The trial will be a charade because it cannot examine and has no authority to act on the international and US security concerns. Having it even nullifies them. So why have a charade, unless that’s how you make your living.
The leeway accorded to enemy combatants would be to send him to Gitmo and get information out of him by whatever means necessary. Mincing lawyers are not going to provide the information about the threat this bomber and his contacts pose.
How do you get “he is clearly not a combatant”? From his recent and clearly false oath? Your geography reference makes no sense. He attacked in Massachusetts. The 9/11 terrorists attacked in New York and DC. So what? Terrorism has come to America. Are these criminal killings by Americans or attacks directed from forces outside the US?
Perhaps unfortunately we are beyond the days of uniforms and soldiers standing in neat little rows firing volleys at each other en-mass. We are fighting forces outside the US that are international in international Islam. It is many countries and no single country. They seem to want to kill us, so we have sent US soldiers to Iraq, Afghanastan and other places to fight them even though they don’t wear uniforms or have a single flag.
You can play “Law and Order” with this one if you want to. I am not interested. Trying to extend Constitutional Law into the battlefield is a fools excercise, even when that battlefield is on our own soil. Perhaps especially then, since it means that we are losing, and idiotic policies like this are probably behind it.
“The trial will be a charade because it cannot examine and has no authority to act on the international and US security concerns. Having it even nullifies them. So why have a charade, unless that’s how you make your living.”
I see two trials here, the domestic trial and a treason trial. (Realistically with respect to Obama I just see the domestic trial.)
Technically as far as non-baystaters should be concerned the treason trial is unnecessary, as far as terrorism is concerned as all we really need is the information about his foreign contacts to go after them. This information would be the fruits of an investigation(including interrogation) that proceeds a trial not the trial itself.