The Confessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

[Jack Rabbit]

Today, there are a number of threads on DU with titles attempting to outdo each other lampooning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's "confession" to a military tribunal in Guantánamo. I origininally thought of given this post a title like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: My mother wore army boots but was afraid the mods would start locking copycat threads.

Kidding aside, Khalid is not a nice person. He may have done everything to which he has allegedly confessed.

Or just some of them. As a matter of due process, it still cannot be presumed that he did any of them. As far as I am concerned, he has not confessed to anything and cannot be found guilty of anything by a military commission in Guantánamo.

Khalid was held for three years under clandestine circumstances and it is known that to get him to talk the US government used a "harsh interrogation technique" (I think that's the Bush regime's euphemism for torture) that was once used to get people to confess to witchcraft.

Everybody except the sadists in the Bush regime and their sycophants knows torture is unreliable as an interrogation technique. Even Alan Dershowitz, whose argument for torture I refuted three years ago, would never use statements obtained by torture as evidence in a legal proceeding.

There was no transparency to the process that provided these so-called confessions which are being touted by the den of liars and thieves collectively known as the Bush regime. The process that oversaw the interrogation is a kangaroo court. Not only was Khalid tortured, but he was denied witnesses who might have testified to his innocence.

It would not surprise me at all to learn that Khalid is in fact responsible for the September 11 attacks. If it makes readers lurking from Free Republic feel any better, I think he is. Nevertheless, until this man is given due process and tried in open court, we should disregard any reports of a confession or other assertions of his legal guilt. Should Khalid be found guilty by a military commission and executed, his death will be murder and a crime against humanity.

Due process of law is a universal human right that cannot be abridged by any government. Khalid, simply because he is made of the same flesh and blood as you or I, is entitled to it. So is your local neighborhood junkie. So is Charlie Manson. So was Jeffrey Dahmer. So is Dick Cheney, who also makes it as difficult as possible to discern his humanity.

I look forward to their fair and impartial trials in open court some day.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Absolutely

without due process and the rule of law, any "confession" has to be suspect.

[CJCRANE]

2. "It would not surprise me

at all to learn that Khalid is in fact responsible for the September 11 attacks".

Indeed, and apart from due process of law being a universal human right how can we know who else was involved without it.

Otherwise it's simply a parade of boogeymen: for instance first we were told Osama did it, then Saddam did it, then Moussaoui was responsible, now it's KSM...who will it be next year?

[ewagner]

3. thanks for posting that....

We need to remember that this guy is no...ummmmm....Robin Hood? No...ummmm...romantic hero?

He's an admitted cold-blooded killer and needs to be brought before a legitimate tribunal to stand trial for his crimes...

this business of getting him to confess to everything up to and including the Titanic (see Attaturks post in rising hegemon...http://rising-hegemon.blogspot.com/) is counter-productive...

[hippiechick]

4. I thought he was gonna say he's Anna Nicole's baby-daddy.

:rofl:

[xxqqqzme]

5. when I heard of the 'confession'

my first thought was.....hmmmm, guess we don't need bin Laden anymore - how conveeen-ee-ent!

[Sequoia]

6. Right on you know.

He could just admit to all this for other reasons. I wonder how Cheney and Co. going to back track on all their "It was Osama's fault. No wait, Saddam's fault. Oh my God, we kilt the wrong guy! We sure can Lazrus him."

[nashville_brook]

7. the witchcraft analogy is totally apt

[nashville_brook]

8. Larisa Alexandrovna: KSM confession bogus

http://www.atlargely.com/2007/03/oh_ksm_confessi.html#more

I was just watching TV and it appears that now KSM has also confessed to the murder of Danny Pearl. That just exposed this confession as a lie. Why? Danny Pearl was murdered by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, while tracking a money transfer from Pakistan (on the orders of then Pakistani General Mahmoud Ahmad to Dubai to September 11, 2001 lead hijacker Atta. More importantly, why are there only 2 pictures and no video of this man? Why is the tribunal closed? Why is he delivering his so-called confession in writing? I want to see a video of this man's confession, not a piece of paper. Where is Waldo?

Does this administration think we are so stupid that we would confuse reality for made-for-politics justice? And where the hell is the healthy skepticism of the fourth estate? I mean really, if you cannot see the man or hear the man, then what makes you so certain he is even alive at this point? I see there is a transcript, so apparently someone actually spoke. Why can't we hear this? What possible reason is there for our limited access to information about an event that is so important to our nation?

I call BS and I suggest that the media stop playing games with our national tragedy!

More on Omar:

British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh has been sentenced to death for abducting and murdering US journalist Daniel Pearl.

[uppityperson]

9. k&r. You wrote well how I feel about all this.

[krispos42]

10. I think this was the point of the copycat threads

Like the one in GD and the Lounge.

After a thousand days of God-knows-what, KSM would confess to anything. His brain may be gone, replaced with a disjointed cache of real and fake memories put in there by the military.

[Jack Rabbit]

11. That was exactly the point of them

Torture is very good at getter the subject to tell the interrogator what the interrogator wants to hear, but less effective at getting the information the interrogator needs to know.

