Somehow or other most of the country seems to have allowed the neat filing away of 9/11. Sure, there are people out there who think more -- too much -- has not yet been told about 9/11 than should be. But they need to be careful. There's a little history of job loss for those speak their doubt openly. That's a scandal in itself. Evidently it's another mess from which we're willing to "move on."
Here's a framing job on 9/11 that we shouldn't accept: that the attack justified a military response. Many believed and continue to believe that the attack, terrible as it was, called for swift and effective law enforcement. This was overruled by a White House which fed us lies in order to take us into two wars based on a criminal action by foreign extremists on home soil.
Senator Lindsey Graham is one of those for whom preserving the "military option" is very important. Don't forget: if questions arise the military's role, then further, more embarrassing, questions will have to be answered about two terms of a Republican presidency and the lies that sustained it.
Perhaps that's another reason why Senator Graham is taking a hard line right now about those Guantanamo prisoners.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is trying to prevent the Obama administration from holding criminal trials in civilian courts for the alleged Sept. 11 plotters instead of bringing them before military commissions.
Graham, who helped craft the 2006 law that established the military commissions, said Friday that he'd attached an amendment to an appropriations bill that would prohibit the Obama administration from spending money on the prosecution and trial of the accused terrorists before U.S. civilian federal judges.
"Khalid Sheik Mohammed needs to be tried in a military tribunal," Graham said. "He's not a common criminal. He took up arms against the United States." ...McClatchy
Talk about putting lipstick on a pig! KSM is, if the law proves it, is a "common criminal" in spades. He wasn't a sovereign nation -- or even the agent of a nation -- taking up arms against the US. He planned the highjacking of commercial airliners and used them to murder thousands of people in New York and beyond.
Under the circumstances, the Obama administration's response seems both saner and more honest. As one Pentagon spokesperson put it: "It is the administration view that when you direct violence on innocent civilians in the continental United States, it may be appropriate that that person be brought to justice in a civilian public forum in the continental United States."
Trouble with that, for Lindsey Graham and others, is what it says about the Bush administration's handling of the whole disaster from day one. And the very wars Graham himself served in were illegal and unnecessary. Painful as it would be for him to have to face that, it's far worse if he requires that the country pay the price of his intransigence by being forced to lie about its history.
