Robert Gibbs on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs said today that KSM is "likely to be executed after being tried and convicted." Apparently even the Obama administration recognizes that the trial is completely unnecessary. There's no question about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's status as a high-ranking Al Qaeda member, and one of the lead planners of 9/11. As a terrorist enemy of the U.S., he should have received a summary execution years ago, after he was no longer useful as an intelligence source.  Here's the reaction at Instapundit,

This statement, from an official White House spokesman, seems a bit indiscreet. Certainly if the goal is to impress the rest of the world with the fairness of our civilian judicial system, official statements that treat conviction and execution as near-certain would seem to undercut the whole point of the exercise.

If that's the goal, it's a useless one. Most people knowledgeable about the United States already know how our civilian judicial system works. Some of them are probably even aware that it wasn't designed to apply to foreign enemies, let alone hostile alien terrorists captured in wartime circumstances. Most of those with anti-American tendencies will refuse to believe that a fair trial was actually fair, no matter how it is conducted. They won't be impressed with our justice system regardless of how many lawyers we give to terrorists, or how far we bend over backwards degrading our constitutional rights by granting them to our enemies. There's even less reason to pander to foreign anti-American opinion, than there is to accommodate our own fools and other terrorist rights supporters.