"… and my second-cousin-twice-removed shot Kennedy."

March 16th, 2007

Either the Bushies are getting more transparent or we’re becoming more savvy — this KSM confession non-sense is as easy to see through as cellophane. With the home front AND the international front in tatters, the best diversion would be an uber-monster, responsible for everything but the kitchen sink, yes? Enter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed … but the chances of this proving anything but laughable are nil. Anybody who read the list of KSM’s confession [boasts] had to take a moment and wonder if they weren’t reading an old Jon Lovitz script from Saturday Night Live:

Yeah, I was resposible for that gig with the shoe bomb … yeah, THAT’s the ticket!

Now, we have two possible narratives about this person — he is perhaps real, perhaps muppet. We have only a picture or two from old files [that Jon Stewart took aim at last night, saying he looked less like evil henchman than Horatio Sanz, again, SNL.] The last piece here is from alternative news, questioning the authenticity of KSM.

As legend, anyway, KSM is the darling of the thumb-screw set; reportedly held his breath longer than anybody else when being waterboarded. It’s been suggested that his children were kidnapped to the US and interrogated … seven and nine years old. He’s been persona non grata since ‘02 in the bowels of … well, some secret somewhere … and has now landed at Gitmo, where he’s trotted out to tell his [long-winded] story.

Let’s just assume for sake of argument that KSM IS real, and has languished in the arms of a CIA rendition squad for all these years — you think he’s credible, citizen? You think his brain isn’t scrambled like an omelette order from the local greasy spoon? Remember Moussaoui? How about Jose Padilla? Both drooling loons by the time we got testimony. If this is what torture gives us, it’s as useless as the Administrations glaring attempts to turn the conversation away from their current [and dramatic] meltdown.

KSM … if he’s real … may well be responsible for acts of terrorism, but thanks to the thumb-screws, we have babble instead of accounting. And if the confession was released for diversions sake, it has backfired as just one more botched job at information gathering by the Bush administration. [Maybe it will satisfy that 30-odd percent of True Believers who will, apparently, believe anything ... but as a voting block, gratefully, they're toast.]

Jude

TORTURE — PENTAGON REDACTED STATEMENTS OF KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED DISCUSSING TORTURE
American Progress Action Fund
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/progressreport/

According to a Pentagon transcript released yesterday, Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessed to masterminding 9/11 and “more than 30 other terror attacks or plots” at a military hearing held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, although many government officials believe his claims may be “exaggerated.” Mohammed has long been the subject of extreme interrogation techniques, including water boarding. “CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. … KSM won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half-minutes before begging to confess.” The CIA also reportedly abducted his seven and nine-year-old sons and flew them to the United States for interrogation.

In his remarks to a military tribunal, Mohammed raised objections to the treatment he received, but his statements on torture were redacted by the Pentagon in its publicly released transcript: “I know American people are torturing us from seventies. [REDACTED]. I know they are talking human rights. And I know it is against American constitution, against American laws.” Mohammed claimed that CIA interrogators warned him he would be subjected to illegal treatment, calling it “bad luck.”

Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch (HRW) questioned the legality of the closed-door sessions and whether Mohammed’s confession was actually the result of torture. “We won’t know that unless there is an independent hearing,” he said. “We need to know if this purported confession would be enough to convict him at a fair trial or would it have to be suppressed as the fruit of torture?” HRW has also called on the Pentagon to make public the full transcript.

Although Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confession “may have effectively signed his own death warrant,” his statements might actually help other suspects. “Mohammed took credit for so many different terrorist plots that others could use his testimony in their own defense strategy.”

Why KSM’s Confession Rings False
ROBERT BAER
Thursday, Mar. 15, 2007
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1599861,00.html

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

[Satire Alert]

New Khalid Shaikh Mohammed stunner: “My great-grandpa sank the Maine!”
The al Qaeda mastermind is finally talking …
Joshua Holland, posted by Evan Derkacz
March 16, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/49300/

(New York) Intelligence officials say that accused al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has claimed indirect responsibility for yet another high-profile attack against American forces stationed abroad.

On Friday, after four years of solitary confinement in secret CIA-run prisons and a brisk morning of water-boarding, Mohammed admitted that his great-grandfather, Hussein abu Taba, orchestrated the 1898 bombing of the battleship U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor. That explosion, which killed 266 seamen, sparked the Spanish-American War.

Mohammed made waves earlier this week when he admitted to planning and/or personally executing dozens of terror attacks, including the 9/11 attacks, the “Shoe Bomber” plot, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Officials say that the Qaeda operative’s testimony vindicates the Bush administration’s tactics in the “War on Terror.” “When Khalid told us he had been the second gunman on the ‘grassy knoll’ in Dallas in 1963 - at age five! — I knew we had a high-value prisoner, ” said one of Mohammed’s interrogators, speaking on background due to the sensitivity of the case. “But the battleship Maine …well, that gets to a whole other war against a completely different set of dusky religious fanatics.”

