Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is holding up another defense bill for the purpose of giving the military the ‘flexibility’ of trying terrorists in our civilian criminal justice system. Did you know that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was wanting that? I must have missed it.
The administration’s goal is to overturn previous congressional actions that prevent terrorists from being given the protections of law-abiding U.S. citizens.
Reid and the administration don’t like the part in the bill that “requires military custody of a suspect determined to be a member of al-Qaida or its affiliate or anyone involved in the planning or an attack on the United States.” In other words, the enemy.
This is Harry Reid deceiving the folks by turning a Right into a Left.
“Limitations on that flexibility, or on the availability of critical counterterrorism tools, would significantly threaten our national security.”
The administration must have the flexibility to combat terrorism, including the use of the criminal justice system to prosecute terrorist suspects.
If they didn’t lie about what they are really doing, they could never advance their real agenda. Sick, but that’s the way it is.
It should be no surprise either that Attorney General Eric Holder, who prior to his current job was defending terrorists, wants to take exclusive authority over enemy combatants away from the military. This is not an enhancement to national security.
Here’s a coincidence. Holder’s former law firm, Covington & Burling, specializes in representing Guantanamo detainees.
Links: Why Civilian Trials For Terrorists? | Detention of terror suspects blocks defense bill
