Coulter: Bush Wanted To Try Richard Reid by Military Commission, But Left-Wing Wouldn't Let Him

A solid update to Krauthammer's point, via antimatter.

COULTER: "The headline, well, I remember it from these ferocious fights throughout the Bush administration, and that is you keep -- we keep hearing that Bush sent Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, into a civilian court as if, you know, that was his choice.

No, he came out about a month after 9/11 and issued. He issued executive order for military commissions. And immediately, the left wing, particularly the left-wing legal community, went mental. Senator Leahy, the Democrat head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was denouncing this. He had all of the human rights mix, amnesty. The entire law professor faculties across America denouncing Bush for doing this without congressional approval, without Congress passing laws.

Immediately, there were about six bills in Congress, setting up military tribunals of their own, including John Conyers' bill, which would apply only to the 9/11 terrorists.

And -- and so obviously, this was a matter that was heavily litigated over the next seven years. It went to the Supreme Court twice. The Supreme Court struck down Bush's executive order for military tribunals with ferocious dissents, I might add, by justices Scalia and Thomas.

And then Congress back in -- this is in 2006 now -- writes a military tribunal law that itself gets appealed to the Supreme Court. The first military tribunal under Bush, after endless litigation from the left, from left-wing lawyers, did not occur until summer of 2008. At that point, Bush had...

O'REILLY: OK. Let me stop -- let me stop you there. So what you're saying there is that the argument that Alan Colmes and others make, Vice President Biden, that 300 captured terrorists have been tried in civilian court is not valid, because there was no other way to try them. Because of all the legal challenges, you couldn't put them in military commissions, because every two minutes there was a blockage of the action. Is that what you're saying?

COULTER: That's right. Not only that but just specifically because of the left wing that we couldn't go forward with military tribunals which, by the way, I agree with Scalia and Thomas on, were constitutional. It is -- the president is the commander and chief in war time.

Yeah, this Richard Reid thing is pure ass.

posted by Ace at 01:37 PM

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