the confession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

[mhgaffney]

There has been some discussion of this on another thread. However, this issue deserves a thread of its own. I agree with the analysis below by Paul Craig Roberts. If the Bush administration executes KSM based on this confession which was obviously extracted via torture it will be viewed world wide as murder. MHG

March 17 / 18, 2007

The Strange Fruit of Torture

The Confession Backfired

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The first confession released by the Bush regime's Military Tribunals--that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--has discredited the entire process. Writing in Jurist, Northwestern University law professor Anthony D'Amato likens Mohammed's confession to those that emerged in Stalin's show trials of Bolshevik leaders in the 1930s.

That was my own immediate thought. I remember speaking years ago with Soviet dissident Valdimir Bukovsky about the behavior of Soviet dissidents under torture. He replied that people pressed for names under torture would try to remember the names of war dead and people who had passed away. Those who retained enough of their wits under torture would confess to an unbelievable array of crimes in an effort to alert the public to the falsity of the entire process.

That is what Mohammed did. We know he was tortured, because his response to the obligatory question about his treatment during his years of detention is redacted. We also know that he was tortured, because otherwise there is no point for the US Justice (sic) Dept. memos giving the green light to torture or for the Military Commissions Act, which permits torture and death sentence based on confession extracted by torture.

Mohammed's confession of crimes and plots is so vast that Katherine Shrader of the Associated Press reports that the Americans who extracted Mohammed's confession do not believe it either. It is exaggerated, say Mohammed's tormentors, and must be taken with a grain of salt.

In other words, the US torture crew, reveling in their success, played into Mohammed's hands. Pride goes before a fall, as the saying goes.

Mohammed's confession admits to 31 planned and actual attacks all over the world, including blowing up the Panama Canal and assassinating presidents Carter and Clinton and the Pope. Having taken responsibility for the whole ball of wax along with everything else that he could imagine, he was the entire show. No other terrorists needed.

Reading responses of BBC listeners to Mohammed's confession reveals that the rest of the world is either laughing at the US government for being so stupid as to think that anyone anywhere would believe the confession or damning the Bush regime for being like the Gestapo and KGB.

Humorists are having a field day with the confession: "'I'm a very dangerous mastermind,' said Mohammed, who confessed to the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, the Brink's robbery, St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and the Lincoln and McKinley assassinations. Mohammed also accepted responsibility for spreading hay fever and cold sores around the world and for rained out picnics."

If there was anything remaining of the Bush regime not already discredited, Mohammed's confession removed any reputation left.

The most important part of the Mohammed story is yet to make the headlines. Despite having held and tortured hundreds of detainees for years in Gitmo, and we don't know how many more in secret prisons around the world, the US government has come up with only 14 "high value detainees."

In other words, the government has nothing on 99 percent of the detainees who allegedly are so dangerous and wicked that they must be kept in detention without charges, access to attorneys and contact with families.

And little wonder. The vast majority of detainees, alleged "enemy combatants," are not terrorists captured by the CIA and brave US troops. They are hapless persons who happened to be outside their tribal or home territories and were kidnapped by criminal gangs or war lords who profited greatly at the expense of the naive Americans who offered bounties for "terrorists."

The US government does not care that innocent people have been ensnared, because the US government desperately needs both to prove that there are vast numbers of terrorists and to demonstrate its proficiency in protecting Americans by capturing terrorists. Moreover, the US government needs "dangerous suspects" that it can use to keep Americans in a state of supine fearfulness and as a front behind which to undermine constitutional protections and the Bill of Rights.

The Bush-Cheney Regime succeeded in its evil plot, only to throw it all away by releasing the ridiculous confession by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Will Bush's totalitarian Military Tribunal now execute Mohammed on the basis of his confession extracted by torture, or would this be seen everywhere on earth as nothing but an act of murder?

If Bush can't have Mohammed murdered, the US government will have to shut Mohammed away where he cannot talk and tell his tale. The US government will have to replicate Orwell's memory hole by destroying Mohammed's mind with mind-altering drugs and abuse.

