Sometimes you just can't use your ammo.

I was a panelist on the McLaughlin Group this past weekend. One of the topics was Gitmo and the Obama administration's move to release some of the detainees (such as the Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs) or to transfer others to the United States for further detention and, in some cases, trial. As I did my research for this segment--yes, I do prepare--I came across a craven editorial that had recently appeared in The Daily News. The New York paper's editorialists were whining about the administration sending Ahmed Ghailani, a Gitmo prisoner accused of participating in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, to New York for trial in federal court:

Compare the way Washington has approached New York with its wooing of Palau, a tiny Pacific island state that has magnanimously agreed to resettle 13 Chinese Muslims, called Uighurs, who were picked up in Afghanistan and later found not to be enemy combatants.

Palau is in line for $200 million in U.S. aid - more than $15 million per detainee - although all parties insist there is no connection between the funds and plans for the Uighurs.

The question that must be asked is: Where's ours?

Where's ours? Were they kidding? Ghailani is accused of participating in a murderous plot that blew up US property and killed 224 people. Patriotic Americans ought to want this guy brought to justice and, if found guilty, locked away for life--just like four of his compatriots who are already imprisoned at the supermax facility in Florence, Colorado. But The Daily News' editorialists were suggesting that Ghailani ought to be tried in Manhattan only if New York City receives a payoff from the feds. (By the way, the detainees who may end up in Palau were found not to be enemy combatants after spending years at Gitmo. Comparing them to Ghailani is silly.)

This was another version of the demagogic argument that GOPers and some Dems have been making against the Obama policy of shutting down Gitmo. They've been screaming about bringing these terrorists--they never say "suspected terrorists"--to the United States, as if these detainees are superhuman evildoers who will escape custody and engineer the destruction of your neighborhood.

As I've noted elsewhere, a number of terrorists (some affiliated with al Qaeda) have been successfully tried and imprisoned in the United States. And several have been convicted in federal court in New York City. By sending Ghailani to Manhattan for trial, the Obama administration was just doing what's been done by past administrations.

So why go on about this vis-à-vis the McLaughlin Group? One of my fellow shouting heads on the show was going to be Mort Zuckerman, the owner of The Daily News. I prepared to challenge him about this editorial during the Gitmo segment. I was ready to go: "Mort, do you think that New Yorkers should be demanding a bribe in order for the feds to apply harsh US justice to terrorists who kill?" But when that part of the show arrived during the taping...the opportunity never came. The conversation simply did not go in a direction that provided me an opening. Oh well. Maybe another time.