It started at 200, now it’s 300 convicted terrorists – will a list ever be produced?

Back in May, President Obama got the ball rolling when during a speech about closing Guantanamo Bay and moving the detainees to federal prisons, he claimed that US supermax prisons hold hundreds of convicted terrorists.

In early November, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be tried in federal court in New York City.  While Holder did not make a claim of 200 or 300 terrorists convicted in court at that time, the liberal media and blogs defended his decision with the figure of 200 terrorists convicted in criminal courts since 2001. In his announcement, Holder indicated a far lower number by saying “federal prosecutors have successfully met these challenges and have convicted a number of terrorists who are now serving lengthy sentences in our prisons.”

The following week, when addressing a Senate panel, Holder stated that 300 terrorists had been successfully convicted in civilian courts.  At that time, on November 18th, Holder was asked for a list of the 300 to which he responded, ““I will supply you with those 300 names and what they were convicted of,” Holder said. “I’ll be glad to do that.”

To date, Holder has refused to produce the list he promised the Senate nearly three months ago.  This week Eric Holder repeated his claim that 300 terrorists have been tried and convicted in federal courts:

“Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the practice of the U.S. government, followed by prior and current Administrations without a single exception, has been to arrest and detain under federal criminal law all terrorist suspects who are apprehended inside the United States,” Holder writes in the letter. “In keeping with this policy, the Bush Administration used the criminal justice system to convict more than 300 individuals on terrorism-related charges. “

While Holder has refused to produce the list, it appears the White House is trying to redefine what the term ‘convicted terrorist’ means, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air explains:

As Byron York points out, they have also attempted to alter the meaning of “terrorism” as a fallback position. The men in Gitmo weren’t captured because they had a “history of” or “nexus to” terrorism, neither of which alone would cause a federal judge to throw a defendant in prison.  We captured them in the acts of terrorism and conspiracy to commit terrorism, and furthermore, we captured them abroad with military and intelligence assets, not with policemen.  “History” and “nexus” should be construed to mean, We didn’t convict them of terrorism but of other crimes instead.

This type of liberal slight of hand and distortion of the truth is the very reason Liberal Whoppers was started.  The liberal mantra is that “if we keep repeating something and claim it is a fact, regardless of having no supporting evidence or even contradictory evidence, then before long our statements that it ‘is a fact’ will become the evidence that it is a fact”.

I know that is a convoluted explanation, but that’s the beauty of their strategy — throw up a cloud of dust and nobody will be able to separate the truth from the lies.  They repeat something over and over, distribute their talking points to the Democratic strategists and liberal bloggers, so that their ‘fact’ gets repeated over and over on TV, in print and on blogs, to the point where for many people, it really does sound like a ‘fact’.

Whether it’s nearly a decade of hearing “the debate is over on global warming” or now hearing that “300 terrorists have been convicted and are being held in federal prisons”, or any of the other multitude of Liberal Whoppers the left tells, you will find that they simply keep repeating their whoppers until one day their ‘facts’ stands on their own.