It is to such depths that George Bush and Dick Cheney have lowered America.

Paul Craig Roberts held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University and was Senior Research Fellow in the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He served as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

[mhgaffney]

Here's the link
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03172007.html

[Spider]

damn , I thought he was claiming he was anna nicoles daughters daddy also

[Bronco Bob]

So what are we to make of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's "confession"?

It is clear that the 26-page transcript should be approached with some care. The man who is confessing is a prisoner whose exact legal status is unclear, without real access to legal protection, who has been held for four years in severe conditions and who has almost certainly been, in one form or another, tortured. However, with that caveat out of the way, there is much in the material released yesterday that rings true.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z," says KSM, as he has been known to al-Qaida specialists, inside and outside security services for some time. "I was the operational director for Sheikh Osama bin Laden for the organising, planning, follow-up and execution of the 9/11 operation."

In fact KSM is being modest. Born in Pakistan, raised in Kuwait, the 42-year-old militant actually came up with the idea for the strikes on the World Trade Centre. Without him, it is fair to say the 3,000 casualties of that attack, for which KSM expresses a somewhat bizarre regret, would still be alive. They were his idea. The single, simple, horribly effective concept of using hijacked airlines as missiles was his.

Understanding KSM's role is key to understanding how al-Qaida functioned and functions still. KSM was radicalised in the late 1980s when in Pakistan in the last years of the war against the Soviets in neighbouring Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden was still a novice, lost in the internecine conflicts of militants in Saudi Arabia or wasting his time on building roads in Sudan when KSM first started seriously operating. In 1993 he financed an attack by a young militant, Ramzi Yousef, against the then Pakistani prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. Yousef went on to bigger things, attempting to bomb the World Trade Center itself soon after. He failed. But when KSM now claims that he was involved in the operation, it rings true. Other plots involved bombs on airlines in the Far East, attacks on the pope on a visit to the Philippines - all this features in the confession and is documented and corroborated by other sources.

In 1996, when his protectors in the Gulf got cold feet, KSM was forced to flee. It was then that he sought out Bin Laden, who himself had recently arrived in Afghanistan. Like many other militants, KSM put a proposal to Bin Laden. It involved waves of hijacked planes flown into targets in the west. Bin Laden deemed it too ambitious and at the time was not convinced that attacking the US rather than Middle Eastern powers was the right strategy. But in time he came round and, when KSM persisted, provided cash and volunteers from the training camps he was running in Afghanistan.

He is also known to be linked to the bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia in 2002 - the bomber rang him just before he died - and the killing of American reporter Daniel Pearl the same year in Pakistan. He was indeed, as he says, "operational commander".

KSM's motivation in putting his hand up to atrocities is not too difficult to explain. He is proud of the 9/11 attacks. Given his situation he has nothing to lose by admitting them and other violent acts. On the contrary, he is happy to take the credit. He sees himself, as he explicitly explains, as a "revolutionary hero" fighting a just war. And as an intelligent and politically astute man he knows he will never be free again. As a religious man, neither does he fear death. He has fudged his involvement with the cold-blooded killing of Pearl, a defenceless journalist executed with a knife, because it was not an act that played well among KSM's target audience in the Arab and Muslim world. In terms of what is seen as a legitimate target, there is a huge difference between an embassy or the Twin Towers and a hapless reporter - and KSM knows it.

However, if KSM's involvement in many of the listed attacks is credible, there are others that are less so. There is an odd dynamic at work here. KSM is happy to build up his own legend - and the American authorities are happy for him to do so. A substantial number of the plots - such as those directed Heathrow airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben in London - are not so much active operations but aspirations. They would feature on the target wishlist of any self-respecting senior jihadi salafist terrorist commander. KSM saying they were his work allows the US government to show how important he is and what an important achievement catching him was, allows them to cross a pile of "unsolved"s off their list and further justifies KSM's incarceration under a legally controversial regime.

