Attorney General Eric Holder’s address at the ACS Tenth Anniversary National Convention championing the use of the civilian court system for terror-related trials has precipitated a public debate with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who responded to Holder’s speech with a disparaging op-ed in The Washington Post.
In the op-ed, Senator McConnell reiterated an argument he had made before Holder’s speech that two Iraqis arrested in the U.S. in April should be tried at Guantanamo because they don’t deserve “all the rights” that Americans have.
He also accused Holder of insulting “those who have served on the front lines” by praising civilian courts as a terror-fighting weapons.
Department of Justice Spokesman Matthew Miller responded to the op-ed by lamenting that McConnell had "selectively lifting words from the Attorney General's speech to the American Constitution Society and using them out of context distorts their meaning and obscures reality,” TPM reports.
“As the Attorney General has said on repeated occasions, we are at war, and we must use every weapon available - military, diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement - to defeat a determined enemy,” Miller said. “Taking one of those weapons off the table would endanger our national security. That would be the real insult to the thousands of men and women who have fought to defeat Al Qaeda."
See more coverage of the ongoing debate in Politico, The National Journal and Main Justice and watch Holder’s address here.
