Eric Holder - Presser Announcing 9/11 Trials at Gitmo

Eric Holder Announcing 9/11 Conspirator Trials at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base delivered 4 April 2011, Washington, D.C. In November of 2009, I announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other individuals would stand trial in federal court for their roles in the terrorist attacks on our country on September the 11th of 2001. As I said then, the decision between federal courts and military commissions was not an easy one to make. I began my review of this case with an open mind and with just one goal: to look at the facts, look at the law, and choose the venue where we could achieve swift and sure justice most effectively for the victims of those horrendous attacks and their family members. After consulting with prosecutors from both the Department of Justice and Department of Defense and after thoroughly studying the case, it became clear to me that the best venue for prosecution was in federal court. I stand by that decision today. As the indictment unsealed today reveals, we were prepared to bring a powerful case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-conspirators one of the most well-researched and documented cases I have ever seen in my decades of experience as a prosecutor. We had carefully evaluated the evidence and concluded that we could prove the defendants’ guilt while adhering to the bedrock traditions and values of our laws. We had consulted extensively with the intelligence community and developed detailed plans for handling classified evidence. Had this case proceeded in Manhattan or in an alternative venue in the United States, as I seriously explored in the past year, I am confident that our justice system would have performed with the same distinction that has been its hallmark for over two hundred years. Unfortunately, since I made that decision, Members of Congress have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the United States, regardless of the venue. As the President has said, those unwise and unwarranted restrictions undermine our counterterrorism efforts and could harm our national security. Decisions about who, where and how to prosecute have always been and must remain the responsibility of the executive branch. Members of Congress simply do not have access to the evidence and other information necessary to make prosecution judgments. Yet they have taken one of the nation’s most tested counterterrorism tools off the table and tied our hands in a way that could have serious ramifications. We will continue to seek to repeal those restrictions. But we must face a simple truth: those restrictions are unlikely to be repealed in the immediate future. And we simply cannot allow a trial to be delayed any longer for the victims of the 9/11 attacks or for their family members who have waited for nearly a decade for justice. I have talked to these family members on many occasions over the last two years. Like many Americans, they differ on where the 9/11 conspirators should be prosecuted, but there is one thing on which they all agree: We must bring the conspirators to justice. So today I am referring the cases of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Bin Attash, Ramzi Bin Al Shibh, Ali Abdul-Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Al Hawsawi to the Department of Defense to proceed in military commissions. Furthermore, I have directed prosecutors to move to dismiss the indictment that was handed down under seal in the Southern District of New York in December, 2009, and a judge has granted that motion. Prosecutors from both the Departments of Defense and Justice have been working together since the beginning of this matter, and I have full faith and confidence in the military commission system to appropriately handle this case as it proceeds. The Department of Justice will continue to offer all the support necessary as this critically important matter moves forward. The administration worked with Congress to substantially reform military commissions in 2009, and I believe they can deliver fair trials and just verdicts. For the victims of these heinous attacks and their families, that justice is long overdue, and it must not be delayed any longer. Since I made the decision to prosecute the alleged 9/11 conspirators, the effectiveness of our federal courts and the thousands of prosecutors, judges, law enforcement officers, and defense attorneys who work in them have been subjected to a number of unfair, and often unfounded, criticisms. Too many people many of whom certainly know better have expressed doubts about our time-honored and time-tested system of justice. That’s not only misguided, it’s wrong. The fact is, federal courts have proven to be an unparalleled instrument for bringing terrorists to justice. Our courts have convicted hundreds of terrorists since September 11, and our prisons safely and securely hold hundreds today, many of them serving long sentences. There is no other tool that has demonstrated the ability to both incapacitate terrorists and collect intelligence from them over such a diverse range of circumstances as our traditional justice system. Our national security demands that we continu e to prosecute terrorists in federal court, and we will do so. Our heritage, our values, and our legacy to future generations also demand that we have full faith and confidence in a court system that has distinguished this nation throughout its history. Finally, I want to thank the prosecutors from the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of Virginia who have spent countless hours working to bring this case to trial. They are some of the most dedicated and patriotic Americans I have ever encountered, and our nation is safer because of the work they do every day. They have honored their country through their efforts on this case, and I thank them for it. I am proud of each and every one of them. Sadly, this case has been marked by needless controversy since the beginning. But despite all the argument and debate it has engendered, the prosecution of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators should never have been about settling ideological arguments or scoring political points. At the end of our indictment appear the names of 2,976 people who were killed in the attacks on that deadly September day nearly ten years ago. Innocent Americans and citizens of foreign countries alike who were murdered by ruthless terrorists intent on crippling our nation and attacking the values that we hold dear. This case has always been about delivering justice for those victims, and for their surviving loved ones. Nothing else. It is my sincere hope that, through the actions we take today, we will finally be able to deliver the justice they have so long deserved. Book/CDs by Michael E. Eidenmuller, Published by McGraw-Hill (2008) Text Source: http://www.justice.gov/ Audio, Image (Screenshot) Source: YouTube.com Audio Note: AR-XE = American Rhetoric Extreme Enhancement Copyright Status: Text = Public domain. Audio, Image = Uncertain.

