9-11 Commission Report needs re-read as Guantanamo proceedings suspended

Guantanamo Bay became a torch for liberal media and a touchstone for justice in many of President Barack Obama’s campaign speeches. It comes as no surprise The Washington Post has reported, “[t]he Obama administration instructed military prosecutors late Tuesday to seek a 120-day suspension of legal proceedings involving detainees at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba…” The U.S. will now return to a kinder gentler treatment for terrorists, ideally providing them full rights accorded by law and by the Geneva Conventions. The Post notes that pre-trial hearings for five 9/11 defendants, among them Khalid Sheik Mohammed, may or may not proceed—depending on the defendants’ preferences. Further, the ACLU has jumped in. The organization wants, “the unconditional withdrawal of all charges… shutting down this tainted system is warranted." Those words were attributed by the paper to Jamil Dakwar, director of the human rights program at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Maybe next time a renegade political group of assassins decides to kill more than 3,000 of us, we can call the ACLU for protection. National defense doesn’t get more stupid than this.

A U.S. Army soldier assigned to Echo Company, 629th Military Intelligence Battalion, provides overwatch security at a checkpoint area near the Joint Task Force Guantanamo detention center on Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Nov. 17, 2006. The company's main missions, as part of the task force, include perimeter security as well as acting as a quick reaction force should something happen inside the detention center. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy.

The Geneva Conventions were developed before radical Islamists decided to restore a new world order embracing complete subjugation of women amongst other dramatic changes in personal liberty. These radicals, referred to as terrorists before liberal media began to empathize with the likes of Sheik Mohammed, observed only one convention before attacking our people and our economy. Murder. These radicals represent no government. They observe no conventions other than murder.

U.S. liberal media has focused myopically on Guantanamo Bay without telling the rest of the story because liberal media can’t get legs on the ground where women are stoned to death on charges of adultery. I haven’t seen too many media embedded with Hamas, at least not officially.

While no one advocates torture, Guantanamo Bay has apparently served a purpose in culling would-be terrorists from our midst. Do we need a special detention facility for terrorists? I have no doubt there are still some in our country who wish to do us harm. President Bill Clinton put a bandaid on terrorism, trying terrorists as civilians in U.S. courts. That was after his actions lit a big fire in Waco. Maybe it’s okay to fry more than 80 Americans including children. Clinton wasn't prosecuted for his actions.

Maybe we’ve just gone to sleep again. The president has the right to deal with Gitmo as he wishes. But what is the alternative, exactly?

The 9/11 Commission Report described the mindset of liberal media in the years before 9/11. It’s a wakeup call: “It is hard now to recapture the conventional wisdom before 9/11. For example, a New York Times article in April 1999 sought to debunk claims that Bin Ladin [sic] was a terrorist leader, with the headline ‘U.S. Hard Put to Find Proof Bin Laden directed attacks.’ The head of analysis at the CTC until 1999 discounted the alarms about a catastrophic threat as relating only to the danger of chemical, biological, or nuclear attack—and he downplayed even that…” [pg. 343]

Many cabinet members in the new administration are Clintonites. We can hope they’ve learned a valuable lesson about national security. We can hope American lives will be considered as valuable as the lives of those who wish to destroy us. It’s all about hope now, right?