For me, the prospect of KSM grandstanding at his trial falls into I-wish-a-motherfucker-would territory. I want to hear how KSM builds a case against America, because everyone will hear how laughably conspiratorial and clownish it is. Think of what a cathartic moment it will be when America sees the face of the man considered to be UBL’s most efficient henchman and he delivers a pitiful harangue to a bank of cameras. No one will be emboldened to do anything but laugh. The only downside will be his inevitable discussion of how CIA operatives tortured him.

Conservatives are all about making quick, half assed conclusions about stuff, however. Particularly in the arena of national security, which they feel is a club they can use to hit Democrats with. And of course, there’s Stephen Hayes and his idiot connections.

Here is what Hayes wrote in 2004:

Until this material is declassified, there will be gaps in our knowledge. Indeed, even after the full record is made public, some uncertainties will no doubt remain.

The connection between Saddam and al Qaeda isn’t one of them.

Of course, we know that this is – to put it charitably – b.s.

Weekly Standard staff writer and author of the book The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America (released on June 1 by Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house HarperCollins), Stephen F. Hayes has appeared in recent months on numerous cable and Sunday talk shows to support his contention that there was indeed a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Despite vigorous critiques that have undermined the credibility of Hayes’s contention, conservative pundits have embraced Hayes and his book in order to, in the words of Center for Strategic and International Studies fellow Daniel A. Benjamin, “shore up the rickety argument that Baathist Iraq had posed a real national security threat to the United States.”

Everything old is new again, and just as dumb the second time around.

The minds behind the worst terror attack in US history, tried in one of our most important cities, and executed under our system of laws? Sounds great.

But the cons? Wetting the bed, again. They’re so down on America they don’t think we can handle this. We’ll prove them wrong, again. Don’t bet against America guys.

RELATED: Home of the brave

All religious extremists are bad.

Conservatives often seem pathologically unable to talk about rightie terror.

The man who is a suspect in the Halloween night slaying of a Seattle police officer is a ‘domestic terrorist’ who had explosive devices in his apartment, police officials said Saturday.

Christopher J. Monfort is believed to have worked alone in the fatal shooting of Seattle Police Officer Tim Brenton, as well as the Oct. 22 firebombing of four Seattle police vehicles, said Jim Pugel, Seattle Police assistant chief.

‘This man, from everything that we can tell, appears to be a lone domestic terrorist,’ Pugel said at a news conference.

An American flag found near where Brenton was shot provided a link between the cases, a law enforcement source said. Pugel told reporters there was one critical ‘piece of evidence’ at the homicide scene that resembled something else found in the Charles Street arson case.”

Tarek Mehanna, 27, of Sudbury, a small town west of Boston, allegedly conspired from 2001 to May 2008 with Ahmad Abousamra and others to support and carry out attacks abroad, including on U.S. and allied soldiers in Iraq, the Justice Department announced.

An FBI agent alleges in a complaint and a search warrant affidavit that Mehanna, Abousamra and an associate traveled to the Middle East in February 2004 seeking training at a terrorist camp in Yemen, and that Abousamra made two similar trips to Pakistan in 2002. The men were unsuccessful, however, the agent said, and the associate became a government informant.

An Afghan immigrant wanted to carry out a New York City terror attack involving hydrogen peroxide bombs to coincide with the Sept. 11 anniversary before federal authorities foiled the plan, a U.S. prosecutor said Friday.

Tim Neff told a federal judge that Najibullah Zazi ‘was in the throes of making a bomb and attempting to perfect his formulation.’

‘The evidence suggests a chilling, disturbing sequence of events showing the defendant was intent on making a bomb and being in New York on 9/11, for purposes of perhaps using such items,’ Neff declared in arguing for Zazi’s transfer to New York.

Terror suspect Najibullah Zazi was indicted Thursday on a charge of conspiring to detonate bombs in the United States.

Zazi is to appear in court Thursday in Denver on a count of lying to terrorism investigators. The new charge of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction was filed in New York.

Court documents charge that in July and August, Zazi and associates in Denver purchased large quantities of chemicals that could be used to make bombs.

Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said Mr. Biden had proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics.

