Posted on 11/13/2009 5:18:43 AM PST by Sergeant Tim
Eight year ago today, on November 13, 2001, my family laid to rest a 9/11 hero on what would have been his 46th birthday. Outside the church, along with hundreds of friends and neighbors and 1,200 firefighters tearfully saluting their fallen brother, we felt our nation standing as one. Today, we ask that you stand once more, for your families and with ours, to support our troops, and in the common defense.
We have appealed directly to the President. Below is that letter. If you wish to add your name to it, PLEASE CLICK HERE. (Note: 911FamiliesForAmerica.org is partners with theBravest.com and KeepAmericaSafe.com in this effort.) We will update the list of those who have signed twice daily. Currently, 5,000 have signed, including 4,000 since 8 PM Eastern last night.
November 9, 2009
President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Obama:
On September 11, 2001, the entire world watched as 19 men hijacked four commercial airliners, attacking passengers and killing crew members, and then turned the fully-fueled planes into missiles, flying them into the World Trade Center twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 3,000 of our fellow human beings died in two hours. The nation's commercial aviation system ground to a halt. Lower Manhattan was turned into a war zone, shutting down the New York Stock Exchange for days and causing tens of thousands of residents and workers to be displaced. In nine months, an estimated 50,000 rescue and recovery workers willingly exposed themselves to toxic conditions to dig out the ravaged remains of their fellow citizens buried in 1.8 million tons of twisted steel and concrete.
The American people were rightly outraged by this act of war. Whether the cause was retribution or simple recognition of our common humanity, the words "Never Forget" were invoked in tearful or angry rectitude, defiantly written in the dust of Ground Zero or humbly penned on makeshift memorials erected all across the land. The country was united in its determination that these acts should not go unmarked and unpunished.
Eight long years have passed since that dark and terrible day. Sadly, some have forgotten the promises we made to those whose lives were taken in such a cruel and vicious manner.
We have not forgotten. We are the husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and other family members of the victims of these depraved and barbaric attacks, and we feel a profound obligation to ensure that justice is done on their behalf. It is incomprehensible to us that members of the United States Congress would propose that the same men who today refer to the murder of our loved ones as a "blessed day" and who targeted the United States Capitol for the same kind of destruction that was wrought in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, should be the beneficiaries of a social compact of which they are not a part, do not recognize, and which they seek to destroy: the United States Constitution.
We adamantly oppose prosecuting the 9/11 conspirators in Article III courts, which would provide them with the very rights that may make it possible for them to escape the justice which they so richly deserve. We believe that military commissions, which have a long and honorable history in this country dating back to the Revolutionary War, are the appropriate legal forum for the individuals who declared war on America. With utter disdain for all norms of decency and humanity, and in defiance of the laws of warfare accepted by all civilized nations, these individuals targeted tens of thousands of civilian non-combatants, brutally killing 3,000 men, women and children, injuring thousands more, and terrorizing millions.
It is morally offensive to offer Constitutional protections to individuals charged with murdering 3,000 individuals, in essence, to jeopardize justice for war crimes victims, in order to make an appeal to the Muslim world. The use of Article III courts after the 1993 World Trade Center attack didn't stop any of the subsequent terrorist plots, including the attack on Khobar Towers, 19 Americans killed, the 1998 East African Embassy bombing, 212 killed, the USS Cole bombing, 17 sailors killed. The attacks of 9/11 were a resounding rebuke to the view that federal courts were an appropriate counterterrorism strategy. Afterward, we didn't send law enforcement personnel to apprehend the perpetrators, we sent the United States military, who captured them and held them pursuant to the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF).
The American people do not support the use of our cherished federal courts as a stage by the "mastermind of 9/11" and his co-conspirators to condemn this nation and rally their fellow terrorists the world over. As one New York City police detective, who lost 60 fellow officers on 9/11, told members of the Department of Justice's Detainee Policy Task Force at a meeting last June, "You people are out of touch. You need to hear the locker room conversations of the people who patrol your streets and fight your wars."
On May 21, you stated that military commissions, promulgated by congressional legislation and recently reformed with even greater protections for defendants, are a legal and appropriate forum to try individuals captured pursuant the 2001 AUMF, passed by Congress in response to the attack on America. Nevertheless, you announced a new policy requiring that Al-Qaeda terrorists should be tried in Article III courts "whenever feasible."
We strongly object to the creation of a two-tier system of justice for terrorists in which those responsible for the death of thousands on 9/11 will be treated as common criminals and afforded the kind of platinum due process accorded American citizens, yet members of Al Qaeda who aspire to kill Americans but who do not yet have blood on their hands, will be treated as war criminals. To date, you have offered no explanation or justification for this contradiction, even as you readily acknowledge that the 9/11 conspirators, now designated "unprivileged enemy belligerents," are appropriately accused of war crimes. We believe that this two-tier system, in which war criminals receive more due process protections than would-be war criminals, will be mocked and rejected in the court of world opinion as an ill-conceived contrivance aimed, not at justice, but at the appearance moral authority.
