LAT: What impeccable timing, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed !

[maddezmom]

What impeccable timing, KSM!
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed may have diverted attention from Alberto Gonzales, but the 9/11 plotter's testimony exposes the flaws in Bush's 'war on terror.'
March 16, 2007


WHAT TIMING! Just when the attorney general and the president were coming under fire for the politicized dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys, the Pentagon released a transcript of a March 10 hearing in which Guantanamo detainee Khalid Shaikh Mohammed confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attacks. Now we can get back to the Bush administration's preferred topic: What a heck of a job it's doing in the war on terror.

KSM is a nasty piece of work. In the transcript, he claimed credit not only for the 9/11 attacks ("I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,") but for more than 30 other plots, from the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl to a plot to assassinate former U.S. presidents. In fact, there's almost nothing to which KSM didn't confess.

But if the administration hopes to regain lost political capital by shifting the conversation back to terrorism and KSM, the strategy may backfire. If anything, KSM's recent performance highlights the downside of the Bush administration's post-9/11 decision to declare "war" against Al Qaeda.

It goes without saying that military action may at times be required to combat well-defended terrorist organizations based in foreign states. But as a policy matter, the "war on terror" framework has been a predictable disaster for the United States. It led to a counterproductive overreliance on military force, an under-appreciation of the role of politics and community identity in sustaining terrorist organizations and a dangerous, "anything goes" approach to intelligence gathering that encompassed secret detentions and torture.

more:http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks16mar16,0,3666636.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

[CJCRANE]

1. Yep, it's all about the timing n/t

[PATRICK]

2. Evidence and irony

The whole point of sequestering and torturing prisoners has been to bypass evidence(trust US) and get to the emergency. Without trust, one would like to see actual evidence. Too late the confessions- after YEARS of secret emergency working over of the accused. if this is the best that /emergency" swift justice measures can produce then let's also take some time for the evidence- but wait the whole system has changed now. Too late to even imagine evidence is even a justice issue. To make matters even more disconcerting, if not downright pathetic, the transcript ramble- settling on absolute literal translation of the accused- the confession makes one wonder if they had even been able to communicate to the prisoner very well at all. Except for dumb bullying. Was there no intelligent interrogation at all? Or was the truth not an objective but preset answers?

Well now. Let's run a parallel for which there is some evidence but NO confessions. And then let us compare the breathtaking lists.

Bush dynasty: Arms dealing to Germans in WWI.
Financial backing to Hitler even after Pearl Harbor.
machinations to become Veep and president via short cuts and subverting real democracy.
Using old friends from the arms dealing to the enemy days and ex-Nazis.
Bush's entire reign of Error and Terror as reign, not presidency in any legal or
democratic form.
Illegally driving America to war for personal gain(religious fanaticism apparently is
a sidebar for which only small Muslim terrorists are considered dangerous.

No wonder Junior intending to expand family crime to the max puts up wall of secrecy built entirely of bulletproof one-way glass for his entire crony administration- only to the avil of bullying down all justice and accountability in his regard.

The list is actually huge and there are others for Cheney and other sassorted eneimes of mankind enjoying the perks of self-selected office, but without a confession- the new standard of the iron fisted torture entitled by raw state power, we are simply not supposed to pay attention. Nor be allowed to seek more evidence, accountability or justice no matter how heinous or spectacular the crimes for which current evidence clearly points to a fundamental process immediately. I bet the old fashioned legal system would do just fine and much better at getting confession/truth out of more serious, flagrant perps than the "man wrapped in the swiss cheese confession currently held in our Bastille at the political pleasure of people who with soiled hands in most of the problems resulting in the hits and delectably politically profitable hit lists mentioned in the KSM story.

Speaking of assassination plots against Clinton, did anyone ever investigate how he was very early on encouraged to go to hotbeds like East Timor and how much real protection was given him by Bush II? There is an LIHOP for you, but since they are either incapable(overthrow of Chavez) or indirect they do not make for great copy as "masterminds" of any actual or possible disasters they desired and engineered.

The new standard of confession has fallen flat even as an illusion. Let us go back to evidence crying to heaven and our immediate survival for good old fashioned full investigation and due process.