A plea deal reached this week with the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, along with two of his alleged accomplices, has been retracted, the Pentagon announced Friday. In a memo, Defense Secretary Llloyd Austin said that the “three pre-trial agreements” approved Thursday with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash and Mustafa […] The post Secretary Austin Revoked the Plea Deal for the 9/11 Killers appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

The Biden-Harris Administration canceled a stunning plea deal that was signed this week with the terrorists who were responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States — and relieved the senior U.S. official who offered the deal. Retired Brig. Gen. Susan K. Escallier, who was responsible for overseeing the war court case at Guantánamo Bay, was relieved from her position by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin after her team entered into pretrial agreements with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi. The deal allowed the terrorists to escape the death penalty in-exchange for them pleading guilty to the murder of 2,976 people and serving sentences of at most life in prison. By removing Escallier, Austin assumed authority over the case and immediately canceled the agreement, meaning the death penalty is back on the table, following days of public backlash against the Biden-Harris Administraiton. “Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pretrial agreements that you signed on July 31, 2024,” Austin said. Top U.S. lawmakers slammed the Biden-Harris Administration for the plea deal, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). McConnell said the plea deal was “a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice.” “The Biden-Harris Administration’s weakness in the face of sworn enemies of the American people apparently knows no bounds,” McConnell said. “The only thing worse than negotiating with terrorists is negotiating with them after they are in custody. The families of their victims and the American people deserve real justice. In the same week that Israel eliminated some of Iran’s most trusted terrorist proxies, the Administration’s decision to spare these mass-murderers from the death penalty is an especially bitter pill.” “Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris Administration still seeks to release other Guantanamo terrorists back into the world,” he concluded. “The Administration’s cowardice in the face of terror is a national disgrace.” “23 years ago, America watched in horror as thousands of innocent Americans died,” he continued. “America mourned for weeks afterwards as first responders sifted through the ashes at Ground Zero, at the Pentagon, and at the crash site in Shanksville. For more than two decades, the families of those murdered by these terrorists have waited for justice. This plea deal is a slap in the face of those families. They deserved better from the Biden-Harris Administration.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that the plea deal made it “a very, very good week, if you happen to be a terrorist.” “If you happen to be someone who wants to murder Americans, this has been a phenomenal week because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris just gave a gift to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, they agreed to take the death penalty off the table and spare his life,” Cruz said. “It’s an absolute outrage. It’s an insult to the families of all of those who were murdered on 9/11.”

'They don't have a lot of time'

'I was really struggling, and I was very, very concerned'

'Donald Trump had bad advisors'

'Your antisemitism cost you your seat'

Mike Barnicle rarely makes a Morning Joe splash, but his description of Donald Trump yesterday as a "deeply damaged" man seemed to get some traction. And so, Barnicle recycled his shtick on Friday's show. On Thursday, Barnicle recruited Charlie Sykes to second his take. On Friday, it was Eugene Robinson's turn to say that he "absolutely" agreed with Barnicle's depiction of Trump as badly, deeply damaged. Someone off-camera chipped in, describing Trump as "broken." Robinson, despite questioning his right to diagnose Trump given that he was not a psychologist, proceeded to don his Dr. Freud cap nonetheless, opining that Trump has "some deep insecurity and feeling of inadequacy." And between that and being a "really, really damaged person," Robinson argued that Trump was "dangerous," and would demonstrate that again if he were elected. Robinson concluded his analysis by offering up that Trump was "not a well man." There's good reason to doubt Robinson's analysis of others. After all, not long ago, Robinson vouched that Biden was not merely sharp, but "sharp as a tack."     The normally circumspect Richard Haass agreed with Robinson's "dangerous" take, adding that Trump was "unwilling and unable to put the country first," having "an inability to put anything other than himself first." Note: This morning's critique of Trump's personality came in response to his refusal to celebrate yesterday's hostage release. Trump criticized the swap, calling U.S. negotiators an "embarrassment." Here's the transcript: MSNBC Morning Joe 8/2/24 6:37 am EDT MIKE BARNICLE: Gene raised the issue quite cogently a couple of minutes ago. Why is it incapable [sic] of Donald Trump to say in the hostage release that, you know, hey, this is great. Good luck to them. I'm happy they're home?  He can't. And he can't let Kamala Harris go. He can't let that go. Why? Not because it's politics, not just because he's filled with hate and envy. I think, and I would submit --Gene, I don't know if you'd agree with me or not -- but he is a badly, deeply damaged individual. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON OFF-CAMERA: Yeah—broken. EUGENE ROBINSON: Oh, yeah, I would absolutely agree. There is a deep -- you know, beneath all that bluster -- who am I to diagnose him, I'm not a psychologist. But there's clearly some deep insecurity and, and feeling of inadequacy that causes him to, to, to continually lash out and puff himself up, and adopt this air of infallibility, which is, which is absurd. But that's who he is. I think he is a really, really damaged person. And, you know, because of that, and for a lot of other reasons, he's a really, he's really dangerous. He proved that in four years as President. He would prove it again if he were ever allowed near the White House again. This is, this is not a well man. RICHARD HAASS: And the dangerous part of it, though, is also, and it's a consistent thing here, is you have someone running for president who is, in some ways, unwilling and unable to put the country first.  And we see that in the ungenerous reaction to getting these Americans home.  It's a good thing for the country. Maybe it's not a good thing for his political campaign, but there's something else going on. It's good for the country! It's good for these families. And there's a consistent pattern here, just an inability to put anything other than himself first. And that's what we're seeing in capital letters here.

