RUSH: I want you to listen. Let me check the sound bite. Do I have time to squeeze this in? We do. I want you to listen to this. This sets up what’s coming next. September 27, 2006, Washington, DC, Senator Barack Obama on the Senate floor.
OBAMA, SEPTEMBER 27, 2006: The irony of the underlying bill as it’s written is that someone like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to get basically a full military trial, with all the bells and whistles. He’s going to have counsel. He’s going to be able to present evidence. He’s going to be able to rebut the government’s case because the feeling is is that he’s guilty of a war crime and to do otherwise might violate some of our agreements under the Geneva Convention. I think that’s good that we’re going to provide him with some procedure and process. I think we will convict him and I think he will be brought to justice. I think justice will be carried out.
RUSH: Again, now, that’s September 27th, 2006, when Obama was still in the Senate. Did you catch the drift of that? In this, Obama is supporting a full military commission trial, a military tribunal. He’s in full support of it because he’s convinced it will be fair. He’s also convinced the guy is guilty. I guess Eric Holder didn’t see this video.
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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I want to turn to the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed trial for just a moment here. There are two things out there. First there’s a story in TheHill.com concerning former Attorney General Ashcroft, and let me just read you some excerpts of what Ashcroft said in this story. ‘Attorney General Eric Holder lacks authority to make a decision on moving terror detainees to civilian courts for trial, one of his predecessors said Wednesday. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who held his position during the Bush administration from 2001-2005, said that Holder lacked the legal standing to decide to move alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed…’ What is alleged? Obama’s already pronounced him guilty! The guy’s already confessed. What is this alleged business?
Anyway, the attorney general doesn’t have the authority to mandate that the Secretary of Defense turn somebody over to him and yield jurisdiction so that something that would have been done in a military setting is done in a civilian setting. Now, this happened on a talk show in Kansas City where Ashcroft made these statements. People sent me notes about this, a lot of people did, and I think a lot of people are misunderstanding this. Ashcroft is essentially saying it wasn’t Holder’s decision because Holder can’t make it. Therefore, what we have said all along is true: It was Obama’s decision. Obama can do whatever he wants. He’s the president. He can order anybody in a military prison to a civilian court. He can do it. Holder can’t. He can only do it on Obama’s authority, and that’s the point. Because Holder is out there saying that Obama didn’t know anything about it until the decision was made; which is all BS because the governor of New York, David Paterson, let it slip that he was told six months ago that this was going to be the decision from the White House.
So what they’re doing is continuing to give Obama plausible deniability on this. They’re dumping it all on Holder. But the point is that Holder can’t do it on his own, which I think is Ashcroft’s point, if you read the whole story. If they disagreed, for example, Obama would have to resolve it. Let’s say that two members of the administration, Holder and somebody else, want to bring these terrorists up to New York for a civilian trial. Somebody else — let’s say it’s Gates, secretary of defense — says ‘No, you can’t take them out of there.’ Obama would have to resolve it. Neither one of those two guys can make the call. Now, they’ve been considering this for ten months. Everybody knows where everybody stands. If Obama told Holder to make the decision he was effectively making the decision himself. It boils down to the fact that Holder is lying and everybody else in the administration is lying about this when they say that it was Holder’s decision and that Holder consulted his wife and his brother, who was a cop in the Port Authority back when this all happened.
So it’s a mountain out of a molehill, but I think it’s another way to get to the truth that this was Obama’s decision, and here’s even more evidence of it. There was a great segment yesterday when Lindsey Graham was questioning Eric Holder, Senator Graham said, ‘Here’s my concern: Can you give me a case…?’ By the way, Lindsey Graham hit on what I talked about on this program yesterday at just about this time. What’s the precedent? Whose rules are going to be used here? What rules are we going to use to try these guys? Where’s the precedent for this? Well, Lindsey Graham raised that. ‘Can you give me a case?’ he asked Holder, ‘in United States history where an enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?’ Holder said, ‘I don’t know, I’d have to look at that. I think that, you know, the determination I’ve made,’ and Lindsey Graham interrupted and said, ‘We’re making history here Mr. Attorney General. I’ll answer it for you: the answer’s no. The Ghelani case, he was indicted for pre-nine … for the Cole bombing before 9/11 and I didn’t object going into federal court. But I’ll tell you right now, we’re making history and we’re making bad history.’
