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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (26111)	3/15/2007 1:09:31 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 35834

I just said about the same thing on another thread a few minutes ago....give the creeps a few minutes....they will get their preplanned ditty going soon.... I wouldn't be surprised if the the anti-war crowd [terrorist sympathizers] expresses concern that KSM was tortured into confessing.

To: Sully- who wrote (26111)	3/15/2007 1:48:54 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Perhaps someday, like mundane Macbeths, [they] will be haunted by Pearl's ghost. They deserve to be. Guantanamo, Newsweek and the Ghost of Daniel Pearl Roger L. Simon Oh, Guantanamo - how it has been the rallying cry of self-described "progressives" and nabobs of the human rights movement who consider US troops the equivalent of tribesmen giving clitorectomies in the Somali desert. I wonder what they think when they read oday's report of the many confessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at a Guantanamo Naval Base hearing. Probably not much. But I'll tell you what I was thinking. After reading the following, I was thinking about Newsweek: <<< In a section of the statement that was blacked out, he confessed to the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, The Associated Press has learned. Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Pakistan while researching a story on Islamic militancy. Mohammed has long been a suspect in the killing. >>> Why Newsweek? Well, the thought of Danny Pearl having his head hacked off by these religious psychopaths threw my mind back to this story about Guantanamo. In Howard Kurtz's words: <<< Newsweek issued a formal retraction yesterday of the flawed story that sparked deadly riots in Afghanistan and other countries, after the magazine came under increasingly sharp criticism from White House, State Department and Pentagon officials. The magazine's statement retracted its charge that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that an American interrogator at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker said he thought the magazine had already "retracted what we think we may have gotten wrong" in an editor's note published Sunday and in media interviews. "We've called it an error," he said. "We've called it a mistake." >>> Mistake? You should have resigned for that, Mr. Whitaker. If I published a calumny that despicable under my watch at Pajamas Media I would like to think I would have stepped aside. Of course, it's easy to say. But I can promise this - today the news about Daniel Pearl would have given me pause. Made me shiver. And mired me in guilt. And yet the beat goes on about Guantanamo. We're baaaad say those same satraps of the mainstream media, anxious to win the approval of their peers while they collect salaries that dwarf our soldiers'. Perhaps someday, like mundane Macbeths, will be haunted by Pearl's ghost. They deserve to be. As for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, what punishment could there be for the likes of him? Even if I were in favor of the death penalty, which frequent readers of this site know I am not, it would not be sufficient. Perhaps this: life imprisonment in a tiny cell surrounded by Buddhist imagery with Buddhist sutras piped in twenty-four hours a day. No visitors. No Koran at all. After a few years, he might begin to forget Islam and its teachings. He would not know what jihad is. He would hear only Buddhist bells. rogerlsimon.com breitbart.com washingtonpost.com

To: Sully- who wrote (26111)	3/15/2007 3:58:23 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

[Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's] hearing proved how bad the attacks would have gotten, had the US not taken the war to the terrorists. KSM: I'm The Mastermind Behind AQ By Ed Morrissey on War on Terror Captain's Quarters The military tribunal of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed turned into a brag-fest, as the captured terrorist took credit for almost every attack al-Qaeda has attempted. His admitted work goes back to 1993 and the first attack on the World Trade Center, and extends to planning assassination attempts against world leaders from Pope John Paul II to Jimmy Carter (via Hot Air): <<< Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, confessed to that attack and a string of others during a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a transcript released Wednesday by the Pentagon. "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z," Mohammed said in a statement that was read during the session, which was held last Saturday. Mohammed claimed responsibility for planning, financing and training others for attacks ranging from the 1993 truck bombing of the World Trade Center to the attempt by would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes. And he also claimed that he was tortured by the CIA after his capture in 2003. In all, Mohammed said he was responsible for planning 28 attacks, including many that were never executed. The comments were included in a 26-page transcript released by the Pentagon, which blacked out some of his remarks. >>> I'm not sure if Mohammed's on the level or if he just wants to pad the legend for later jihadis. One would think that killing 3,000 people in a single day would be enough, but Khalid wants to make sure we get the point. However, if he's taking credit for attacks that never came off, it seems to me that he's adding to the reputation of American counterterrorism rather than his own track record of success at mass murder. His hearing proved how bad the attacks would have gotten, had the US not taken the war to the terrorists. Mohammed spoke about AQ's efforts to develop biological and nuclear weapons to attack America: <<< He offered a chilling confession to “managing and following up on the Cell for the Production of Biological Weapons, such as anthrax and others, and following up on Dirty Bomb Operations on American soil.” >>> Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Faraj al-Libi showed a little more intelligence and opted not to participate in the tribunals. Maybe they're rethinking the whole Legends Of Jihadis thing. captainsquartersblog.com washingtonpost.com hotair.com blogs.abcnews.com defenselink.mil