Pier Paolo Pasolini Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Pier Paolo Pasolini - Essay Example Were it simply a question ÃŽ ¿f quantity, however, were Pasolini's art no more than the indulgence ÃŽ ¿f an unrepressed narcissist, there would be scant interest in a study ÃŽ ¿f this kind. Instead, his work offers an extraordinarily fertile and dense example ÃŽ ¿f how subjectivities are built on something other and something far more complex than merely saying 'I'. Indeed, one might say that his work offers an illustration ÃŽ ¿f the ultimate incompatibility ÃŽ ¿f saying 'I' and being 'I', in any cohesive sense these phrases might have (Benveniste, 1966, 259-60). For Pasolini does indeed, as Barberi Squarotti implies, constantly offer himself up for display in his work, but to such a degree ÃŽ ¿f intensity that conventional mediation 'is cast aside: he is personally, bodily present within language, as he explains in Petrolio, 'in queste pagine io mi sono rivolto al lettore direttamente [. . .] in carne e ossa'. In other words, he uses the textuality ÃŽ ¿f his work or the semiosis ÃŽ ¿f his multiform interventions in order to embody himself, to project himself into, rather than onto forms ÃŽ ¿f expression. The project is, ÃŽ ¿f course, deeply flawed and unrealizable, but also strangely utopian. It is an almost mystical aspiration to being-in-the text, to textual transubstantiation which can be related to his homosexuality. It represents a recourse to the essential signifier ÃŽ ¿f an 'authentic' body as a public locus ÃŽ ¿f discourse, in response to the exclusion from discourse and from normative sexual ideologies. But the recourse is a subversive and not a naturalizing one, since the irreducible aura f presence surrounding the body disavows coded norms (Dollimore, 1991). It radicalizes the relations between selfhood, signification and the real by projecting irreducible markers f the latter into the first two. It brings selfhood and form into uneasy synthesis, in a dynamic akin to that seen by De Lauretis, 1984, in Pasolini's essays in film semiology: a deployment and experience f forms f discourse as active and subjective

Computer and Network Hardware Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 3

Computer and Network Hardware - Assignment Example Additionally, utilizing wireless network is simpler than utilizing cable network that has its own complexities. Hardwired systems have the tendency of backing up individuals in waiting to utilize computers. Consequently, this presents time limitations for individuals utilizing these systems. Fast Ethernet enable clients to receive augmented transmission speeds. The Ethernet protocol has implemented a novel standard that sustains 100 Mbps. Fast Ethernet necessitates utilization of dissimilar and expensive network hubs, in addition to network interface cards (Spurgeon, 2000). Furthermore, this category of Ethernet necessitates utilization of five twisted pair cable (Contreras, 2005). This category of Ethernet has considerable use in learning institutions to ensure that these institutions obtain reliable internet services, considering the huge populace that utilizes the internet. Bus and Star are the best topologies for library systems although the Star functions best in offering library services. Star topology requires easier maintenance relative to Bus topology. Additionally, it is easily installed and offers little difficulties during troubleshooting network-related problems (Bangia, 2005). Backbone entails huge transmissions that deliver information obtained from miniature lines that are linked to these transmission lines. These lines link LAN to WAN depending on the distance of