WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- The Obama administration needs to stop treating terrorism as a crime and instead see it as a war, a U.S. Republican Party spokesman says.
Delivering the GOP's weekly radio address Saturday, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., cited a botched Christmas Day bombing attempt aboard a U.S. plane as evidence that "we are a nation at war, and we should act like it," rather than trying alleged terrorists such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in civilian courts.
King, the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said a U.S. decision to try Mohammed -- a Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainee and self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- in a New York courtroom is "an enormous, unnecessary risk, as is housing terrorists at the proposed 'Gitmo North' facility near Chicago."
Instead, he said, the White House should heed the provisions of the GOP-sponsored Keep Terrorists Out of America Act, which would virtually bar the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States.
"That's why we put in place a process by which these terrorists should be held and tried -- as enemy combatants, by military commissions," King said.