The Americans would accelerate training of Afghan forces and provide support as they took the lead against the Taliban. But the emphasis would shift to Pakistan. Mr. Biden has often said that the United States spends something like $30 in Afghanistan for every $1 in Pakistan, even though in his view the main threat to American national security interests is in Pakistan.

Detectives were combing Queens storage facilities on Monday for stockpiled explosive chemicals that Al Qaeda terror thugs planned to use to bomb New York, sources said.

At the same time, the Daily News has learned that prime terror suspect Najibullah Zazi has confessed he was a jihadist hell-bent on murderous mayhem, the sources said.

NYPD investigators, in coordination with the FBI, hit chemical and fertilizer companies looking for customers who bought bulk and paid cash – and they were also showing up at storage centers in Long Island City.

Investigators believe they were going to use the units to mix chemicals for explosives.

‘They’re full on, and still going full bore,’ a counterterror official said of the bomb hunt.

After overnight arrests this weekend in the alleged New York terror plot, FBI agents believe an active terror cell directed by al Qaeda was preparing an attack on New York City, and authorities say they have yet to identify everyone involved.

Officials say they do not have specifics on the potential targets of the alleged plot, and with so much still unknown, security in New York has been heightened.

American commandos killed one of the most wanted Islamic militants in Africa in a daylight raid in southern Somalia on Monday, according to American and Somali officials, an indication of the Obama administration’s willingness to use combat troops strategically against Al Qaeda’s growing influence in the region.

After 9/11, the Democrats not only lost their marbles the way the rest of us did at the horror, they also had their spines turn to jelly politically. After years of polling showing conservative superiority on national security issues, Democrats did the stupid thing and caved in to the right on security issue after issue – on issues ranging from the invasion of Iraq to the use of torture and warrantless wiretapping.

Now, many of us out there in liberalland did – and still – knew better than those in DC on our side of the aisle. We rejected the notion that conservatives know anything about national security, let alone the idea that they are more trustworthy on the issue.

Oh sure, around 2005-6 the Democratic party itself started talking a better game on these issues, but that doesn’t change the fact that from 01-04 they were limp noodles. They gave the Bush administration a free pass, and went along to go along. That doesn’t absolve them of guilt. They voted for things and supported policies no member of a liberal party should have done.

But.

We only have one President. He, and he alone, made the final decision on these issues – congressional authorization or not. Congress gave him the loaded weapon, but he chose whether or not to pull the trigger. George Bush authorized the torture of people, and while the congress turned a blind eye to it and authorized it and deserves some of the blame for it, it is Bush and his henchmen who committed the act itself.

I feel its probably likely that Speaker Pelosi was an accessory to these acts, but George W. Bush was the trigger man.

Furthermore, I’ve learned since then. I’m interested in killing Al Qaeda and destroying their networks (that’s why I support Democrats, because Republicans are clearly uninterested). I don’t – like Glenn Reynolds has – support presidential administrations that define away torture and do so with legal b.s. in order to pervert what America stands for. We don’t get good information from it and its immoral.

President Barack Obama on Friday is to unveil a new offensive against terror havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, aiming to deal a death blow to Al-Qaeda more than seven years after the September 11 attacks.

To win a war aides said was “adrift” the new president will dispatch 4,000 extra troops to train the Afghan army, on top of 17,000 deployments already authorized, in a bold move in defiance of critics who fear a quagmire.

Obama also will send hundreds more civilian officials into Afghanistan and stump up billions of dollars of extra aid to help anti-terror ally Pakistan secure its democracy, senior administration officials said.

“It is a clear, concise, attainable goal, and that goal is to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al-Qaeda in its safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” one of the officials said on condition of anonymity.

“How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?” Mr. Obama said Friday in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on “60 Minutes” on CBS.

The president was responding to recent charges by Mr. Cheney that the administration’s decision to shut down the Guantánamo prison, along with other policies on the treatment of terrorism suspects, would make the United States more vulnerable to attacks.

Bush administration terrorism policy “hasn’t made us safer,” Mr. Obama said, according to excerpts of the interview released Saturday.

“What it has been,” he continued, “is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment.”

So many Americans and others are dead because of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. You’d think they’d at least shut up.

My inclination is towards the latter, especially when you consider the recent trials in Iraq. The problem is it might be too late for that.