Let the show trial begin: it’s as American as cherry pie

You can't please all of the people all of the time, but President Obama and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, have got nearer than most to pulling it off. A week ago Holder announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators will soon go on trial in a federal court in New York for planning the attacks of September 11, 2001. After a week's uproar it's fair to conclude that this was smart politics on the part of the Obama team.

The fact that Holder, a man with famously sensitive political antennae, told the press that political considerations played "no part" in his decision only buttresses this judgment. The prime function of all US Attornies General is to loyally undertake the political requirements of their President.

The scenario envisaged by Obama, his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Holder is presumably that somehow a jury of unprejudiced citizens will be convened, and that ultimately – hopefully sometime before the presidential election of 2012 - at least Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will step into the execution chamber, thus vindicating Obama's oft-advertised commitment to track down the perps of 9/11 and kill them.

Documents will be leaked that portray George Bush in an unflattering light

So eager is Obama to underline this point that last Friday he declared in Japan that those offended by the trial will not find it "offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him". This remark came right after his assertion that the trial would be "subject to the most exacting demands of justice." Realising that the latter remark might be construed by some pettifogging civil libertarians as prejudicial to a fair trial, Obama then added that he was "not going to be in that courtroom. That's the job of the prosecutors, the judge and the jury".

So, in this prospectus, even if the Great War on Terror does not prosper in Afghanistan, it will proceed satisfactorily in execution chambers here in the Homeland, with the possible lagniappe of Major Hasan, the alleged Fort Hood shooter, also getting a lethal injection after conviction in a military court.

It's certain that the legal team mustered to defend KSM and the other four will be reviewing mountains of documents amassed by the prosecution, setting forth the evidentiary chain that led to the indictments of the Ground Zero Five. Of course, most of these will no doubt be classified top secret, to be reviewed by defence lawyers only under conditions of stringent security, but it's certain that enough will be leaked to portray the Bush Administration and Republicans in general in a harshly unflattering light, ignoring profuse indications of the unfolding conspiracy.

For their part - though the smarter among them may worry about disclosures of Bush and Cheney’s incompetence or worse - the Republicans also exult at the opportunity to savage the Obama administration as soft on terror by the mere fact of hauling KSM and the others into a US courtroom, as opposed to giving them a drumhead trial by military "commission" outside the jurisdiction