Graham Amendment Fails, Fight Against Gitmo Goes On

November 06, 2009  |  Posted by Danielle Belton

Thursday the Senate voted to kill an amendment by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham that would have made it illegal to try 9/11 terrorism suspects on U.S. soil.

This defeat of the Graham Amendment was the second success in stopping measures that would tie the president’s hands as he prosecutes terror suspects, but Republicans are not going to let up any time soon as they maneuver, distort, manipulate and contort every avenue they can find to keep Guantanamo Bay open. The Graham Amendment is just the latest example of how far they’re willing to go to stall, delay and derail justice.

Graham wanted to make it so that terrorists could only be tried by military commissions. During the debate over the amendment, Sen. Mitch McConnell talked about the nightmare scenario of all the “havoc” terrorists could cause when put on trial in federal courts, but he doesn’t have to look into a crystal ball to see what would happen if we tried them here. We have and DID try them here and you know what happened? They went to prison. Why is Sen. McConnell trying to make us afraid of something that already exists?

McConnell is for military commissions only, but he needs to do the math. Eight years of the Bush-Cheney Administration and the military tribunals convicted how many terrorists? Three. The federal courts have convicted 195 individuals in the same amount of time. At this moment we have 355 terrorists sitting in U.S. prisons, 216 are international terrorists and 139 are domestic. How are the terrorists responsible for 9/11 any different from those who attacked the World Trade Center the first time in 1993? Or those who bombed the U.S.S. Cole? Last time I checked, terrorists were human and fallible. They don’t have super powers. They aren’t geniuses. These are mass murders manipulating religion to push an agenda.

What was another reason Republicans and some Democrats were pushing the Graham Amendment? Because of nomenclature. Arguing that the 9/11 terrorists are warriors rather than the mass murderers they are, Congressional Republicans want to make these terrorists dreams of grandeur come true by elevating the terrorists' cause to something bigger than what it is. These men aren’t “warriors” -- they’re murderers using fear and death to push their whacked belief systems.

Why do Republican senators like McConnell want to turn vicious killers into criminal masterminds and soldiers? In statements to the Senate Thursday, Sen. McConnell, in an amazingly surprising turn, cited the cases of terrorists Ramsey Yusuf and Zacarias Mousaoui as examples of why terrorists are too extreme to be tried in federal courts. But, surprise, surprise (and earth-to-McConnell) BOTH Yusuf and Mousaoui were tried, convicted and sentenced in same federal courts that suddenly aren’t good enough for terrorists in Guantanamo.

It's important for people to recognize terrorists for who they are and not allow politicians to elevate them to the status of warriors. And it’s good that people are standing up for our federal system of justice that has worked for us for so long.

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