As my learned colleague Andy McCarthy points out: How in the world could Eric Holder, the attorney general, not know the answer to this question? Those of you in the law know that stock-in-trade in your profession is precedent. You go there — whether you’re a prosecutor, whether you’re any other lawyer faced with a policy question — and the first thing you want to know is, ‘What does the law say on the subject? Has this come up before? Are there prior cases on point? What have the courts had to say?’ Those are the first questions you ask, always, and Holder didn’t. How could he be stumped by the question? Lindsey Graham said, ‘Have we ever had an enemy combatant caught on a battlefield tried in a civilian court?’ Holder didn’t know. Yet he said that he studied and agonized over this decision. And if he did, this would have been the first issue he’d have considered, the fact that there’s no legal precedent for what he wanted to do. Look at it this way. If there was a single case in American history that supported what Holder wants to do here — Obama.
Forget Holder. This is further evidence. Let me just nail the coffin shut on this. This is more evidence this whole thing is a political and not policy decision. If it were policy, if it were legal, they would have gone and tried to find precedent. Had they been able to find a precedent, that’s all they’d be talking about, and the media would be shouting it from the rooftops. ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve done this before. Oh, this is not unprecedented. We’ve had one case, two cases,’ whatever it would have been. But there aren’t any. And the fact that Holder didn’t even bother to find out means that this whole thing is political, it has been decided by Obama, and it has as its purpose something other than the conviction of these masterminds. There’s something else afoot here. It is insidious. I’ve known it since the first this happened and you and I have discussed this since it was first made public.
This is the Obama administration, which runs around the world apologizing for this country. He sees this country the same way a Third World socialist dictator does. That’s the lens through which he sees the United States of America, and he wants this country to be on trial. So he sends his attorney out there claiming the attorney general made the decision after a long, agonizing moment, ‘after eight years of delay’ in the Bush administration, yada yada yada yada yada, and can’t even cite one example where it has been done before because he didn’t look — and the reason he didn’t look is because this is not legal. This is not about policy. It is pure Obama administration politics.
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RUSH: You know, every day — every day, ladies and gentlemen — Barack Obama is showing more and more who he really is. We are learning who Obama is every day. This decision to bring these terrorists to New York for this trial? I referred to it moments ago as ‘politics.’ What I actually meant to say is ‘ideology.’ The politics appears to be bad given the polls, but it is ideology. Believe me when I tell you: Barack Obama and Eric Holder have a mentality of the ACLU, and remember the original goal of the ACLU was to totally break down the US justice system. That was the original objective. That’s why they formed. Obama and Eric Holder are the highest officials in a society they do not like and they do not trust. They wish to change it whether the public likes it or not. Obama… I think it’s Victor Davis Hanson who said it: Obama’s view of the United States is no different than that of a Third World, Marxist dictator.
That’s how he views this country: Immoral, unjust, evil, unequal, discriminatory, all of those things. With every passing day, ladies and gentlemen, the core beliefs of Obama, Eric Holder — everybody in this administration — are revealed. Damn the public! Damn national security! Full steam ahead! ‘We’re gonna fix what we find wrong about this country, and we’re going to fix it.’ Like the Fox News/Opinion Dynamic poll: 46% approval. A guy sent that to me today. I wrote him back, ‘Do you think they’re bothered by this? Do you think they care?’ I’m sure Obama cares personally, because he’s a narcissist, but in terms of whether it’s going to alter what their policies are, hell, no! They couldn’t care less what the public thinks. If they cared what the public thinks they wouldn’t be doing any of what they’re doing. Learn that: If they cared, they wouldn’t do one thing as they have done it.