Eric Holder's Import - Export Trial Business

Neil Puckett is an ex-Marine who is now a lawyer defending a U.S. Navy Seal from charges of tuning up an enemy combatant while snatching the guy from a terror hideout. He appeared this morning on Fox TV to talk about a case I'd previously read about on AC in an article entitled Trial Date Set for Navy SEALs

That article tells the story more precisely than I could, and the details are worth reading. But the gist of it is that the three Seals captured one of the guys who tortured and murdered four Blackwater Security guards, drug them through the streets of Fallujah, and strung them up on a bridge. The terrorist they captured, Ahmen Abed, was following an Al Qaeda instructional manual which advises captured enemy combatants to claim they were mistreated and "tortured."

If Abed did indeed take a body shot, as the complaint alleges, I'm sure there are many who approve doing what it takes to subdue a violent prisoner. This man who murdered, tortured, humiliated, defiled and struck at all of America complains now of a punch to the midsection?

It's the aftermath of the capture that angers us most, and that's why the Seals' defense Attorney Neil Puckett appeared today on Fox News. Puckett wants a trial in Norfolk, Virginia, a reasonable request since the defendants are not only American citizens, they are American heroes.

But apparently, Eric Holder's Justice Department has the view that American citizens like Navy Seal McCabe cannot be tried in an American court whereas mass murderers like Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his terrorist buddies can.

KSM and several others will be accommodated in great style, much fanfare, and with all the phony pious, crocodile sentiment the Holder Justice Department can muster-all to stage a show trial which subjects New York to greater dangers and which will imperil America around the world. At the same time, Navy Seal McCabe will have his trial buried in Baghdad so that this travesty of justice cannot attract as much attention as it would in Norfolk, Virginia where people are not fooled by a Justice Department bureaucrat like Eric Holder who lacks any intellectual or moral foundation for his hidden agenda. Moreover, Attorney Pucket informs us that, at great expense, the military will have to fly half an army of people to Baghdad and pay for all ancillary expenses, when it could easily fly the single terrorist-plaintiff to Virginia instead.

It may be a misnomer to term the defendant Navy Seals as "prisoners of war" but it is entirely appropriate to call them "Prisoners of the Holder Justice Department." Eric Holder will publicly wash his hands like Pontius Pilate and claim that this is a military matter. That's the "confusing" part for Americans who expect justice which recognizes honor and does not reward dishonor. Attorney-General Holder cherry picks cases, deciding for apparently political reasons, which are "military" and which are "criminal."

As a case in point, FBI Director Robert Mueller wouldn't say yesterday at a Senate Hearing who made the decision to provide Miranda rights to would-be Christmas Bomber Farouk Abdulmutallab (underpants bomber?) on the night of his capture while lying in the hospital. Who did make that decision? And what's so "top-secret" about an answer to it? Dwight D. Eisenhower took responsibility and offered to resign due to the massive deaths of Allied troops on D-Day, but Eric Hold can't tell us where and how the decision was made to Mirandize Abdulmutallab?

These matters are entirely wrong. The Justice Department is in the "Looking Glass Darkly" and justice is upended, turned upside down, a fact not unknown to Massachusetts voters who may have heard Senator Scott Brown in one of his least repeated but most memorable lines:

"I want to use taxpayer money to buy weapons to protect us against terrorists, not to buy lawyers to defend them."