Jon Gold Asks Another Stupid Question

Jon Gold's whole shtick is that he is not making any claims, he is just asking questions, however they are usually stupid questions. Today, regarding the trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:

Do you think we'll get a new picture of KSM? - Jon

Uhh, no. If he had been paying the slightest bit of attention to the trial he would know that photographers are banned from this court room, as is common practice, instead they have those courtroom sketch artists.

Bizarrely, Mohammed, who has openly bragged about planning the murder of 3,000 Americans, even before he was captured, complained about these sketches:

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed objected that a courtroom sketch artist had made his nose look too wide on Thursday and sent her back to revise the drawing.

"He didn't like the nose," artist Janet Hamlin said.

Mohammed asked Hamlin to obtain a copy of a photo taken shortly after his 2003 capture in Pakistan and redraw the nose to look as it did in that picture, the artist said.

Mohammed and four accused co-conspirators appeared in court at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba for the first time on charges of conspiring with al Qaeda and murdering nearly 3,000 people in the 2001 hijacked plane attacks on the United States.

Cameras are banned in the top-security courtroom so news organizations hired Hamlin to sketch the scene. Military censors review Guantanamo courtroom sketches before they can be released to ensure they do not reveal any national secrets.

We are redrawing sketches to avoid offending the defendant? What kind of show trial is this?

Additionally the truthers are complaining that the trials are politically biased, citing the alleged omission of family members from the court room. Debra Burlingame, the sister of AA77 pilot Chick Burlingame, who famously characterized Loose Change with "The only thing they (the filmmakers) seem to have gotten right about the Sept. 11 attacks is the date when they occurred," takes issue with this:

The New York Daily News falsely and dishonestly reported yesterday (”9/11 Kin barred from Gitmo Trial,” by James Gordon Meek) that 9/11 family members have been barred from observing the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four of his co-conspirators. In fact, the Daily News and its reporter know that the trial, which has yet to be scheduled and which may not commence for several months, will be broadcast on closed circuit tv and all 9/11 family members will be able to monitor the gavel-to-gavel proceedings from remote locations here in the United States.

Further, it falsely reports that the DOD singled out one family member to “secretly” attend Thursday’s arraignment of these five 9/11 defendants, heavily insinuating that the purpose was to propagandize on behalf of the Bush administration, “alongside conservatives from the American Legion and Judicial Watch.” I am the family member the article names, calling me a “GOP loyalist whose brother Charles died in the attacks.” Essentially, the article accuses me of using my brother’s brutal murder as an opportunity to engage in a “covert” operation whose end is crass partisan politics.

Deb Burlingame Nails It

I'm not much for anniversary comments; anniversaries are, to an extent, for those engaged in sentimentalism. My emotional response to 9-11 is over; you can't deal with "Truthers" for as long as I have if you can't focus solely on facts and argumentation.

But Debra Burlingame is back with a spot-on editorial in the NY Daily News that hits on the anniversary and several other topics, and it's absolutely worth savoring:

The attacks were not a random act of violence or insanity. They were a deliberate and brutal act of war committed by religious fanatics engaged in Islamic jihad against the United States, all non-Muslim people and any Muslim who wishes to live in a secular society. Worse, the people who perpetrated the attacks have explicitly told us that they are not done.

Sept. 11 is a date that comes and goes once a year, but "9/11" is with us every day. The body count keeps rising - Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, Madrid, Beslan, London, Amman.

We now clearly know that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was part of the holy war against America. When we previously dismissed this as a random attack by crazy men and declared ourselves lucky that "only six lives were lost," we effectively disarmed ourselves. Eight years later, six became 3,000. While the comparison to other "tragedies" may help us cope with what has befallen us, we must resist being glib and intellectually careless.

Our fellow human beings were not "lost" in 1993 or on 9/11. They were torn to pieces. We must not give the enemy any quarter. We must confront the reality of their acts.

Exactly. The 9-11 Truthers are the Neville "Peace in our time" Chamberlains of the new millenium, determined to find good in our most implacable enemies. Chamberlain at least acknowledged that the Germans had invaded Poland.