The Senator Who Cried Wolf

November 09, 2009  |  Posted by Danielle Belton

Sometimes when I hear Republicans (and unfortunately, some Democrats) talk about the prospect of 9/11 terrorism suspects in Guantanamo coming to the U.S. to stand trial it sounds a lot like that old cry from the poem about the ride of Paul Revere.

The terrorists are coming! The terrorists are coming!

There’s only one problem with that bit of hyperbole: The terrorists are already here.

What? You didn’t know? You wouldn’t know the way some people talk, but our prisons are already chock full of Dick Cheney’s “the worst of the worst.” Right now we have 355 terrorists sitting in U.S. prisons, 216 are international terrorists and 139 are domestic. Many are already tried and convicted, mostly with little fanfare, in U.S. courts. And we’re not talking people who made threats or looked at a government official funny. We’re talking bombers, mass murderers and criminals. People like 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramsey Yusuf and 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Mousaoui. Murderers like domestic terrorists John Allen Muhammad, the Beltway Sniper and Theodore John Kaczynski, the Unabomber. But let some Republicans tell it and you’d think the federal courts had never seen the likes of a mass murderer before. That they’d never stared into the face of a terrorist and convicted without incident.

But don’t tell that to the likes of Sen. Mitch McConnell who’s never met a terrorist he couldn’t turn into a “must keep Gitmo open” boogeyman.

From Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Web site in his address to the Senate about terrorists being brought to the U.S. for trial:

Some might argue that terrorists like Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the 9/11 conspirators, aren’t enemy combatants – that they are somehow on the same level as a convenience store stick-up man. But listen to the words of Moussaoui himself. He disagrees.

Asked if he regretted his part in the September 11th attacks, Moussaoui said, quote, ‘I just wish it will happen on the 12th, the 13th, the 14th, the 15th, the 16th, the 17th, and [on and on].’ He went on to explain how happy he was to learn of the death of American servicemen and women in the Pentagon on 9/11. And then he mocked an officer for weeping about the loss of men under her command … There’s no question Moussaoui himself believes he’s an enemy combatant engaged in a war against us.

It’s so kind of McConnell to let Moussaoui be the one to define who and what he is as opposed to the Americans who captured and convicted him. Moussaoui thinks he’s a warrior, so let’s call him one, because that’s exactly what he wants. He doesn’t want to be told he’s just a mass murderer, manipulating religion to control people. He wants you to recognize his noble cause and McConnell, in his efforts to scare people, is willing to go along with the gambit.

McConnell also went on to question the safety of U.S. courts, arguing that they cause the leak of sensitive information, forgetting entirely about the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) that “establishes a detailed set of procedures designed to balanced the defendant’s right to a fair trial with the need to protect sensitive evidence that could endanger national security.” We have laws in place to protect our courts and the information revealed within them. In past incidents, under CIPA, appellate courts were successful in excluding defendants and uncleared counsel from attending sensitive proceedings.

Congressional Republicans like Sen. McConnell want to scare the public by telling them to imagine a horrible future, when that future is both past and prologue. We’ve tried. We’ve convicted. We’ve moved on. Telling citizens to imagine some doomsday scenario reveals the weakness of the pro-Guantanamo, pro-military tribunals argument. They have to scare people because the minute you point out the obvious, the minute Americans learn the facts, the more they want to see Guantanamo closed. The opposition’s argument is so feeble that these scary extremes are the best they can muster. But how many times can Guantanmo’s proponents cry wolf before people get tired of living in a constant state of fear over things that have already happened?

Who’s afraid of justice for 9/11 victims through our U.S. courts system? Not me.

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