For example, Maher Arar, the Canadian software engineer wrongly rendered to Syria for torture, confessed to training with al Qaida in Afghanistan. In fact, Mr. Arar has never been to Afghanistan. There is another case I read about where another torture victim told his interrogators all about Saddam's biochemical arsenal. If anybody has the link to that one, I would appreciate it. Perhaps that information found its way into the pre-war NIE.

[lectrobyte]

12. Well said. k & r.

[dapper]

13. What happened to the other threads?

They were pretty funny. Where they combined somewhere or deleted?

It would suck if they were deleted.

Dapper

[majorjohn]

14. I don't know but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed must have had something to do with it

:rofl:

[dapper]

15. He shot JR!

Atleast that's what one of the threads referred to...


Dapper

[Jack Rabbit]

16. I can dispell that one

You can come look, there are no bullet holes in me.

[treestar]

17. Well said

:kick:

[Proud Liberal Dem]

18. Questions

Since KSM has now confessed to being the "mastermind" behind 9/11, as well as a lot of the major terrorist attacks over the past few years, what has Osama's role been exactly and what was HE actually responsible for? Were we chasing the wrong guy all this time? Also, since we now have KSM safely in custody (and likely buried in an unmarked grave sometime soon), can't we now legitimately call for an end to the so-called GWOT and for Bush to relinquish his extraordinary executive powers, close down Gitmo, etc. since we are now rid of terrorism with the capture (and probable execution) of KSM? Inquiring minds want to know.

[majorjohn]

19. who's KSH?

:eyes:

[Proud Liberal Dem]

20. Whoops!

Meant KSM

[Jack Rabbit]

21. Some possible answers

(W)hat has Osama's role been exactly and what was HE actually responsible for?

Two possible answers:

• Osama bankrolled the operation.
• As the leader of al Qaida, Osama approved the operation.

(C)an't we now legitimately call for an end to the so-called GWOT and for Bush to relinquish his extraordinary executive powers, close down Gitmo, etc. since we are now rid of terrorism with the capture (and probable execution) of KSH?

That depends on what one means by Global War on Terror. Calling for an end of the neoconservative idea of it is long overdue. If one insists on conflating the invasion of Iraq with the war on terror, as Bush and the neocons do, then there should certainly be an end to the war on terror. It might be a better idea to revamp the war on terror so that instead of an endless war, it is an effort aimed at specific terrorists, giving the war definable and obtainable goals.

As for closing down Guantánamo, it is less important to close down one symbolic outlet in the neoconservative gulag chain than that the Geneva Conventions be observed within all US operated detention facilities and to assure that the government observe the Convention against torture. There is no such thing as an "enemy combatant" without protection of the Geneva Conventions. There is no human being on earth who is without the protection of the Geneva Conventions. A prisoner of war has the protection of the Fourth Geneva Convention specifically, while all others taken in war zones or who live in occupied territory have the protection of the Third Geneva Convention. The rights afforded under the Conventions are similar. Both categorically prohibit torture. Both guarantee any defendant in criminal proceedings due process. Meanwhile, the Convention against Torture also categorically prohibits torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment, but also prohibits the practice of extraordinary rendition.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

22. Osama's being marginalized

Oh I'm sure that Osama was fully involved in bankrolling and/or approving a lot of operations over the years. After all, OBL's grand importance was practically DRILLED into our heads by the MSM post-9/11. The point that I was trying to make is that it seems as though, with these reports of KSM's sensationalized "confession" of having masterminded so many terrorist attacks over the years, most notably 9/11, he is being made to seem more important than OBL himself, especially since we actually captured him. Ultimately, I think that this whole story, in addition to trying to take our focus off the Bush (mis-)administration's "whack-a-scandal", is intended to further marginalize OBL and minimize Bush's failure to capture him. I totally agree with your statements regarding the so-called GWOT. Personally, I just think that the so-called GWOT is the Bush (mis-)administration's readily available "all-purpose" rationale (or as Al Franken likes to put it, Bush's "little black dress") for being able to do whatever it wants to do whenever it wants to do it both here and abroad and that the GWOT will NEVER "end" as long as Bush is at the helm and possibly not even then since so many Democrats have even bought into the concept and adopted the language thereof (although I don't think as many of them are "true believers" in the PNAC "vision" of the world like Bush, et. al are).

[Jack Rabbit]

23. Bush doesn't need KSM for that

To Bush and the neoconservatives, truth is malleable. Bush has gone back and forth on whether capturing Osama is a priority or something he doesn't worry about, depending on the circumstances at the given moment. That isn't going to change as long as Bush is in the Oval Office.

Bush has not been interested in fighting a real war on terror. He is interested in being a war president, like Lincoln and FDR, on which to pin his immortality. The September 11 attacks have been used as a rationale for invading Iraq, torture and draconian laws curtailing civil liberties. None of it is necessary and so far, KSM hasn't figured in that equation.

KSM won't figure in the equation, either. Bush needs a ready rationale for what he does in the name of GWOT that is not really germaine to it. He can't have people thinking that we're safe now that KSM has "confessed." For that, he needs a bogey man who is "out there."

[Jack Rabbit]

24. For my pals on the west coast . . .

A slef-indulgent kick.