Most of 9/11 case gutted Moussaoui might face tribunal

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A federal judge dealt a severe setback to the only U.S. prosecution arising from the Sept. 11 attacks, ruling Thursday that the government cannot seek to execute Zacarias Moussaoui or introduce trial evidence linking the al-Qaida loyalist to the suicide hijackings.

If it's proven he helped kill 3000 people, he can't be put to death?!

The problem with this whole travesty is that he is not guilty of that or any other civil crime.

The decision to prostitute the courts to deliver his just punishment was deeply flawed, and this is the result.

ZM is an enemy soldier sent here to attack our country. He was arrested before he could carry out any military acts.

Nevertheless, because he was out of uniform and was captured behind our lines, he is subject to summary execution without trial under the Geneva Convention and the older Laws of War.

He should have been taken to lower Manhattan on 9/12/01, been put up against a wall, and shot.

The rest of this spectacle is a travesty.

Because the GOP would need virtually all 51 Senators to be on call constantly in case a vote came up,

Isn't that what they are paid for? If they're not willing to do their jobs, then they shouldn't run for office.

They have to give up a golf game or a circle jerk with some lobbyists, so what?

Dems would need only 3 or 4 mouthpieces to prattle on and on while the others bring them coffee. Other business would be held up indefinitely,

Sounds like a good idea to me; if you can't do something right, don't do it at all or you will just make matters worse.

Then why don't you tell us just how they might overcome the filibusters.

Why wouldn't 24/7 work?

[sigh] Because the GOP would need virtually all 51 Senators to be on call constantly in case a vote came up, while the Dems would need only 3 or 4 mouthpieces to prattle on and on while the others bring them coffee. Other business would be held up indefinitely, the media and many right here on good ol' FR would blame the GOP anyway, and the filibuster still probably would not result in accomplishing the job.

So 51 Senators would have to be "on call constantly".

How dreadful.

Before the advent of teleradiology, as the sole radiologist in a rural county, I put myself "on call" 24/7 for eight years except for the three weeks each year when I would hire a locum tenens to hold the fort for me.

My four CT techs are still manning our hospital CT scanner 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, for year after year after year.

Yes, being "on call constantly" is a sacrifice as I very well know. However, sometimes getting an important job done requires sucking it up.

You know...."No pain, no gain", "No guts, no glory" and all those other cliches that mean "Sometimes you just have to suck it up".

As it stands now, we have set the bar so high that only by winning 60 Senates seats can Republicans accomplish anything of importance. I'm not holding my breath that Republicans will get a 60 seat majority in my lifetime.

Yes, "other business would be held up" and the Liberal networks will blame the Republicans while FoxNews will blame the prattling Democrat idiotically reciting baseball scores on the Senate floor at 3:00 A.M.

The American public could therefore have been givin a choice on siding with FoxNews or with CNN just as they were given that choice during the Iraq War.

The American public, however, was shown that it is too much of a sacrifice for Republican Senators to fight for a month or for a week or even for a 36 hour shift that medical interns all over the U.S. routinely do every three days.

In earlier days, filibusters were actual filibusters. In those days, Senators did not just put their tails between their legs, roll over, show their bellies and pee on themselves whenever the other side threatened a filibuster. In the old days, the Party threatening a filibuster was forced to go through with it.

To win a fight, one must at least be willing to make the sacrifice of showing up for the fight instead of declaring defeat as soon as the opponent threatens to fight.

Well, then, you just hustle on back to the old days when the GOP was the perpetual minority party.

"When" the GOP was a minority party?

You are the one that is making excuses why the GOP cannot possibly win any consequential Senate fights until some future day when the GOP has 60 Senate seats because it is just too much trouble to put up a real fight.

With that defeatist attitude, the Republicans may now have a Senate majority on paper but, as far as actually appointing a Federal judge, they are "still" a minority party.

With that defeatist attitude, the Republicans are mearly MINO's (Majority in Name Only).

The government countered that Moussaoui has no right to question al-Qaida prisoners, whose every word of trial testimony could reveal classified information and harm the war against terrorism.
Prosecutors were especially chagrined at the possibility of Moussaoui directly questioning his al-Qaida colleagues, a right he would normally have because he's representing himself.
"We continue to believe that the Constitution does not require, and national security will not permit, the government to allow Moussaoui, an avowed terrorist, to have direct access to his terrorist confederates," McNulty said.

Brinkema, however, said Moussaoui deserved access to witnesses who might back up his claim that he was not part of the Sept. 11 attacks.

I see that if he could get three al-Qaida comrades on the stand, and acting as his own defense, interrogate them, there's no telling what they'd say. Moussaoui's a loon, and maybe they'd exonerate him, maybe not, and you'd never know if the al-Quida witnesses were lying like dogs or not. But he should be allowed to try and save his life since possibly, he wasn't involved.

Not excuses. I'm just not foolish enough to continually run around different threads bleating about the spineless GOP when any and all alternatives (which are about as frequent as a solar eclipse) presented don't pass the smell test.

I challange you to find any other one of my posts where I have ever complained about the GOP.

Find a single one.

I have been a registered Republican since the very day I was old enough to vote and, since then, I have voted for every single Republican Presidential candidate starting with Gerald Ford.

When the Libertarians and the Pat Brigades are dissatisfied with Republican tactics, you can take that with a grain of salt.

When the broken-glass Republicans begin to ask WTF is going on with the Republican Senators that they elected then it is time for those GOP Senators to realize that maybe, just maybe, they could be doing things a little differently.

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