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Curious timing

By smintheus

On the very eve of the presidential election, George Bush & Co. finally got to unveil a conviction of somebody accused of having at least some role in the September 11, 2001 attack. They've spent years paying little attention to bin Laden himself and doing nothing to charge the hundreds of alleged terrorists they've locked up without trial at Guantanamo Bay - and in who knows how many other secret prisons around the world.

But as the election approached, almost miraculously, they've been able to ramp up the (unconstitutional) Military Commissions in order to generate some fizz for the electorate.
Last October we learned from the former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo that the trials were being timed for the 2008 election.

Senior defense officials discussed in a September 2006 meeting the "strategic political value" of putting some prominent detainees on trial, said Air Force Col. Morris Davis. He said that he felt pressure to pursue cases that were deemed "sexy" over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go.

[...]

"There was a big concern that the election of 2008 is coming up," Davis said. "People wanted to get the cases going. There was a rush to get high-interest cases into court at the expense of openness."

And sure enough, this year we found Bush administration appointees pushing for trials to be timed just before the November election.

Accordingly the verdict against Ali Hamza Ahmad al-Bahlul, reached last Friday, was not made public until Monday. He was charged with undergoing al Qaeda military training in Afghanistan, swearing allegiance to bin Laden, and producing propaganda videos.

Bahlul is also accused of preparing the video of the last "martyr wills" of Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 19-man team that hijacked four passenger jets to crash them into US buildings on September 11, 2001.

Bahlul was not however charged with ever firing a shot at Americans. Pretty small stuff, you say?

But the Pentagon argued that Bahlul committed three war crimes by creating a two-hour video that spliced fiery bin Laden speeches with Muslim bloodshed and stock news footage of the aftermath of the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole.

So, finally, a major conviction in the Global War on Terror of an extremely dangerous videotaper. Until now, the Military Commissions could boast only of having convicted bin Laden's former driver, Salim Hamdan, for minor offenses that brought a sentence of only to 5 months in jail. But now Bush & Co. has won a conviction against an actual 9/11 terrorist, sort of.

Funny thing, though...you would have thought that the shameless politicization of the Military Commissions by the Bush administration was aimed at something a little...oh, I don't know, greater...than convicting a guy of making videos?

crossposted at unbossed.com

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on November 03, 2008 (boomark / email).