In a move that NO ONE saw coming, Sec Def Austin grew a pair and revoked the atrocious 9/11 plea deal last evening.
Yes folks, you read that correctly. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin doesn’t like this deal at all. Thus, he’s kicking ass and taking names.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Friday relieved the overseer of the war court at Guantánamo Bay and revoked a plea agreement reached earlier this week with the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two alleged accomplices.
The Pentagon announced the decision with the release of a memorandum relieving the senior official at the Defense Department responsible for military commissions of her oversight of the capital case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his alleged accomplices for the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field.
The overseer, retired Brig. Gen. Susan K. Escallier, signed a pretrial agreement on Wednesday with Mr. Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi that exchanged guilty pleas for sentences of at most life in prison. In taking away the authority, Mr. Austin assumed direct oversight of the case and canceled the agreement, effectively reinstating it as a death-penalty case.
Again, no one, and I mean NO ONE saw this coming.
We and every 9/11 family as well as the families of those who responded to The Pile as it’s called, were completely blindsided and angered by the so-called plea deal.
“I’m disgusted. He killed 3,000 people and more than 3,000 if you consider all of the people who have been dying since he caused all of this pain and suffering,” Steven Hanges, a retired 20-year veteran of the NY Highway Patrol, who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer late last year.
~Snip
“They made a deal with the devil,” he said.
Edgardo Lopez, 57, an ex-NYPD officer and 9/11 first responder who got throat cancer and lost a vocal cord from an aggressive course of chemotherapy and radiation, said the defendants should have gotten “an automatic death sentence right off the bat.”
“There should have never been a plea deal,” he said.
I agree. The fact that, as Deanna pointed out here, this mess has dragged on for over TWENTY THREE YEARS. It is way past time for all of us to quit playing nice in the legal sandbox and realize .. these are terrorists who do deserve the full measure of retribution instead of an asinine plea deal.
The announcement comes after Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his top lieutenants agreed to plead guilty “in exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment,” according to Department of Defense letter sent to victims’ families Wednesday.
The Al Qaeda operative has been jailed at Guantanamo prison for nearly two decades and is considered to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. The now-scuttled plea deal would have given Mohammed and two of his al Qaeda lieutenants life sentences and would have removed the possibility of a death penalty trial.
I love how the families of those killed on 9/11 were notified after the plea deals were in place.
The memo itself, is quite blunt and to the point.
I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial
agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority under the Military Commissions Act of 2009. Effective immediately, I hereby withdraw your authority in the above-referenced case to enter into a pre-trial agreement and reserve such authority to myself.
I’d say that Sec Def Austin was definitely not a happy camper. Which brings me to some key questions.
A. What was in the plea agreements that sent alarm bells ringing?
B. What was left out of the plea agreements?
C. Who benefitted from this, besides the obvious?
As for those who are screaming into the void about ‘we had a DEAL!’ Here’s a reality check.
What the Secretary giveth, the Secretary can taketh away.
— Sunny (@sunnyright) August 3, 2024
The convening authority only had the authority to accept the plea deal by virtue of the Secretary's designation. If such designation no longer pleases him, he can take the authority for himself — which is the default…
These plea deals aren’t part of what we view as ordinary U.S. law. No, there’s a very different set of laws, military in nature, that apply here. So, for those whining about the deal getting tanked, go fly a kite and step right off.
The blowback was immense, and I’ve a feeling the hidden blowback was even worse. Why else did this happen on a late Friday evening?
Now, Austin needs to stick to his guns.
BREAKING: @Secdef Lloyd Austin yanks plea deals for 9/11 terror attack mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, 2 others @DeptofDefense memo released tonight also relieves the official in charge of the military commissions of her oversight in the case pic.twitter.com/bMVvCDn37I
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) August 3, 2024
This was an excellent and necessary move by Sec Def Austin. But we also have to wonder if Alaska is in play again…
The Secretary of State is ordering naval fleets around while the Secretary of Defense is contradicting the White House’s own stated position and revoking the 9/11 terrorist plea deals.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) August 3, 2024
Meanwhile, Biden is in Delaware again. We have no president.
And…
Perhaps it would be nice to know where the new Democratic nominee for president falls on this issue https://t.co/VymCpWPyZA
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) August 3, 2024
There is that.
More importantly, do NOT walk this back! This country, and especially the 9/11 families and all the first responders that day deserve actual justice. That plea deal wasn’t justice, and I for one am thankful that Austin kicked that mess into the gutter.
Feature Photo Credit: Statue of Liberty and the Twin Towers pre-9/11 via iStock, cropped and modified
Scott says: I really want to get excited about this, and believe that Austin did it because it’s the right thing to do, and will stick to it.
But here’s the problem. Austin has NEVER done the right thing as Sec Def.. He didn’t stand up for the troops in Afghanistan, he didn’t stand up for the troops when they were forced to get the jab, he didn’t do the right thing when he was headed to the hospital… So forgive me if I don’t believe he’s doing the right thing here.. I believe this is all smoke and mirrors because the dims saw how bad this was playing before the election. I believe that this is just a delay, and after the election, a similar deal will be put back in place and inked quickly to try and appease the islamonazis…
Totally agree with Mr. Lopez when he said they should have gotten an automatic death sentence over 20 yrs ago.
Blackwing1 says: We are at a critical inflection point for Western Civilization. So many crises ongoing, including (but not limited to):
– Russia invading a sovereign nation (Ukraine)
– China threatening to invade a sovereign nation (Taiwan)
– Iran threatening to obliterate a sovereign nation (Israel) with nukes enabled to them by the Democrats
– Third world welfare-seekers and terrorists numbering in the millions invading the US southern border
And exactly WHO is president? Gropey Dopey Joe doesn’t even know which plane to get on, and Kackles is still officially the Veep. She’s running for Pres even though she’s never, ever in her life gotten a single Dem-primary vote (“Selected, not elected” should be the Rep-wing’s phrase). We’ve got the SecDef acting like a Pres (thank you for once, Austin), and before you know it he’ll be saying that, “…I’m in charge, here, in the White House”.
Whoever forms the cabal running the ventriloquist’s dummies are responsible for this mess, and need to be named. But given the current status of every three-letter alphabet agency (DOJ, FBI, NSA, CIA, et cetera ad nauseum) as the Dem-wing Stasi, that’ll never happen.
I did NOT want to spend the end of my life living in “interesting times”, but here we go.
2 Comments