Leahy is an idiot and a traitor but it wouldn’t matter so much if he was the dog catcher. The problem is he’s not just a congressman, but he’s on a major committee. He used to be on the intel committee until he deliberately leaked classified material to try to hurt President Bush and got punished by… being put on another powerful committee.

It’s yet another example of Democrats fundamentally understanding the nature of the problem. Leahy sees the problem of terrorism as being essentially a criminal matter. Hense, if we have enough information to convict, we don’t need to interogate.

The problem with viewing terrorism as a simple criminal matter is that it is principally the role of criminal magistrates in a free society to act as historians and investigators after a crime is committed. The detective gathers evidence and documents a crime hoping to lead to a conviction of the guilty party. He’s primarily interested in seeing that justice is served – that the guilty are punished and the innocent go free.

But, merely figuring out who done it is not enough in the case of terrorism, because the scale of violence goes above the level of mere criminality. The terrorist is not motivated by criminal desires. The terrorist does not fit the profile of a criminal. The terrorist is likely not even a member of the society whose laws he breaks. Terrorism is a national security matter, and the agent charged with national security cares (or ought to care) rather less about merely figuring out who done it as they do about preventing the attack from occuring in the first place. Once the terrorist or sabateur does their work, it’s really too late. Their mission is accomplished.

And you cannot prevent terrorism with the tools you use to prosecute common crimes and remain a free society.

The simple truth is this. KSM was on trial when Obama took office. KSM had sent a memo to the judge of that trial indicating that he was willing to plead guilty and that he prefered a death sentense. That trial was stopped by Obama as a political stunt, and as a political stunt – probably to cover up the recent announcment that Obama won’t be closing the Gitmo detainment center after all – the trial will become a circus in NYC under conditions which even a non-lawyer like myself could get the trial declared a mistrial. For one, we’ve had the POTUS indicating that he believes successful prosecution is a sure thing, and presumption of innocense is a central pillar of the US criminal justice system. There are so many motions you could make to hang this trial up for years in our courts, that I consider it highly unlikely that KSM would actually be convicted in a criminal court – precisely because our criminal courts are not set up to handle a case like this at all. At best, we’ll have a show trial that is obviously a show trial, and at worst he’ll make a circus of this and still get off.

Incidentally, I’m still convinced Bin Laden is dead and has been for a while now.

Bin Laden has been dead for years. Leahy is still an idiot.

Of course Leahy is against interrogating bin Laden. He doesn’t believe in interrogating his allies.