This Weekly Standard piece on how the infamous "flying Imams" won a settlement against defendant airlines and the Minneapolis Airport authority shows that the lessons of 2001 have not been fully learned in the West. I will not summarize the 2-pager, but simply note that it details that a fool federal judge dismissed as meritless the unanimous opinions of 15 law enforcement officers that sufficient reason existed to remove the 6 imams from the flight they boarded. Read the article and weep.
Then weep some more, by reading in full an op-ed former Attorney-General Judge Michael Mukasey, who presided over trials of terrorists in the 1990s and knows full well the holes in the criminal justice system. The good judge explains how the plea bargain Justice reached with Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, one of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's accomplices, caught in the US collecting data for possible WMD attacks in a second wave after 9/11, exposes America to possible grave harm. Citing what he termed excessive detention in the Charleston naval facility, the trial judge handed down a light sentence, to a defendant the judge knows is a terrorist and fully realized might resume terror activities upon being released.
Judge Mukasey recounts this perfectly:
Marri's time in the brig at Charleston apparently was substantially responsible for the judge's decision to impose even less than the 15-year maximum "in order to reflect respect for the law and reflect just punishment." The judge rejected Marri's attempt to portray himself as a lackey -- "that would be an insult to your intelligence and to the commitment you made when you came here as a sleeper agent for al Qaeda" -- and acknowledged that it "remains to be seen" whether Marri would resume that commitment after he was released, but added that "we are defined as a people by how we deal with difficult and unpopular legal issues."
Unlike lightning, Lawfare can strike twice in the same place (in this case, the Judiciary).
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