To: Sully- who wrote (26111)	3/15/2007 12:32:14 PM
From: ManyMoose	Respond to of 35834

So this character confesses and all the others are off the hook? I don't think so.

To: Sully- who wrote (26111)	3/16/2007 8:08:09 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

[T]he transcript of Mohammed's confession is a reminder of the fanatical nature of the enemy that America and its allies are fighting in the War on Terror. MOHAMMED SPEAKS NEW YORK POST Editorial March 16, 2007 There's no way of knowing for certain how much of Khalid Sheik Moham med's dramatic confession is true. Indeed, describing his blood-soaked activities to a Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing at Guantanamo Bay, he admitted to everything but having been on the grassy knoll in Dallas in 1963. But whether he was trying to inflate his role as the world's leading jihadist mastermind or possibly deflecting attention from other al Qaeda operatives, there's no denying that a good deal of Mohammed's narrative rings true. It is, in fact, backed up by other evidence. And little of what he admitted at the hearing last Saturday is new. What's different now is that the details for the first time come straight from his own lips. Even in his rambling, broken English, to read of Mohammed boasting about how he personally decapitated Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl sends chills down one's spine. "I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," he said, matter of factly. All in all, he confessed to having planned or personally carried out 31 separate terrorist attacks - including both the 1993 and 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and unrealized assassina- tion plots against three U.S. presidents and Pope John Paul II. Again, he obviously isn't to be taken wholly at face value. But it's clear that he's a dangerous guy - and the transcript of Mohammed's confession is a reminder of the fanatical nature of the enemy that America and its allies are fighting in the War on Terror. It's also a critical reminder of something else: Islamist terrorism can't be defeated by treating it like a criminal enterprise to be dealt with in the courts, as far too many Democrats continue to argue. That might work with the Mafia - it won't with al Qaeda. Fanatics like Khalid Mohammed won't be deterred by the threat of a long prison sentence. They are part of an ideological movement whose touchstone is hatred of the West - and, in particular, America. After all, it was Khalid himself who boasted before his capture in 2003 that al Qaeda's "department of martyrs" would replenish itself, at the cost of "as many deaths as possible . . . on America's own soil." But keeping them in isolation for as long as necessary - forever, if that's what it takes - will keep them from ever again targeting innocent victims. This may irk the ACLU types, but they've been all but rooting for the bad guys since Day One - so who cares about them anyway? They don't care about you. nypost.com

To: Sully- who wrote (26111)	3/16/2007 8:13:51 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

