Vice President Biden's mission of distraction

AMERICANS didn't like it when the Obama Administration announced last November it would try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in New York City.

Many New Yorkers who support a civilian trial for Mr. Mohammed don't want it held in their city. Their ranks swelled after Police Commissioner Ray Kelly estimated the cost of providing security for the trial would run $200 million a year.

This caused Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who initially supported the President's decision, to ask the administration to hold the trial someplace else.

The administration, in its left-handed way, acknowledged the unpopularity of its decision, first by saying it would consider other sites, and then by saying Attorney General Eric Holder alone had made the decision to try Mr. Mohammed in New York City.

The President "is planning to insert himself into the debate" about where Mr. Mohammed should be tried, the Washington Post reported Feb. 12.

Finding another location won't be easy. One of the planes hijacked on 9/11 crashed in Pennsylvania, but don't think about holding the trial in that state, said Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the "20th hijacker," was tried in northern Virginia, but don't think about bringing Mr. Mohammed to the Old Dominion, said Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell.

In an interview with the Post, Mr. Holder left open the door to trying Mr. Mohammed by a military commission. One thing that seems clear is that he won't be tried in New York City, which the President's allies as well as his political adversaries oppose.

So it seemed odd that Vice President Joe Biden chose a recent Sunday to pick a fight with Mayor Bloomberg about the location of the trial.

"The mayor came along and said the cost for providing security to hold this trial is hundreds of millions of dollars, which I think is much more than would be needed," Mr. Biden said on Meet the Press.

Mr. Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly have not responded in public to the vice president's charge. But other city officials indicated they are irked.

"No city should have to put up with the burden and risk of a trial so the administration can have a terroristic dog-and-pony show," said City Councilman Peter Vallone, a Democrat.

Some think that it was just Slow Joe running off at the mouth again, and that if the President hopes to recover in the polls, he would be wise to bind and gag his vice president and lock him in a closet for the duration of his term.

Others think Mr. Biden was saying what the President really thinks.

Two prominent conservatives think the vice president was on a mission of distraction.

Columnist William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal thinks Mr. Biden's purpose was to distract attention from the fumbled handling of Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and a forthcoming flip-flop on a civilian trial for Mr. Mohammed.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson thinks Mr. Obama keeps initiatives that are popular only with the far left - such as a civilian trial for Mr. Mohammed - in the news to distract their attention from the fact that he's greatly expanded the use of drones to kill terror suspects abroad and has kept in place most of the Bush anti-terror measures he castigated during the campaign.

His policy is "far more cynical than confusing," Mr. Hanson said.

I think the President's petulance at not getting his way overcomes good judgment.

Jack Kelly is a columnist for The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Contact him at: jkelly@ post-gazette.com