Wow, this is getting pretty bad for the National Review and Marc Thiessen. Thiessen of course said that we tried Richard Reid in a regular American court since that was “long before we figured out that we had other options than handing him over” to law enforcement. But as TPM Reader RM points out, President Bush okayed military tribunals a month before Reid tried to blow up the plane.
As I said, there’s no spinning this one. There’s no reason beside GOP electoral strategy for not trying AbdulMutallab in a regular American Court. But seriously, with National Review’s august history, can’t we at least get better fake answers?
Late Update: Here’s Bill Kristol arguing that we need to hurry up and designate AbdulMutallab an enemy combatant. As always, pure politics. But remember, Kristol’s comes out of political operative work. Needless to say, he can’t even advance any argument for how ‘enemy combatant’ status would make any actual Americans, as opposed to Republican officeholders, safer.