BEING FAIR TO KHALID TRIBUNALS TAKE BIZARRE TWIST John Podhoretz NEW YORK POST Opinion March 16, 2007 THE transcript of al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheik Mohammed's March 10 tribunal hearing runs 26 pages. It was a very polite proceeding - and remained so even as Mohammed's representative offered a lengthy statement in which he confessed to plotting almost every single terrorist attack on the United States since 1993. The politesse continued when Mohammed's representative read the statement that he "decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head." And what sentence did Khalid Sheik Mohammed repeat over and over again, on at least seven occasions during his hearing? "Be fair to people," he said by way of offering advice to the four military officers who comprised the tribunal. Be fair to people. The purpose of the hearing was to determine whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed deserves the status of "enemy combatant." You might think that, since Mohammed stipulated almost from the beginning of the hearing that he was an "enemy combatant," there wasn't much to discuss. But Mohammed complained about three bizarre things. First, he was angry that some evidence was taken off a computer seized by the United States at the time of his capture in March 2003. It wasn't fair, he said, to accuse him of anything because he had a photo of 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta on the computer. "I don't think this should [be] accepted," he said. "There are many hundred thousand Americans who have a lot of picture[s] on their computer." This objection seemed a little beside the point, considering Mohammed later said flatly that "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z." The government rejected the notion that the tribunal needed to hear a witness' testimony on the matter. Second, Mohammed insisted he never told an Al-Jazeera reporter he was head of the "Al Qaeda Military Committee" and wanted to call a witness who would testify he never said such a thing. (One imagines he fears the wrath of whoever is the head of the Military Committee, either here or in heaven.) Third, he wanted "several sub-paragraphs under parent-paragraph 3" to be "combined into one sub-paragraph to avoid creating the false impression that there are more allegations or statements against me than there actually are." This, from a man who a few minutes later would freely confess to 31 acts of terrorism or terror plots that led to the deaths of thousands of people. One thing Mohammed did not do on his own in the course of the tribunal hearing was issue complaints about mistreatment. Rather, it was the American leading the tribunal - an unnamed U.S. Navy captain - who actually chose to open a discussion with Mohammed about whether or not the No. 3 man in Al Qaeda had been tortured following his capture. "You claim torture," the tribunal leader said about a written statement made by Mohammed that was entered into evidence. The statement wasn't released by the Pentagon, so we do not know what it says or when it was made. Mohammed gave a peculiar answer - peculiar because he insisted on speaking in broken English and his meaning is hard to decipher. He seemed to be saying he could not recall whether he was tortured or not. "I, ah, cannot remember now," he said. His immediate next words don't appear in the transcript. They were redacted, presumably because Mohammed mentioned the location of his secret detention prior to his incarceration at Gitmo. (He didn't arrive at Gitmo until September 2006.) In any case, Mohammed seemed far less concerned about his own treatment than the treatment of other detainees. Throughout the tribunal hearing, he kept going back to the issue of others captured in Afghanistan. "I will not regret when I say I'm enemy combatant," Mohammed said, "but there are many detainees" who don't deserve the title, according to Mohammed. "I'm saying for you to be fair with people," he said. Be fair with people. Still, the tribunal leader persisted with his line of questioning about torture. "Now, what you have told us about your previous treatment is on the record of these proceeding[s] now," he said, "and will be reported for any investigation that may be appropriate." This 26-page transcript tells me a few things. First, there is such a thing as unmitigated, unmediated, undeniable evil in human form. Second, there is reason to be wary of every word this man says, including his claims of responsibility for anything and everything. He might be speaking the truth. He might be a psychotic megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. Or he might be shouldering blame to deflect it from others still in detention. Third, the military tribunal process isn't entirely about determining the status of enemy combatants. It seems to have been redirected in part - turned into an examination of the conduct of the United States in the War on Terror. And so, even as we attempt to deal with the evil of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we Americans cannot resist the temptation, so often indulged in this painful decade, to turn on ourselves. jpodhoretz@gmail.com nypost.com