Ilona Maher spent her childhood in Burlington, Vermont, playing softball, basketball, and field hockey. But it wasn’t until she discovered rugby at age 17 that something clicked. “The sport fit my body like a glove,” she recalled in a June interview. Maher has long been made conscious of what “fits” her physique. The broad shoulders and muscular frame that helped her lead the U.S. women’s rugby sevens team to their first-ever Olympic medal Tuesday have never conformed to certain notions of femininity. She’s been called “masculine” all her life. The beauty of athletics is that the only authority that matters is the stark, uncompromising authority of physical reality. Maher’s fame as a breakout Olympic star and social media sensation has amplified the jeers along with the cheers. She handles it with good humor and aplomb. “I do have a BMI of 30. I am considered ‘overweight.’ But … I’m going to the Olympics and you’re not,” she responded to a hater on TikTok last month. The day the games officially began, Maher posted another video, encouraging viewers to “see themselves” in the athletes they were about to watch: “I want you to take a look at of all the different kinds of body types on display … from the smallest gymnast to the tallest volleyball player … all body types are beautiful [and] can do amazing things.” Maher’s message was widely praised, and it burnished her reputation as an icon of “body positivity.” But hours after she made her post, the Olympic opening ceremony confronted viewers with a very different celebration of unconventional body types: a sort of "Last Supper" tableau, with an obese woman at the center of a long table, flanked on either side by drag queens, all eventually upstaged by a bearded, nearly naked man painted blue. This, too, is “body positivity,” we’re often told. Whereas Maher’s post defending her weight made a point about the uselessness of the body mass index metric (which doesn’t differentiate between fat and lean muscle), some people are genuinely overweight, and that’s OK, too. “Fat acceptance” means never having to admit an extra hundred pounds or two may be hazardous to your health. Also beautiful are male bodies pretending to be female (and vice versa), no matter how unconvincing the impersonation. Both drag queens and “transwomen” present a grotesque parody of womanhood, but you’re only allowed to laugh at the former. How do these two visions of body positivity relate? Unsurprisingly, conservatives and progressives are split on the matter. For the left, Maher’s measured and specific affirmation of “inclusivity” is laudable largely because it advances the liberal project of blurring distinctions and value judgments. For the right, to accept Maher’s slightly unconventional femininity without comment or insult is but a slippery slope away from proclaiming “transwomen are women.” Both sides miss the point. What makes this latest debate notable – and so very tiresome – is how out of touch it is with basic reality. What does this feud over a manufactured ideal of femininity have to do with actual women? People arguing over representations of representations (and so on) and getting farther and farther from the original point is nothing new; it’s pretty much standard operating procedure for internet discussion. Philosopher Jean Baudrillard had a word for the place we often find ourselves when online: hyperreality. Hyperreality is where you land when you become so immersed in the images, words, and stories we use to represent reality (an immersion that has never been easier) that you mistake them for the thing itself. In his 1981 book “Simulacra and Simulation,” Baudrillard illustrates the process in four steps. These are: 1. the faithful copy, 2. the perversion of reality, 3. the absence of a profound reality, where the sign pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original, and 4. pure simulacrum, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Women’s bodies have been particularly susceptible to this treatment. In fact, body positivity originated as a reaction to the predigital dissemination of “unrealistic” depictions of female beauty in fashion magazines and TV advertisements, specifically the so-called “heroin chic” look of the early ‘90s, represented by waifish models like Kate Moss. The movement started with good intentions. Young girls imbibing the monolithically skinny and boyish heroin-chic representation of womanhood (which, among other perversions, scrubbed the adult female body of natural indicators of fertility) were driven insane trying to reconcile what they saw in the mirror with what they saw in the media. The solution was to break the spell with images expressing the variety of real women’s bodies. And it worked, for a while, communicating a benign “strong is beautiful” message not far from Maher’s. But then, in typical leftist fashion, the body positivity movement began to eat its own. What about those for whom being strong or athletic was an unrealistic beauty standard? Are you really suggesting that the morbidly obese are somehow “less than” physically fit women – and to change their bodies to be more like them? And what about female bodies that were born male? Body positivity’s mission to reconnect images of womanhood to reality was hijacked by extremists who took it even farther afield. They presented a newer, more hideous ideal, arguably even more divorced from reality than the wan, expressionless China dolls in sleazy Calvin Klein photo shoots. Those old images seduced with beauty and erotic mystery. Hulking middle-aged men in dresses and 400-pound bathing beauties have no such ability. And so they had to impose their ideal by fiat, legitimized by the authority of their victimhood. The beauty of athletics is that the only authority that matters is the stark, uncompromising authority of physical reality. This is why the incursion of ambiguously-sexed athletes into women's sports -- as in the recent case of two Olympic boxers -- is so hotly contested. The intangible qualities that we admire in competitors – determination, courage, resilience – only have meaning when tested by gravity, distance, time, and force, as well as by the limitations set by the body God gave each. These bodies can be pushed and transformed, but they can never be escaped. This is usually the point at which the writer would extol the virtues of putting down the phone and “touching grass.” And let’s hope the display of physical mastery on our screens will inspire us to do just that. But I think the disputants in this particular case would do well to take in more of Ilona Maher’s social media. If they do, they’ll find a person who appreciates her atypical female body for what it can do on the rugby pitch. But they'll also find a person who embodies the more conventional attributes of femininity: girlishly flirting with guys, showing off adorable fits, unabashedly expressing emotion.In short, they'll discover that Ilona Maher is intuitively and undeniably female while also being irreplaceably unique and irreducibly herself. In other words, she's a woman. The world is full of them.