(CBS) The ability of America to try terror suspects was itself on trial today, as a Democratic Senator (and former prosecutor) argued the sentiments of a Republican Congressman who believes a courtroom is no place for an avowed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said putting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terror suspects on trial in a federal court in Manhattan, as was announced this week by Attorney General Eric Holder, is a bad idea, tantamount to " ideology run wild.
"We're going to go back into New York City, the scene of the tragedy on 9/11. We're now going to rip that wound wide open, and it's going to stay open for, what - two, three, four years, as we go through the circus of a trial in New York City?" Hoekstra said today on CBS' "Face the Nation."
He said the defendants and their lawyers will "bring every motion forward that they can" to drag the trial out so they can be at center stage, and that their objective is to make the trial a propaganda show. "Obviously our Attorney General, our legal system, will try to keep it dignified and civil and bring some respect to it," Hoekstra said. "That's not what KSM is going to try to do. They'll do everything they can to disrupt it to make it a circus and allow them to use it as a platform to push their ideology."
Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, however, believes that putting those charged with attacking the United States on trial is the best way to show the world the strength of America.
"I think that Eric Holder, our Attorney General, is right; I think the president is right in holding the trials of these murderers in New York City," Leahy told Schieffer. "What we're saying to the world is, the United States acts out of strength, not out of fear.
"I was a former prosecutor. I'd like to just see them prosecuted, in the same way which we prosecuted Timothy McVeigh. We're not afraid to do that. We're the most powerful nation on Earth. We have a judicial system that is the envy of the world. Let's show the world that we can use that power."