The public has a right to know that prosecuting the 9/11 conspirators in federal courts will result in a plethora of legal and procedural problems that will severely limit or even jeopardize the successful prosecution of their cases. Ordinary criminal trials do not allow for the exigencies associated with combatants captured in war, in which evidence is not collected with CSI-type chain-of-custody standards. None of the 9/11 conspirators were given the Miranda warnings mandated in Article III courts. Prosecutors contend that the lengthy, self-incriminating tutorials Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others gave to CIA interrogators about 9/11 and other terrorist operations--called "pivotal for the war against Al-Qaeda" in a recently released, declassified 2005 CIA report--may be excluded in federal trials. Further, unlike military commissions, all of the 9/11 cases will be vulnerable in federal court to defense motions that their prosecutions violate the Speedy Trial Act. Indeed, the judge presiding in the case of Ahmed Ghailani, accused of participating in the 1998 bombing of the American Embassy in Kenya, killing 212 people, has asked for that issue to be briefed by the defense. Ghailani was indicted in 1998, captured in Pakistan in 2004, and held at Guantanamo Bay until 2009.
Additionally, federal rules risk that classified evidence protected in military commissions would be exposed in criminal trials, revealing intelligence sources and methods and compromising foreign partners, who will be unwilling to join with the United States in future secret or covert operations if doing so will risk exposure in the dangerous and hostile communities where they operate. This poses a clear and present danger to the public. The safety and security of the American people is the President's highest duty.
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that "the challenges of terrorism trials are overwhelming." Mr. Mukasey, formerly a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, presided over the multi-defendant terrorism prosecution of Sheikh Omar Abel Rahman, the cell that attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 and conspired to attack other New York landmarks. In addition to the evidentiary problems cited above, he expressed concern about courthouse and jail facility security, the need for anonymous jurors to be escorted under armed guard, the enormous costs associated with the use of U.S. marshals necessarily deployed from other jurisdictions, and the danger to the community which, he says, will become a target for homegrown terrorist sympathizers--like the recent Fort Hood shooter--or embedded Al Qaeda cells.
Finally, there is the sickening prospect of men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being brought to the federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, or the courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, just a few blocks away from the scene of carnage eight years ago, being given a Constitutionally mandated platform upon which he can mock his victims, exult in the suffering of their families, condemn the judge and his own lawyers, and rally his followers to continue jihad against the men and women of the U.S. military, fighting and dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan on behalf of us all.
There is no guarantee that Mr. Mohammed and his co-conspirators will plead guilty, as in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, whose prosecution nevertheless took four years, and who is currently attempting to recant that plea. Their attorneys will be given wide latitude to mount a defense that turns the trial into a shameful circus aimed at vilifying agents of the CIA for alleged acts of "torture," casting the American government and our valiant military as a force of evil instead of a force for good in places of the Muslim world where Al Qaeda and the Taliban are waging a brutal war against them and the local populations. For the families of those who died on September 11, the most obscene aspect of giving Constitutional protections to those who planned the attacks with the intent of inflicting maximum terror on their victims in the last moments of their lives will be the opportunities this affords defense lawyers to cast their clients as victims.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators are asking to plead guilty, now, before a duly-constituted military commission. Mr. President, the families of their victims have a right to know, why don't you let them?
The reason he won’t is because he is not on our side. Just another outrage on the American people by a man who should never have been elected to any public office.
Sorry for your loss, but you are wasting your time. The muslim who currently occupies the White House hates this Country and has no intention of stopping his muslim “brothers” in their worldwide jihad.
Don’t be sorry for my loss; be sorry for all the loses coming if we let this happen, for your family ... read the post again and sign up.
Thanks for the post. It is my honor to add my name.
Sadly enough even ten million signatures would not sway this man from desecrating the memory of our loved ones lost on that day.
Won't matter of course. And, oh, ya' think there will be muslims on the jury, even islamists? Yeah, I think so, holder will make sure of that. Hung jury.
Signed.
Will pass it on. It is very well written.
Just this morning I heard on Fox News that 0bama and Holder had decided that they were bringing kahalid sheik mohammed, the 9-11 mastermind, to New York to stand trial. One expert said that ther ewas a chance that he could “go free” because he confessed after being waterboarded.
This is outrageous!
I have signed the petition and forwarded your link to all of my family and friends.
I’m very sorry for your loss.
Same here.
Signed and a bump!
Signed... God bless these families.
Proudly signed. It is unbelievable to me that every single day we are hit in the face with ANOTHER policy decision that is so anti-American and the absolute opposite thing that should be done. Everything about this president and his administration sickens me.
They are pure evil.
I agree with President Bush - “You are either with us or you are with the terrorists.”
Obama’s decision is to benefit of TERRORISTS, to give them rights they do not deserve, those who murdered our fellow citizens. They will mock us, our justice system, and above all -their VICTIMS.
When are we going to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
I just listened to Debbie Burlingame on Foxnews. Her brother, in case you didn’t know, was a pilot on one of the flights. She was near tears, she is so outraged...as am I! The muzzie in the White House is killing us!
i already signed it and tried to pass it along. I hate the Obama administration.
yep I heard the same thing. This is going to get ugly!
Now this individual, pictured below on the left of the photo, is using him as his own political pawn and tool to justify civilian court for those whose very appearance there will be a travesty. Disgusting.
She was very articulate but you could feel her pain when she was talking. I cannot stand the traitor anymore I have disliked him but this, this is completely disrespectful to the 911 families and all American families. Obama just gave the GOP 2010 and 2012
Seeing that picture of him holding his crotch....did you see the latest one at a Veterans Day ceremony? Four? people on stage with either hand over heart, or saluting. Except HIM. He was covering his crotch AGAIN.
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