Posted on 03/03/2010 4:56:16 AM PST by ConservativeHideout
On December 25th, 2009 a 23 year old Nigerian Muslim boarded Northwest Airlines flight number 253 with explosives hidden in his underwear. His name: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. His mission: to kill as many Americans as possible. His training came from Al Qaeda after he was recruited by Anwar al-Awlaki. The same Anwar al-Awlaki who had ties to the shooter in the Ft. Hood massacre, Major Nadal Malik Hassan.
Abdulmutallab (ab-dool-moo-tal-ab) is an enemy combatant. He donned no uniform, and carried no insignia of any standing army. He wore civilian clothes and attempted to perform a terrorist act upon the citizens of this country. Yet he was not interrogated to find out if he was part of a plot with other would-be bombers. He was not interrogated as an enemy combatant in order to ascertain where he received his training, bomb materials and/or financial support. He was not interrogated in order to find out names, contact information, phone numbers or the email accounts of those who trained and supported his attempted terrorist attack.
Instead, Abdulmutallab was questioned for 50 minutes in his hospital room, where he was awaiting surgery for the burns he received when he tried to detonate the bomb in his underwear. The responding FBI agents decided against Mirandizing the suspect due to the “public safety” exception which allows police agents to question suspects to protect the public interest. Naturally they suspected Abdulmutallab was one of many terrorists on planes that day. However, after Abdulmutallab got out of surgery, a different FBI team, a “clean team” resumed questioning him and then gave him Miranda rights.
Now at this point it is pertinent to point out that Obama fancies himself a type of modern day FDR. He compared his first 100 days in office to FDR’s and his handling of the economic recession practically mirrors FDR’s actions. But FDR and Obama part ways in one area of Presidential responsibility, national defense.
On June 19 [1942] the President received an excited call from Francis Biddle, his attorney general. Six days before, Biddle told the President, “at 1:30 A.M. an unarmed Coast Guard patrolman near Amagansett, Montauk Point, Long Island, discovered two men placing material in a hole they had dug; one of them covered the patrolman with a gun, gave him $260 and told him to keep his mouth shut. I shall, of course, keep you informed.” As J. Edgar Hoover’s nominal boss, Biddle later recalled the FBI chief’s demeanor while describing the plan to track down the rest of the saboteurs: “His eyes were bright, his jaw set, excitement flickering around the edge of his nostrils,” Biddle remembered. The question now was how much to tell the public. Hoover wanted no announcement that might alert the men still at large. The President agreed, and the press was, for the moment, frozen out of the story.
FDR’s longstanding preoccupation with sabotage now seemed validated. Biddle admitted, “I had a bad week trying to sleep as I thought of the possibilities. The saboteurs might have other caches hidden, and at any moment an explosion was possible.” [Saboteur] Dasch had, in fact, revealed that, along with their transportation and industrial targets, the Pastorius mission was supposed to spread terror by placing firebombs in department stores and delayed-action explosives in hotels and in crowded railroad stations.
So long before 9/11, long before the Christmas Day Bomber, enemy combatants were caught on U.S. soil, attempting to kill American citizens. How did FDR respond to this threat to national security? Well within days, all of the would-be saboteurs were apprehended; mainly because Dasch, one of the first two that were caught, turned on his comrades and gave them up. At this point, FDR laid out exactly how he expected them to be dealt with.
Three days after all eight saboteurs were in custody, FDR sent Biddle a memo making clear his expectations. “The two Americans are guilty of treason,” he told the attorney general. “I do not see how they can offer any adequate defense. . . it seems to me that the death penalty is almost obligatory.” As for the six German citizens, “They were apprehended in civilian clothes. This is an absolute parallel of the Case of Major [John] Andre in the Revolution and of Nathan Hale. Both of these men were hanged.” The President hammered home his point once more: “The death penalty is called for by usage and by the extreme gravity of the war aim and the very existence of our American govemment.”
FDR held sway his iron will in this matter, as he did in many other matters that he wanted done his way, telling Biddle that he did NOT want the saboteurs tried in civilian court, but in a military tribunal that he would appoint. FDR said the men did not warrant a civilian trial because they “had penetrated battle lines strung on land along our two coasts and guarded on the sea by our destroyers, and were waging battle within our country.” The military tribunal would be quick and efficient, not having to deal with the complicated rules of evidence or protracted appeals process that at times beleaguered the civilian courts. The death sentence that FDR sought was easier to obtain in a military tribunal, requiring only 2/3 majority, not unanimous decision. He further told Biddle, “I want one thing clearly understood, Francis: I won’t give them up . . . I won’t hand them over to any United States Marshall armed with a writ of habeas corpus. Understand!”
Conviction should be simple, Biddle promised FDR, since “[t]he major violation of the Law of War is crossing behind the lines of a belligerent to commit hostile acts without being in uniform.”
On July 2 the President announced that the eight accused would stand trial before a military commission composed of seven generals, and they would be charged with violating the eighty-first and eighty-second Articles of War dealing with espionage, sabotage, and conspiracy. Court-appointed lawyers for the defendants made a game effort to move the trial to a civilian court, taking the constitutional issue all the way to the Supreme Court, but the justices backed the legality of a military tribunal. Biddle himself was to prosecute, an unusual move, having a civilian serve as prosecutor in a military proceeding. But FDR was taking no chances. The Army’s Judge Advocate General was rusty and had not tried a case for over twenty years. FDR wanted his own man before the bar. All eight were sentenced to death. The generals sent their verdict to the President. Roosevelt, acting, in effect, as the court of last resort, confirmed six of the death sentences, but commuted Burger’s sentence to life and Dasch’s to thirty years for their willingness to betray their comrades. August 8 was set for the executions, which would take place in the electric chair on the third floor of the District of Columbia jail. Eight weeks had elapsed from the night the first saboteurs had landed on Long Island.
Eight weeks. I am not saying that the Abdulmutallab should be put to death. But if he had received justice from the Obama administration as swiftly as the above mentioned eight men received their justice from the Roosevelt administration, then he would have been sentenced on February 12th, 2010. He now awaits trial, defended by a lawyer paid for by the American taxpayers.
Barack Hussein Obama was on vacation in Hawaii when he learned of this terrorist attempt. Does he regret not cutting his vacation short and addressing the American public right away? Doubtful. Maybe he regrets allowing Abdulmutallab to “lawyer up,” leaving gaping holes in our intelligence that might have been garnered from him. Again, very doubtful.
I wonder what FDR would say about this. It is said that he did have a regret about the eight saboteurs that he dealt with in 1942. FDR’s only regret? That they were not hanged.
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Not having lived through the Depression, Obama and his minions do not understand "quick and efficient".
These terrorists have cost us billions already. Why should we spend another billion to provide security and give them a forum to espouse their grievances?
As Rudyard Kipling wrote "Odds are on the Cheaper Man".
Trying the terrorists in civilian court is lunacy.
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