I have read over and over people from the right lambasting Clinton for treating the first World trade center attack as a criminal matter. Now we have the 9/11 terrorists being treated as criminals.
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Lopez: When the World Trade Center was first bombed in '93, why was it treated at first as a criminal investigation?
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http://www.nationalreview.com/interr...ory091103b.asp
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The terror attack would be treated as a criminal matter, not a threat to national security.
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http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110004081
Now I would argue that treating the second world trade center attacks with an agressive "wanted dead or alive" approach, but as a criminal matter would have served our purposes much better than deciding that we needed to go to war with Iraq...
We needed to hunt down and get, dead or alive, all terrorists. But focus on terrorists and those that protect them. That means that if Afghanistan protected terrorists, then they would even be able to go so far as to invade the country to get to the terrorists. But it would not have justified attacking Iraq, because they were not protecting any terrorists.
And now, we are finally, after years of idiotic practices of torture and secret rendition and years and years of imprisonment without trial and so forth, treating these guys like criminals. And that is how we should have brought them to justice all along.