News confirms: per “senior administration officials,” new locations are being sought for the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The trial will still be in federal court, triggering none of the harms I mentioned (read last night’s post).
Also as our source suggested, one possible motivation is a bill (H.R. 4542), posed by Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.), which would withdraw federal funding from efforts to try Guantánamo detainees in the United States. However, that bill is too broad to pass, and as of yet is drawing only Republican support. Thus, it can’t be the full story. I expect that the near-unity of downtown legislators, and the recommendations of Mayor Bloomberg, were the real factors here.
The battle is joined. To stress the necessity of our victory, I’ll close by quoting last night’s post:
For the Republican Party, the stakes surrounding the KSM trial couldn’t be higher. They’ve spent decades (think Joe McCarthy) building a national security platform on the theory that civilian institutions don’t work in wartime, and that “wartime” includes any national security crisis that occurs on a Republican president’s watch. Should the KSM trial proceed to an orderly conclusion, that entire line of argumentation would, in a single moment, dissipate. If push comes to shove, we, the Democratic Party, will be up against the momentum of fity years of Republican rhetoric. But it’s a fight we have to win, if we’re to trust ourselves and our country once more.
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