What would YOU do with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

He would be afforded a painless peaceful death in a depressurized plane at that altitude. Instead try him in a civilian court, he will get life and sentence him to general population at Cook County jail. He will get to know Holy terror up close and personal for the rest of his life.

Your plan makes you no better than he is.

@marinelife How do you figure?. He, a sociopathic degenerate, by his actions does not deserve to live in our midst. If we do nothing, we are in default of any claim to the position of good.. If we cleanse ourselves of his evil, we are virtuous.

@josie Pretty sure he and his ilk think they’re “cleansing [themselves] of evil, and our virtuous.”

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

Civilian court has nothing to do with the severity of the crime – it’s where we try murderers, rapists, serial killers – it just has to do with not being part of the military.

I would ask him about everything he allegedly confessed to, without torturing him, to hear what he has to say.
Then I would give him a fair trial, with access to a lawyer, in a civilian court, with no evidence gathered during torture to be allowed, just like I would hope for any alleged criminal.

*are, not our

What @Cruiser suggested. Don’t make a martyr of him. It’s what he wants most. Keep him alive and in prison with the rest of the animals until all his victims come back to life or he dies in a cage.

WAY too much time and resources have been wasted on this monster.

Take him (blind folded) to the top of the Empire State Building. (clear the streets below) Stand behind him with a flame thrower. (Remove blind fold) Tell him that he has the option to jump of be fried. Give him 10 seconds to decide.

Send him to prison for the rest of his life, in solitary confinement, make him do hard labor everyday, and feed him nothing but pork.

The responses here make me sick.

If KSM is obviously guilty, then what the fuck do you people think would happen if he were tried in a civilian court? Do you have so little faith in the foundation of our justice system?

Do you think people who obviously commit murders and other heinous crimes should just be taken out back and shot, too?

@Qingu housing heinous criminals is very expensive…bullets are cheap. Less than 50 cents will get the job done…

Actually, if it were up to me, I’d try him in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. But of course, red blooded Americans wouldn’t dare give up sovereignty to participate in the ICC, so therefore I would try him in the civilian court system so justice can be done.

I would not try him in a military tribunal because terrorists are not soldiers of a sovereign army. Terrorists are not enemy soldiers. Treating them as enemy soldiers is putting a square peg in a round hole, for a number of reasons. But, I don’t think it’s the end of the world if he is tried in a military court—you can argue there is a gradient between “civilian” and “soldier” that terrorists fall in the middle of.

What bothers me more is that so many conservatives (and some liberals) have such a disgusting disregard for the entire concept of justice.

@Cruiser, how utterly psychopathic. Who determines who counts as a heinous criminal worthy of your 50 cent bullet approach to justice?

Your approach worked so well in the stone age.

I say he gets the trial, he confessed to criminal acts committed on US solid so those crimes he stand in court for; civilian court. It don’t matter much it is all a horse and pony show to say “we gave him a fair trial” but we all know how it would have come out even if he had not confessed.

If he confessed and there’s evidence, why wouldn’t the trial be fair?

@josie JESUS CHRIST! So you decided for a fact this man’s guilty? He would claim to be Bin Laden himself post plastic surgery if ever it occurs to him he might be believed. He has not been tried so we don’t even have any facts to even speculate on at all if they were true. Any islamic fanatic nut out there who dreams of being a martyr would claim all the things he said he did. So try him in a military court which even defense military lawyers say would be hard pressed for credibility so we could just get it over with based on your gut feel and news media? The media? What a hoot! Personally I think there is not enough evidence of his deeds so some parties prefer the military court. That I understand. The civilian court is the better option if you want a FAIR trial. The downside is he won’t be found guilty for lack of enough hard evidence and worse, his admissions under torture may end up being inadmissible. But what do you really want, rant about how you want to end this man, guilty as assumed by you? He may not be in trial yet but American character already is. Are we going to be a fiery torch brandishing mob?

He should be put on trial so we can see the evidence against him and then sentence him accordingly. If we don’t put him on trial it suggests there are doubts about his guilt. The families of murder victims get some closure from a court case. I think they deserve that.

@josie We are a civilized society. We have a justice system to mete out punishment. We are not terrorists.

