The newest fear-mongering campaign from the Right and the media

(Updated below - Update II - Update III -Update IV - Update V - Updated VI)

The latest fear-mongering campaign downloading movies in the U.S. — this one devoted to scaring Americans that they will be slaughtered if Guantanamo is closed and Terrorism suspects are brought into the U.S. for real trials — is now in full swing.  The New York Times today prints a front-page article claiming that a detainee released from Guantanamo last year has now become ”the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch” (it’s always amazing how bureaucratically structured Al Qaeda is alleged to be and how well we can discern the structure:  ”Deputy Leader, Yemen Branch”; do they have business cards and organizational charts?).

But the real fear-mongering is focused on all of the attacks that American communities will suffer if we imprison dangerous Terrorists inside the U.S. rather than in Guantanamo. House Minority Leader John Boehner wants you to be frightened:  ”I think the first thing we have to remember is that we’re talking about terrorists here.  Do we bring them into our borders?” GOP House Minority Whip Eric Cantor warned:  ”Actively moving terrorists inside our borders weakens our security.  Most families neither want nor need hundreds of terrorists seeking to kill Americans in their communities.“   The always frightened Wall St. Journal Editorial Page shrieks that any place that houses Al Qaeda Terrorists will become a “target” for attack:

the military base [at ft. leavenworth] is integrated into the community and, lacking guantanamo’s isolation and defense capacities, would instantly become a potential terror object. expect similar protests from other states that are involuntarily entered in this sweepstakes.

National Review’s Jim Geraghaty spent all day yesterday fantasizing about all the scary things that could happen if we have Al-Qaeda Terrorists in our communities (near nuclear facilities and airports!).&#160 crime movies; Former Bush aide and chief speechwriter Marc Thiessen warned yesterday in The Washington Post that if there is a Terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Americans will blame Obama because he stopped torturing and closed Guantanamo, and Democrats will be “unelectable for a generation.” Today, at National Review, Thiessen, citing yesterday’s Executive Orders, declared Obama “to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office.”  And yesterday, of course, The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt echoed the standard claim that our regular federal courts were inadequate to try dangerous Terrorists.

Israel prepares legal defense of soldiers

All of this is pure fear-mongering — the 2009 version of Condoleezza Rice’s mushroom cloud and Jay Rockefeller’s “we’ll-lose-our-eavesdropping-capabilities” cries.  Both before and after 9/11, the U.S. has repeatedly and successfully tried alleged high-level Al Qaeda operatives and other accused Islamic Terrorists in our normal federal courts — in fact, the record is far more successful than the series of debacles that has taken place in the military commissions system at Guantanamo.  Moreover, those convicted Terrorists have been housed in U.S. prisons, inside the U.S., for years without a hint of a problem.  Here is but a partial list of the accused Muslim Terrorists who have been successfully tried and convicted in U.S. civilians courts and who remain imprisoned inside the U.S.:

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