GOPer: Dems Give Al Qaeda "Significant Victory"
A GOP congressional candidate said Tuesday that by bringing terrorists to U.S. soil, Dems are handing al Qaeda a "significant victory."
Dirk Beveridge, a business consultant running against Rep. Melissa Bean (D) in suburban Chicago, said in a statement Tuesday that possible plans to bring detainees at Guantanamo Bay to a maximum-security prison in western Illinois amounts to an insult to American troops.
"Providing foreign terrorists the privilege and benefits of our great U.S. judiciary system, is an insult to tax-paying citizens and a slap in the face of our soldiers who risked their lives at the hands of these terrorists, on our behalf," Beveridge says in the statement. A quote atop the release reads: "The Democrats are handing Al Qaeda a significant victory."
Asked in an interview to clarify the statement, Beveridge told OnCall he "believe[s] it."
"They say that those who wage war on us aren't going to beat us militarily. They can't match our fire power, and the battle has expanded to the airwaves, the printed word, the internet," Beveridge said. "And now with this, the battlefield is going to be moved to our federal courts, and it's going to be an opportunity for our enemies to wage war from Manhattan. It's going to give them a victory in this part, this battle, of the global war on terror."
Beveridge, as part of the DoD's Joint Civilian Orientation Conference, has toured the prison at Guantanamo Bay. He maintains that the U.S. should make clear that prisoners are treated to standards higher than those of the Geneva Convention, but that the prison ought to remain open.
"If we close Guantanamo Bay, if we move these enemy combatants to our shores, we lose this battle," he added. "Close Guantanamo Bay, their voice wins, their value wins this battle, and al Qaeda does win this battle."
Beveridge announced his candidacy last week and says he has already raised more than $100,000. He runs a consulting firm and a nonprofit that supports soldiers, which hosts an annual Freedom Festival in Barrington, at the heart of the district, according to the charity's website.
(REID WILSON)
As someone who spent six years in the military, I can't help but wonder how giving someone a fair trial, as our Constitution requires of our government, is an insult to anyone. I just can't understand how upholding our Constitution is an insult to someone who has sworn an oath to "...uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..."
It simply isn't possible to give the detainees a "fair trial", according to the rules.
They were detained by the military or intelligence services (which have no arrest powers), very often on foreign soil (where the U.S. courts have no jurisdiction), they were not read their rights, they were transported by extraordinary means and subjected to strenuous interrogation. It would appear that a very few were actually tortured. Much, if not all, of the evidence against them was collected in such a way that it is probably not admissible in court.
What does this mean? It means that an attorney with a pulse and a passing acquaintance with American criminal procedure could get any indictment quashed and any verdict overturned on procedural and evidentiary bases alone.
After a public spectacle in which America will be put on trial by the defense (will we have to build cages in our courtrooms, like the Europeans did?) and huge swaths of information about our intelligence assets and methods are revealed to the world (not to mention the defendants' jihadi allies), we will have handed the jihadists a huge propaganda victory at little or no benefit to ourselves.
If *I* had risked my life to bring these guys in, I'd be pretty insulted right now.
PS - The detainees *are* the "foreign enemies" against which the oath calls upon us to defend. I'm not sure that includes extended Constitutional protections to those very same "foreign enemies". YMMV.