https://wellstonjournal.com/9-11-families-still-wait-for-the-mastermind-of-the-attacks-to-be-brought-to-justice-18-years-on.html?unapproved=93&moderation-hash=f39d365dc6407d46e7afb3e2917c461d#comment-93MY COMMENT:
My heart breaks for those who lost loved ones on 9/11/01. My life was changed forever that day, as it began a string of deployments that lasted nearly 2 1/2 out of the next five years in support of the Global War on Terror. One of my first assignments was at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, helping to stand up the incarceration mission there. My unit, a small Military Police liaison detachment was trained in battlefield commissions. our belief before deployment was that we would be participating in commissions to determine the status of detainees. But that had already been hastily done on the battlefield. The only reason the unlawful combatant Islamists who wanted to kill us at Gitmo were still alive was that they may have valuable information that could save many lives. Waterboarding and other Enhanced Interrogation Techniques were legal and approved when performed on a handful of detainees, which, according to then President George W. Bush, provided valuable information that saved many lives. This was NOT torture. Only after President Obama took office did two critical things happen. One, he unilaterally declared EIT to be torture, specifically waterboarding. Which he knew would make all information given suspect. And two, he wrote the Military Commissions Act of 2009, which gave virtually the SAME rights to unlawful combatant Islamists who want to kill us the SAME rights you or I would enjoy in a federal court of law. These are the sources for delays in the trial.