If anyone possesses the requisite “street cred” to rebuke the Obama administration for its decision, tendered Friday, to try the most thuggish terrorists — Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his motley ilk — in New York City, it’s former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose bravado tempered by coolness held the city together following the horrific attacks.

And Mr. Giuliani had made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that bringing the sheik and his four cohorts to the city is a bad idea. We couldn’t agree more.

“In this particular case,” he said on ABC’s “This Week,” “we’re reaching out to give terrorists a benefit that’s unnecessary. In fact, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, when he was first arrested, asked to be brought to New York. I didn’t think we were in the business of granting the requests of terrorists.”

Amen. Nor should the Obama administration be in the business of putting New York City, and all those touched by the crashing of the Towers, through the prolonged hell of a trial sure to last years — that is, if the extended legal proceedings of Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20th hijacker,” are any indication. This is sheer madness, a recipe for a three-ring circus during which, as Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said, “the terrorists are going to do everything they can to disrupt it.” In short, it will serve as a forum for them to spout their hateful ideology.

What’s more, it’s totally unnecessary. The administration is already trying lesser evil-doers by military tribunals — a system codified by Congress three years ago — so why not use this legal venue for the worst offenders? After all, aren’t these people alien enemy combatants, detained outside the United States and charged with committing acts of war? Since when is this nation obliged to afford them the rights of citizens, the same protections extended those they wantonly killed?

It just doesn’t make any sense — unless one views this startling move, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy does, through the prism of politics.

As Mr. McCarthy sees it, this incipient farce offers President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder an opportunity to give the left its promised “reckoning” — i.e., putting the Bush-era counter-terrorism community on trial with the terrorists. The “discovery” process will all but assure that.

“[D]efendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they will get it,” Mr. McCarthy wrote at National Review Online. “The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets.”

Sound far-fetched? Not when you consider that no other reason adequately explains why five men originally charged by a military commission now apparently will be tried in a civilian court.