MSNBC terrorism analyist Evan Kohlmann responds to Lindsey Graham's fear mongering and talking points that we need to have suspected terrorist tried in military tribunals and why it is ridiculous that we cannot have the trials in New York. Sadly the administration looks like they're waivering on this one.
Witt: You are perfectly comfortable with it being held in a civilian court in lower Manhattan, absolutely comfortable that we would have the security with which to keep New Yorkers…
Kohlmann: We’ve got trials going on right now here in New York involving hard core, well trained, highly trained senior terrorists. I mean just a few days ago the wife of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s cousin, or nephew was just convicted, here in New York—right here in the southern district. No one said anything. There were no riots. There were no terrorist attacks. The world didn’t come to an end.
Witt: Well perhaps the focus wasn’t… I mean the media scrutiny wasn’t as great.
Kohlmann: Right. But that’s the point is that this was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the wife of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s nephew. This woman was captured outside of a U.S. base in Afghanistan with information about terrorist attacks here in the United States. You couldn’t imagine someone to be more hard core than that. She was convicted resoundingly. She tried turning the trial into a circus. The judge immediately told her “You’re outta’ here”. He kicked her out of court. He only let her in when she agreed to calm down. The answer is that we’re already doing this. We’ve been doing it for years. There is absolutely no reason we can’t do it again.
Kohlmann goes on to point out that this is of course, all about politics. Alex Witt later in the broadcast brought in her “boys” Grandpa Pat Buchanan and some guy who they call a “Democratic strategist” who’s always on with Buchanan on the weekends, who actually said that terrorists shouldn’t get lawyers no matter what our Constitution says. Witt, of course, during that interview seemed to completely forget she even had this conversation with Kohlmann.
