OLD AND BUSTED: President Ash Carter.
The New Hotness: President Lloyd Austin: Defense Secretary Revokes Plea Deal for Accused 9/11 Mastermind, Accomplices.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday revoked a plea agreement made days earlier with the accused mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and two alleged accomplices.
The plea agreement, announced Wednesday, would have spared the three men from receiving the death penalty.
Instead, Austin relieved the overseer of the war court at Guantanamo Bay on Friday and announced in a memo that he had assumed control as the convening authority for military commissions.
“I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused in the above-referenced case, responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior convening authority under the Military Commissions Act of 2009,” Austin wrote in the memo addressed to retired Brigadeer General Susan K. Escallier.
“Effective immediately, I hereby withdraw your authority in the above-referenced case to enter into a pre-trial agreement and reserve such authority to myself,” he said. “Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024 in the above-referenced case.”
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is believed to be the main conspirator in al-Qaeda’s 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, and two co-conspirators had agreed to plead guilty with the U.S. military justice system.
In more news from President Austin: US sending aircraft carrier, warships and fighter squadron to Middle East as region braces for Iranian retaliation.
On Friday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group, which is currently operating in the Gulf of Oman, according to a statement from Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh.
In addition, destroyers and cruisers capable of ballistic missile defense will also be sent to the Middle East and the Mediterranean Sea. The statement does not say which warships have been sent, but two US destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea took part in intercepting the barrage of strikes Iran launched against Israel in April.
Austin also ordered the deployment of a fighter squadron to the region, Singh said.
President Austin jokes aside, who is running the show in DC with Biden being non compos mentis? Because otherwise:
How it started: How Joe Biden Is Positioning Himself as a Modern FDR.
—Time magazine, October 28th, 2020.
How it’s going: “Jill Biden is becoming the Edith Wilson of America.”
—The Boston Herald, July 6th, 2024.