To: Sully- who wrote (26111)	3/17/2007 1:45:50 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Talking to the Enemy By The Editors National Review Online Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confession to masterminding the 9/11 attacks and a string of other terror plots hasn’t taught us much about him that we didn’t already suspect. But it does offer a chilling reminder of how brutal and determined an enemy we face in the War on Terror. The confession was released yesterday, as part of a government transcript of a hearing to determine whether Mohammed, once the third-highest leader of al Qaeda and now a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, can be designated an enemy combatant and tried by military commission. “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z,” he said. He also confessed to the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and the 2002 bombing of a Bali nightclub that killed 202 people. All this is, as we said, no surprise. What’s startling about the confession is the glimpse it gives us of how much worse things could have been. Mohammed said he was plotting to attack the Sears Tower, the Empire State Building, the New York Stock Exchange, the Panama Canal, Big Ben, and Heathrow Airport. He wanted to assassinate Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Pope John Paul II. He planned to blow up nuclear power plans in the U.S. and suspension bridges in New York. None of these plans succeeded, but there’s no reason they couldn’t have—and every reason to think that al Qaeda is hard at work plotting equal or worse destruction. The usual suspects on the Left are obsessing over Mohammed’s claim, according to the transcript, that he was once tortured by the CIA (though the same transcript has him saying, as he confesses to 9/11 and the other attacks, that he is not speaking under duress). It has been widely reported that he was subjected to the extremely harsh technique of water-boarding shortly after his capture. This, along with the barring of reporters from the recent proceeding, has led some to suggest that the confession is somehow bogus. Their argument is unpersuasive for two reasons. To understand the first, recall the trial of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui wanted to call Mohammed as a witness in his defense. Why? Because Mohammed had told government interrogators that Moussaoui had had nothing to do with 9/11. In the end, Mohammed didn’t testify at the trial. But if the government were in the business of torturing people to make them say what it wants, surely it wouldn’t have kept records of Mohammed’s claims that Moussaoui was innocent, let alone permitted Moussaoui’s defense to learn about them. More important, the government would have had no motive to force Mohammed’s recent confession, for the simple reason that it was not necessary. There was already more than enough evidence to convict him of 9/11 and other attacks. Don’t forget that Mohammed was indicted in 1996 in connection with “Operation Bojinka,” a plot to blow up a dozen U.S. commercial airliners. (In Arabic slang, “bojinka” means “explosion.”) The plot was never executed, but the terrorists tested their explosives and killed a man in the process. If tried for his role in the Bojinka plot, Mohammed could have faced the death penalty (though he probably would have been sentenced to life imprisonment, as were some of his co-conspirators). An abundance of evidence linking him to 9/11 has also emerged. We didn’t need yesterday’s transcript to tell us what he has done or to hold him accountable for it. There’s little doubt as to the outcome of the hearing: Mohammed will be designated an enemy combatant and eventually tried by military tribunal. He deserves a swift and relentless justice. His value as an intelligence asset is probably exhausted. Having been in custody since 2003, he has likely said everything he is going to. Nor can he offer useful information about al Qaeda plots hatched since his detention. His crimes are acts of war and worse, for his specialty was the slaughter of civilians. Thousands are dead because of him. Thousands will die yet if we slacken in our resolve to defeat his comrades still plotting against us. article.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (26111)	4/4/2007 12:52:07 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

The Red-Baiter Responds Are the Geneva Conventions a commie plot? Best of the Web Today BY JAMES TARANTO Tuesday, April 3, 2007 We got an email from Anthony D'Amato, the law professor at Northwestern University who, as we noted last month, likened Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's Combatant Status Review Tribunal to a "Stalinist show trial": <<< I've been called many things ("hey you" being the most common), but "red baiter" is a new one. Thank you, Mr. James Taranto, for that dollop of McCarthyite nostalgia. Mr. Taranto's only substantive point is that I have unfairly confused the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s with the Guantanamo Bay proceeding against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The show trials were meant to "determine guilt," according to Mr. Taranto, whereas the purpose of Khalid's hearing "was merely to determine whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in fact an enemy combatant." The word "merely" is the tip-off. If Khalid is found to be an enemy combatant, then under President Bush's rules, he can be kept incommunicado for the rest of his life (or until the war on terror ends a few hundred years from now). Mr. Taranto might wish to explain to his readers the difference between sentenced for life at a jury trial and sentenced for life at an administrative hearing. In the meantime, if I'm a red baiter, then Mr. Taranto is a bait and switcher. >>> In truth, it is a well established principle of international law (not "President Bush's rules") that combatants captured in wartime can be held for the duration of the conflict. The purpose of such detention is not punitive but preventive--to keep the detainee off the battlefield. KSM's hearing was conducted pursuant to Article 5 of the Geneva Conventions, under which such hearings are mandatory only if there is doubt about whether the detainee is in fact an enemy combatant. In 2004 the U.S. military decided to give Article 5 hearings to all Guantanamo detainees, which means that KSM is getting at least his due, and in our view more than his due, under international law. It's likely that KSM will eventually face charges for war crimes. If so he will receive a trial, under the Military Commission Act of 2006; and, if found guilty, he could (fingers crossed) be sentenced to death. Granted, this is all somewhat complicated. But a law professor, especially at a top-ranked school (Northwestern Law is No. 12 in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report), ought to take the trouble to learn about an area of the law before weighing in publicly about it. opinionjournal.com opinionjournal.com usnews.com