A final point. Yes, it is useful to take men like KSM out of circulation, but few intelligence analysts working on al-Qaida are very optimistic about the years to come. Though the global uprising of the Muslim masses that Bin Laden and others hoped for has not come, the threat from militant Islam is growing rather than diminishing.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/...07/03/ksm.html

[Dudeskey]

Originally Posted by §Pide®

damn , I thought he was claiming he was anna nicoles daughters daddy also

He also confessed to the attempted assasination of Ronald Regan, being the man on the grassy knoll, etc

but that was of course after the waterboarding, pulling out fingernails. Not to discount the fact he was a bad mother****er, but I think I'd confess to everything I never did just to make the waterboarding stop too.

[Spider]

Waterboarding .......wife is into water sports , perhaps .............. Naw she is pissed off at me enough now

[spdirty]

I sure as hell hope we tortured that son of a b****.

[cutthemdown]

Is he to blame for my missing mini-nuke.

[spdirty]

Just get another one at Wal Mart...I hear theyre having a Spring Rollback sale.

[alkemical]

I mean seriously though - this guy confessed to EVERYTHING - that's why it's so ridiculous IMO....

[Spider]

Originally Posted by claviculasolomonis

I mean seriously though - this guy confessed to EVERYTHING - that's why it's so ridiculous IMO....

[Bronco Bob]

Originally Posted by claviculasolomonis

I mean seriously though - this guy confessed to EVERYTHING - that's why it's so ridiculous IMO....

He claimed to have been involved in 31 plots. Some were merely plots
they planned to do. Considering he was at it for almost 15 years,
that's not so outrageous. That's what, 2 plots a year.
Consider al-Quada has thousands of members and millions of
dollars to work with. So there are more than enough people and resources
to carry terror plots. All they need is someone clever enough to
think these plots up. Someone like KSM? If not him then who?

[alkemical]

Originally Posted by Bronco Bob

He claimed to have been involved in 31 plots. Some were merely plots
they planned to do. Considering he was at it for almost 15 years,
that's not so outrageous. That's what, 2 plots a year.
Consider al-Quada has thousands of members and millions of
dollars to work with. So there are more than enough people and resources
to carry terror plots. All they need is someone clever enough to
think these plots up. Someone like KSM? If not him then who?

Well, i'd guess he'd have to do since we can't find OBL...

[bendog]

Anybody notice that Bushii is even incompetent in torture? Well, how can we be surprised? He can't even find oil in Iraq

[alkemical]

Originally Posted by bendog

Anybody notice that Bushii is even incompetent in torture? Well, how can we be surprised? He can't even find oil in Iraq

Considering he couldn't find oil in texas.........

[Bronco Bob]

Originally Posted by claviculasolomonis

Considering he couldn't find oil in texas.........

Let's be honest. Bush couldn't find his ass with both hands if someone
spotted him his left hand on his left cheek.

[Garcia Bronco]

Now this guy should be put to death for his crimes.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by Garcia Bronco

Now this guy should be put to death for his crimes.

no Bush doesnt deserve death , just slapped around and thrown in jail for 50 years

[alkemical]

Do you think he's also OJ's "mystery killer"?

[Spider]

Originally Posted by claviculasolomonis

Do you think he's also OJ's "mystery killer"?

Bush has never been asked ..............hmmmmmm

[Dudeskey]

He also confessed to killing Jon-Benet Ramsey


stop the presses!

[55CrushEm]

Originally Posted by mhgaffney

Here's the link
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03172007.html

Well, that explains it all.......

What's the "mh" stand for? Mullet Head? Mullet Head Gaffney?

[yavoon]

Originally Posted by Urinal_Cake

He also confessed to killing Jon-Benet Ramsey


stop the presses!

and nicole brown simpson! omg!

[TailgateNut]

Originally Posted by Garcia Bronco

Now this guy should be put to death for his crimes.

Who? Bush? I agree!

[Dudeskey]

Originally Posted by yavoon

and nicole brown simpson! omg!

So maybe he's also a sereal killer that targets blonde well-to-do females of all ages... Maybe Anna Nicole Smith's death wasn't an accident... Waterboard him again!