Fox News Sunday Morning December 14 with Eric Shawn. 
I report to FNC's smooth host and reporter Eric Shawn on the strange case of the Guantanomo imprisoned 9-11 killers who want to die as quickly as possible yet will likely outlive Guantanomo and perhaps even time itself. Last week, nearly lost amid the blazing scandals surrounding the Obama transition team in Chicago, five of the the 9-11 killers led by the Pakistani Khalid Sheik Mohammed all rushed to plead guilty to their crimes of
mass murder before U.S. Army judge Colonel Steve Henley at GITMO. It was a pretrial affair, no officer tribunal was present, and the judge, uncertain how a guilty plea would affect a death sentence, shook off the ploy. KSM, slender and heavily bearded after the Cuban climate, exercise, better food and generally clubby orange jumpsuit ambience of the temperate and clean Marine run prison (right, before, in March 2003 following capture in Rawalpindi, Pakistan and after GITMO detention in 2007), stood in the court and rambled on fearfully in his conscientiously broken words. The other four bearded gangsters nodded along. And then, when it became clear to KSM's limited understanding of responsible adulthood that the guilty plea, if accepted, might rule out execution and his delusion of conscious pride beyond biological death, KSM withdrew the game of the plea. Also, two of his pals appears so clearly thick-headed that the court might not ever let them die unnaturally. The 9-11 killers are looking to game the system and confound the already confused US justice system as to how to deal with war criminals who can neither become POWs nor have they been rendered routine Federal prisoners like
Timothy McVeigh. They are instead in an as yet unclarified and controversial category of "enemy combatant." The legal limbo means that their case has taken six years to reach the bar of justice and now will drag on into the Obama Administration. Why did KSM ask for death and martyrdom? He is cunning and obnoxious and not entirely logical, so there is no clear explanation for his motives; and his cronies are diluted versions of KSM's natural poison. At the least, the surprise guilty plea, even now withdrawn, makes it clear to those on the planet who still doubt that these are five mass murderers who the U.S. has the correct bad guys in hand. Now Mr. Obama inherits an opportunity to render justice for the 9-11 families and the country. I spoke to Iwo Jima vet Marine General Fred Haynes two weeks back about the U.S. retired general officers who have been lobbying politicians for two years to close GITMO. It will happen, and it is already the recommendation of the newly named NSA, Jim Jones. Close GITMO; disperse the approximately 250 remaining problems, prosecute and convict and sentence KSM and his pals to death by hanging and then -- I will recommend on Fox, if asked, that it would be useful to play a trump card and commute the KSM gang sentences in to life without parole at Supermax. Let them grow their scratchy beards in the yellowy light of the tiny cell tombs inside the same Florence, Colorado GPS as their old compadre Ramzi Yousef. Buried alive without the sun and alone, deeply alone, 23 hours of 24 for forty or fifty or sixty years. I mention that everyone goes screamingly mad at Supermax. Cancer of the soul seems to be the preferred way out.
Iraq Iran Afghanistan Same.
However GITMO is not the only problem that Mr. Obama now inherits, and from the news reports this weekend it appears his administration will carry on the war on terror with little
change from the Bush administration. In Iraq all is settling down to occupation and continuity when theater commander General R. Odierno acknowledges that U.S. combat troops will remain in the Iraq cities after the supposed deadline of this summer, or 16 months, or a few years. With regard Iran, newly named and continuing Bush family consigliere SecDef Robert Gates asserts (right in Balad, Iraq) that Iran is responsible for the trouble in Iraq and the Gulf region. Tehran shrewdly hears this as hostility. The recent cleverly ambiguous remarks by the President-Elect did not persuade the IRGC and its mullahocracy of new appeasement gambits coming f rm Washington. And in Afghanistan, CENTCOM General D. Petraeus has indicated, and NATO theater commander General D. McKiernan has agreed, that a surge of more than twenty thousand combat troops are necessary to get past the present threatening "tipping point" of Taliban aggression and win back the country. No peace or armistice breaking out soon from Baghdad to Tehran to Kabul to Peshawar and Islamabad. The long war. Continued.
Afghanistan Special Roundtable.
Speaking Sunday 14 with my professionals on Afghanistan, Ann Marlowe and Kerry Patton, both of them just returned from theater, and Bill Roggio, Long War Journal, and Larry Johnson, No Quarter, re the new surge recommended by Petraeus and McTiernan. Will a surge work with the Pashtuns as it seems to have worked with the Sunni Arabs of Iraq? Can Afghanistan be solved unless and until Pakistan is solved (right after Taliban attacks on NATO supplies in Peshawar) What is the worth of saving Afghanistan in the hands of narco-lords like the Kabul government? Why save either country unless and until we are delivered Bin Laden and the kindred of Cain? And is Pakistan the true rogue of rogues?
Liberals have always (mistakenly) feared that Bush would use the “war on terror” to take control of the country in order to ban abortions, deprive homosexuals, immigrants and blacks of their rights and secure unlimited oil supplies with which to melt the polar ice caps. The narrative has matured into a re-write of history in which the former World Trade Center towers have become “what towers?” while the “scientific method” has evolved to discarding any evidence that does not prove the latest politically correct hypothesis.
Any effort was deemed worthy if it undermined Bush’s evil designs including bringing the troops home early and closing GITMO. GITMO, especially, would prove to be an effective propaganda tool for the left in that it could be used as a “show and tell” to convince the electorate of the imminent prospect of an America, equally bound and shackled by conservative chains, without recourse to appeal in front of a bench of liberal judges. GITMO, as JB says, must close, if only to support continued allegations of Bush’s crimes against humanity.
Now liberals stand at the crossroads, as any and all these real-life (non)issues will soon settle in Obama’s lap. By continuing with the “war on terror” in the same way as Bush has done, they run the risk of exposing their ceaseless campaign over the past eight years as a farce. GITMO must close at any rate unless Obama can figure out some way to effectuate a prisoner swap: replacing the current crop of misfits with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Limbaugh and whoever else dared to expose their ersatz fiction to natural light.
I understand the NYTimes is working on a story with the headline "Waterboarding IS NOT Torture" -- Publication date Jan 21, 2009 ;)