Here's one of those headlines that sort of leaps at us from out of the blue, resurrecting the name of a monster that seemed to be safely tucked away in the dustbin of history. It was announced last night by the Office of Military Commissions (OMC) that a plea deal has been reached with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two of his fellow terrorists. They will plead guilty to their roles in the worst terror attack in history. In return, the death penalty will be taken off the table for all three, including Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi. They have been detained at Guantanamo Bay for nearly a quarter of a century while the families of their victims awaited justice. Most of the family members are already expressing outrage, because "justice delayed" in this case has turned out to not be any sort of justice at all. The details of how this deal was finally reached are not being released yet, but some critics already suspect that the Biden administration was behind it. (NY Post)

The alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and two other terrorists being held on Guantánamo Bay will be spared the death penalty under a deal with prosecutors, it was revealed Wednesday.

The announcement came as a bitter pill to swallow for victims’ families who have anxiously awaited the conclusion of the case for nearly 24 years — many of whom felt death was the only appropriate punishment for the perpetrators of the heinous attacks.

A spokesperson for the Office of Military Commissions (OMC), which is prosecuting the case, confirmed it had entered into pre-trial agreements with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the accused principal architect of the al Qaeda attacks — and two alleged co-conspirators, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, all of whom have been held at the US military prison on the coast of Cuba since 2003.

The three stand charged with the murder of 2,976 people and countless acts of property destruction. The decision was sent to the victims' family members yesterday, some of whom described it as a "gut punch." Daniel D’Allara told reporters that "the government has failed us." His twin brother John was one of the 23 NYPD police officers killed on the day of the attacks. Moira Smith was the only female police officer killed in the attacks. Her widowed husband Jim, a retired police officer himself, told the Post that he felt like he had been "kicked in the balls."

The response from Washington, particularly from Republicans, wasn't much better. Mitch McConnell and other lawmakers immediately slammed the agreement as a miscarriage of justice. McConnell called the deal, "a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice." Others were more muted in their responses or declined to comment, but nobody seemed to be happy about this.

Congressional lawmakers slammed a plea deal reached Wednesday that will spare the accused 9/11 mastermind and two alleged accomplices from death, calling it a “national disgrace” and a “total miscarriage of justice.” 

“The Biden-Harris Administration’s weakness in the face of sworn enemies of the American people apparently knows no bounds,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement. 

“The plea deal with terrorists – including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks that killed thousands of Americans – is a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice,” the Kentucky Republican argued, noting that “The only thing worse than negotiating with terrorists is negotiating with them after they are in custody.”

I hope that someone can eventually explain to us what was supposedly accomplished by cutting this deal because it makes absolutely no sense. The evidence of the participation of these fiends in the planning and orchestration of the attack was overwhelming. After all of this time, why couldn't we simply move forward with a trial? Were they worried that they might not be able to convince a jury to bring back a guilty plea? Surely all three of them have long since said everything that they ever intended to say during questioning, including extensive waterboarding. We should have been able to find them guilty and put them in front of a firing squad and invite as many of the victims' family members to fly down and watch if they wished. 

Failing that, we could have simply shut down any negotiations and left them to rot in Gitmo until they died of natural causes. That's all that's going to happen to them now anyway. Also, there aren't very many prying eyes at Guantanamo Bay. It's one of the most secure locations on the planet. KSM could have just "had an accident" at some point and been dumped in the ocean. Yes, that would be a violation of our normal rules of justice, but sometimes you have to make the occasional exception and he's not a US citizen anyway. I can't conceive of any circumstances under which they would ever be set free, even with the BIden administration in charge. The national outrage levels would send all of the meters shooting to eleven instantly. 

Our nation was thrust into two wars as a result of the attacks these creatures planned, one of which was completely unnecessary and the other one dragged on for far too long and came at a vast cost. It took forever to hunt down Osama bin Laden, but we had these jokers all the way back in 2003. The situation should have and could have been resolved long ago. This is a disgraceful end to a long and tragic tale.