Irony of the day

By Mustang Bobby

Jack Kelley, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade in Toledo, and the poor man's William Kristol, is railing against President Obama's "vendetta" against the Bush administration.

Former Justice Department official Shannen Coffin thinks the real reason for a civilian trial is that President Obama hopes KSM and his lawyers will attack the Bush administration.

“The decision to try KSM in civilian court accomplishes indirectly what Obama does not wish to do directly — it puts the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics on trial for all the world to see,” Mr. Coffin said. This would be red meat for the liberal base. But it’s unlikely to be popular with centrists who are already unhappy with Mr. Obama’s economic policies.

This has been the most political administration in modern times. Ten months after his inauguration, Mr. Obama still behaves more like a candidate than a president. But in pursuing his vendetta against his predecessor at the expense of American security, he may be campaigning to be a one-term president. [Emphasis added.]

I'd like to take up a collection and send Mr. Kelley a get-well card and hope that now that he's recovered from his eight-year coma, someone will bring him up to date on just which has been "the most political administration in modern times." That's an insult to Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Miers, and the rest of the people in the Bush administration who worked so tirelessly to try to secure a permanent Republican majority. How Mr. Kelley could ignore their work just to take a cheap shot at President Obama is unconscionable.

But seriously, while it is important to grant the defendants a fair trial, it is also important to recognize that it's going to be that much harder because the Bush administration did everything they possibly could to make it impossible for that to happen. They expected two outcomes: either KSM and his cohorts would be tried in a military tribunal using evidence that could never stand up in a civilian court, or they were going to let them rot away in jail for the rest of their lives without ever bringing them to trial. They never expected the rule of law to be applied, and now the biggest fear they and the rest of the monarchists have is that the Bush administration will be the ones held accountable for throwing the case against the terrorists into the crapper.