@marinelife It has nothing to do with punishment. It has to do with eliminating a threat. Same notion that motivates people to find a way to kill bacteria and viruses. Nobody is punishing strep and staph bacteria when they invent antibiotics. Just getting rid of them when they infect us.

It is the sick minded and viciously devised plan to kill in order to turn civilization upside down, if only for a short while that gets him his richly deserved scorn. He isn’t like the rest of polite society anywhere on Earth. His “stunt” has cost the world so much that spending millions on his trial is still adding to his damage even now. He’s admitted to it. boasted even, and apparently the evidence points to his guilt. Put him in a box already he can have his hate to keep him comforted. There is no such thing as cruel and unusual punishment in his case. It still is light years better than many of his victims who were forced to make a choice of burning to death or jumping out of a building ½ a mile high, (and still dying).

@woodcutter Could not have said it better.
The theme of Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men is that evil is an emergent behavior that becomes so bizarre that even established systems of justice do not really know what to do with it. That is the case with KSM. And in our time people are conflicted, just like the old law man in the novel, about whether or not they have the moral authority to do what they should about it.
But that is a novel.
The truth is, in the face of something extraordinarily evil, you are entitled to take extra ordinary action, and you are on the moral right side of it. Your soul will not be put at risk.
Anyway. If everybody were truly honest about principles, then colleges would admit students based exclusively on academic prowess.
But they don’t. And promotions would be made exclusively on merit. But they are not.
So clearly our institutions make exceptions all the time. Here is an occasion to do it again.

@josie, you don’t believe our justice system is capable of dealing with extraordinary evil?

Are you not aware that juries convict serial killers and child rapists and have in fact convicted numerous terrorists? Or do you just not care because you’re an authoritarian fascist who prefers to do away with such trifles?

@Qingu I’m aware of all that.
The question was posted just to give people a chance to play a little chin music on Fluther about one of the many issues that the government seems to be so incapable of managing well, and not to establish a domestic system of vigilante justice.
But you already know that

There’s always somebody who feels like they have to jump in everybody else’s shit, and so the question gives them an opportunity to participate as well.

KSM is going to get a trial one place or the other, and neither I nor anybody else is going to stop it or even argue about it.
You on the other hand might consider working on your people skills before graduation.

@josie We do not have the right to just “get rid of a threat.” That makes us as lawless as he is.

@marinelife Please see above. So I gather your answer to the question is put him on trial (someplace) and let it go at that. Duly noted. Here’s some lurve.

@josie, if you’re aware of that, and accepting of the concept of justice, why have you repeatedly called for extrajudiciously killing him? Just venting steam?

@marine life
If we don’t have the right to just get rid of the threat, why do we send drones into Pakistan and Yemen and kill civilians and how come that isn’t considered terrorism?

I imagine many of us (including me) don’t support the use of drones, which are (I’m pretty sure) illegal under international law and thus not even acknowledged by our government to begin with.

That said, the use of force can be justified to prevent an ongoing threat. If an armed robber is shooting at a bunch of people, police would be justified in shooting the robber. Police can also use force to take fleeing criminals into custody, which (depending on how hard they resist) can result in the criminals’ death. For this reason, I don’t really have a problem with special forces dudes surrounding suspected Taliban suspects’ houses in the middle of the night and taking them into custody “dead or alive.”

In the case of KSM, he is not a threat; he is in prison. Once someone is in custody, this simply does not apply. And the goal should be to bring people into custody (rather than just killing them) and swiftly determine if they’re guilty, and then swiftly punish them if they are.

What should we do with @josie who suggests that we give up the rule of law?

Then there’s the problem during a trial the defense is going to pressure witnesses on how they got their evidence in the first place jeopardizing people and methods used in the fight against these elements. You know they’re going to do it. Not worth giving up that formation to prove something we already know. It will turn into a sidebar circus with KSM going off on one of his “hate the infidels” dogmatism’s. Why give this animal one more hurrah for him to energize his base into doing something rash. We all know America is not perfect, that much we all can agree on so whats one more non perfect maneuver for the sake of never hearing this person’s voice ever again? I’m sure the world will get over it, if not they will get under it.