4um: Why KSM's Confession Rings False

Title: Why KSM's Confession Rings False
Source: http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1599861,00.html
URL Source: http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1599861,00.html
Published: Mar 15, 2007
Author: R Baer
Post Date: 2007-03-16 06:20:55 by Kamala
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Keywords: 911
Views: 122
Comments: 1

It's hard to tell what the Pentagon's objective really is in releasing the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession. It certainly suggests the Administration is trying to blame KSM for al-Qaeda terrorism, leading us to believe we've caught the master terrorist and that al-Qaeda, and especially the ever-elusive bin Laden, is no longer a threat to the U.S.

But there is a major flaw in that marketing strategy. On the face of it, KSM, as he is known inside the government, comes across as boasting, at times mentally unstable. It's also clear he is making things up. I'm told by people involved in the investigation that KSM was present during Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl's execution but was in fact not the person who killed him. There exists videotape footage of the execution that minimizes KSM's role. And if KSM did indeed exaggerate his role in the Pearl murder, it raises the question of just what else he has exaggerated, or outright fabricated.

Just as importantly, there is an absence of collateral evidence that would support KSM's story. KSM claims he was "responsible for the 9/11 operation from A-Z." Yet he has omitted details that would support his role. For instance, one of the more intriguing mysteries is who recruited and vetted the fifteen Saudi hijackers, the so-called "muscle." The well-founded suspicion is that Qaeda was running a cell inside the Kingdom that spotted these young men and forwarded them to al-Qaeda. KSM and al-Qaeda often appear bumbling, but they would never have accepted recruits they couldn't count on. KSM does not offer us an answer as to how this worked.

KSM has also not offered evidence of state support to al-Qaeda, though there is good evidence there was, even at a low level. KSM himself was harbored by a member of Qatar's royal family after he was indicted in the U.S. for the Bojinka plot — a plan to bomb twelve American airplanes over the Pacific. KSM and al-Qaeda also received aid from supporters in Pakistan, quite possibly from sympathizers in the Pakistani intelligence service. KSM provides no details that would suggest we are getting the full story from him.

Although he claims to have been al-Qaeda's foreign operations chief, he has offered no information about European networks. Today, dozens of investigations are going on in Great Britain surrounding the London tube bombings on July 7, 2005. Yet KSM apparently knew nothing about these networks or has not told his interrogators about them.

The fact is al-Qaeda is too smart to put all of its eggs in one basket. It has not and does not have a field commander, the role KSM has arrogated. It works on the basis of "weak links," mounting terrorist operations by bringing in people on an ad hoc basis, and immediately disbanding the group afterwards.

Until we hear more, the mystery of who KSM is and what he was responsible for is still a mystery.

Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down

the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, the murder of the Black Dahlia, being D.B. Cooper, the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, and let's throw in the murder of Chandry Levy while we're at it

"Can Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession be believed?" queries the credulous Time Magazine in a headline.

Of course. That's the point of torturing people. Duh. You get them to confess to something you believe they did. For example, the great WITCHFINDER GENERAL, Matthew Hopkins (immortalized in Vincent Price's dazzling screen performance), used torture methods like sleep deprivation to get people so confused that they would confess to crazy shit, such as consorting with familiars. That's how it worked.

Even worse were continental inquisitions that relied on the depraved lunacy of the Malleus Maleficarum, a catalog of every fantasy about witchcraft you'd care to imagine. Armed with this list of "facts" sprung from the sexually repressed minds of religious zealots, an inquisitor could torture someone until they "confessed" to doing all the weird shit that was collected in the book. Torture was used because the inquisitor believed, in the soul-killing logic of the inquisition, that the person was withholding the truth. Torture merely confirmed reality, which, unfortunately, was just some fucked-up fantasy about a lesbian/bi-curious orgy with a devil.

Well, that's not a bad fantasy, actually. The bad part is that the inquisitors executed the "witches," often in ways that were fucked-up. And, not surprisingly, the Germans were the most fucked-up about the whole thing.

Anyhoo, back to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. We can "believe" his confession as much as it confirms our "Malleus Mohammedicarum." Once torture is introduced in legal process, you lose the ability to discern fact from fiction in a reliable fashion. That's why torture is only used by complete fucking idiots.

Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is. ~George W. Bush
(About the quote: Speaking on the war in Kosovo.)