9/11 Never Forget Atlas

NEVER FORGET PRESS CONFERENCE SPEECH BY DEBRA BURLINGAME AND CONGRESSMAN PETE KING…….

Debra Burlingame:

I am one of the co-founders of the organization announced today, 911 Never FORGET US. The mission is to stop President Obama, Attorney-General Eric Holder, and members of congress from bringing sworn enemies of the United States into this country, and from bringing war criminals captured on the battlefield, lawfully held as war detainees, into civilian court, doesn’t have to happen.

Two weeks ago, 300 9/11 family members sent a letter to the president telling him we adamently oppose this foolish, dangerous and unnecessary act. The letter was never acknowledged.

But one hour after the Attorney-General made his stunning announcement that unlawfull foreign combatants would be tried as civilians in federal court, the number of signers to that letter, jumped to 45 000, that was in one hour. By the end of the day, the number of signers was 100 000. Our internet server could count the number of Americans who somehow found out about this letter and wish to stand with us. That was the genisis of this movement.

Just as they did eight years ago, the American people are standing with us again. Attorney-General Eric Holder has suggested that those who oppose prosecuting these men, here, in New York city are afraid, that we don’t have the courage to face Khalid Sheik Mohammed. But I say, how dare Mr.Holder, who didn’t have the decency to notify victims’ families of his decision to bring these monsters here. How dare him tell us, that we lack courage.

Courage, is carrying on after watching your loved ones die in real time, knowing that they burned to death, were crushed to death, or jumped from one hundred flights high. Courage is carrying on, even after we waited, in some cases years, to bury something of our loved one. More than eleven hundred families still await. how dare Mr.Holder suggest, that the firefighters who oppose this trial need to, man up, and let KSM mock their brother firefighters in the country’s most majesterial setting, of federal court.

Mr.Holder, courage is going into those burning buildings that day, knowing, that they may not come out alive. Courage is digging for nine months on their hands and knees, breathing in toxic smoke, to find the ravaged remains of their brother firefighters, police officers, citizen responders and office workers.

This was courage, not summoned from false bravado, but which sprang from abiding love of their fellow human beings and their sense of obligation to them, their families and their beloved country. Mr.Holder has glibbly, and most insensatively called the perverse spectical that he wants to invite on this city and the nation, the trial of the century.

Well Mr.Attorney-General, Khalid Sheik Mohammed has put you on notice, he’s going to give it to you. We, the families, the first responders, and those members of the US military, the people who patrol your streets, rescue your citizens and fight your wars, we understand what you do not. This trial will be lawyer assisted jihad. This trial will be lawyer assisted jihad in the courtroom.

We understand that jihad is more than justs spilling American blood, it is forcing us to change our lives, divert our limited resources, forgoing the luxury of boarding an airplane unabused. When we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars for rooftop snipers, kevlar vests and armored vehicles, that’s jihad. When we barracade our buildings, lock down our streets and close our transportation systems, that’s jihad. When we grant a confessed war criminal access to platinum due process so he can use it to rally his fellow terrorists to kill more of our citizens and to do harm to our military, that’s jihad.

Mr.Attorney-General, it doesn’t have to happen. You called the military commission system, quote: “lawful, fair and effective” and that they are, I quote: “consistant with our highest standards of the nation”. We agree, and we think it’s far more than they deserve.

Congressman Pete King, from the Third district from New York, and ranking member of the House Homeland Security committee and member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intellegence:

Thank you Debra and Tim Brown for all the work in organizing this. Let me thank Andy McCarthy who is a regular scholar on this issue, and has been on the front lines of fighting jihad in the court rooms, also Peter Regan and his family, and I just want to thank you all so much, and of you who are here today.

The Obama-Holden descision to grant civilian rights to Guantomino detainees, is the most dangerous decision that any president and any attorney-general have ever made. This is a decision that has not basis in logic, in law or morality. We are changing the rules of the war. We are now saying that those captured as enemy combatants, on the battlefield, are entitled to civilian due process. There are in many ways more rights than are entitled for our own soldiers.

We are opening up so many avenues to terrorists, as far as giving them access to our intellegence, allowing then to use the courtroom as a forum, and of course putting, incredible, undue stress and strain and raising the level of security here, in the city of New York, at costs, as Debra said, in tens and tens of millions of dollars. And this is part of a pattern why this adminstration comes to not fighting the war in Iraq in the right way, and against terrorism

So it starts with the ordering the closure of Guantamino, it starts with the beginning of talks prosecuting or investigating CIA interrogators, the men and women who kept us safe for all these eight years. And now this decision to bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed and others to New York, by not puting him on trial before a military tribunal, is conferring a constitutional status on them which they don’t deserve and it’s going to be very harmfull to the United States. But again, to me the largest issue of all, in spite all the others, is the fact that we now that we’ve gone back to September 10.

We’ve said that we are going to treat this as a law enforcement issue, not as a matter of war. These enemy combatants are entitled to none of these rights. And I say what is this all going to do, in Afghanistan, when we capture someone in al-Qaida, knowing that an attack may be emminent, knowing that that person may know where Bin-Laden is? Is he allowed to question him, is he allowed to interrogate him, does he have to read him his rights, does he have to make sure of all the evidence, is carefully put them all together somewhere in the future when we put him on trial and send him here to New York or the District of Virginia or where ever ?

This again an administration which has turned its back, I believe, in effective fighting foreign terrorism, and taking us back to September 10th, and when you think back to September 10th, remember what happened on September 11th. We said that we would never do that again, we would never make those mistakes, unfortunately I believe we are mistaking them, more and more and more, so with that I urge everyone, to be at the rally at September 5th, let the President and the Attorney-General know, let them know clearly without any doubt at all, that New York and as a nation are opposed to these trials, we’re opposed to the status they are conferring to the mass murderers of our generation.

And with that I want to thank everyone here today and everyone who I know who’s going to be there on September. Thank you all and God bless.

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