Long a matter of controversy, the U.S.S. Maine sank on February 15, 1898, following a fiery explosion. The U.S. government claimed the ship was destroyed by a Spanish mine or via sabotage; others have argued that an accidental explosion in the ship’s armory was the cause of the tragedy.

Mohammed claims that his great grandfather described to him in detail how he had smuggled an early IED that had been built in Persia onto the battleship and detonated it with a timer. The accused terror mastermind claims he had forgotten about the exchange until several years of gentle questioning by U.S. interrogators brought the exchange back to him.

Officials say such revelations aren’t unusual. “We’ve found that the mind often represses difficult memories,” said Major David L. Barry, an Army intelligence officer attached to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. “And very few things can cause those hidden memories to emerge like a few years of sensory deprivation followed by hooking up a prisoner’s testicles to a 24-pound truck battery. It’s remarkable what they recall!”

Evan Adds:

Thanks Joshua, you stole my post (and did it better than I’d planned to…)

Coupla things, mostly random:

First, the Bush Admin appears to have made “a marketing blunder” in the way it released the information. Think that doesn’t matter? Think again. Time magazine isn’t even buying (Yes, TIME magazine…):

there is a major flaw in that marketing strategy [of touting the administration's successful capture of a menace to Americans]. 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.
Second, a clip from Reservoir Dogs, which predates 9/11 [I think the names aren't accurate but the quotes are]:

Marvin Nash: I already told you I don’t know anything about any fucking setup - you can torture me all you want.

Mr. Blonde: Torture you? That’s a good idea. I like that.

Nice Guy Eddie: If you fucking beat this prick long enough, he’ll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don’t necessarily make it fucking so!

And finally, from Juan Cole:

A lot of commentators will note that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad has admitted that he planned out the 9/11 attacks. What they will miss is that he claimed the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as his idea, as well, and as an al-Qaeda operation. Remember that Paul Wolfowitz, following the frankly kookie Laurie Mylroie, blamed Saddam Hussein for the 1993 bombing. Wolfowitz was then the number 2 man in the Pentagon and enormously influential. His conviction that Bin Laden was “one little man” and that 9/11 had to have had a state sponsor (i.e. Iraq) helped drive us into the current quagmire. Wolfowitz was wrong, dead wrong. Has he ever admitted it? Should someone so wrong on so much really be heading the World Bank?

Boys Crying Wolf
by digby
digby 3/15/2007
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/boys-crying-wolf-by-digby-as-little.html

As little children we were all told a lovely little parable about boys and wolves to illustrate the problem of losing your credibility. (Apparently Barbara Bush was too busy golfing to share that one with her oldest son.) Once you are a proven liar, you often find that people don’t believe you even when you tell the truth.

Similarly, when a government has made a fetish out of torture, which everyone knows is unreliable and forces false confessions, people tend to be just a tad skeptical when the government releases transcripts of a terrorist mastermind’s confessed plots replete with lurid details about beheadings and plans to assassinate the pope. (It’s especially difficult to swallow when they release the information in the middle of an exploding white house scandal, when they’ve had custody of this person for years.)

It may all be true. But because this government has insisted that “sending a message” of toughness will make suicide bombers turn tail and give up — and seems to truly believe that a false confession is a good as a real one, we have no way of knowing. This guy is by all accounts a very bad man, I don’t doubt it. But the details of his confessions are meaningless because of this administration’s short sighted and immoral policies.

Imagine how powerful these confessions could have been in a legitimate war crimes trial if the Bush administration had followed civilized practices and maintained a shred of moral authority and credibility. Too bad we’ll never know.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Gitmo song
“Confession” or Bush administration propaganda?
Larry Chin, Global Research
March 16, 2007
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHI20070316&articleId=5091
[open link for more articles]

According to a transcript of a Guantanamo Bay military tribunal newly released by the Bush administration, “Al-Qaeda mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has “confessed” that he directed the 9/11 attacks, and was fully or partially responsibility for more than 30 other terror plots and attacks. With this “confession”, the mysterious Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (or “KSM”) becomes the ultimate and lone fall guy for virtually all “Al-Qaeda”-attributed attacks prior to 9/11, and up to his alleged arrest in 2002.

Rather than put to rest all doubts about 9/11, the KSM “confession” refocuses all inquiries back on the Bush administration’s role behind the 9/11-Al-Qaeda-“terrorism” military-intelligence propaganda operation, and the manufacturing of the KSM legend.

KSM’s sudden penchant for “spilling his guts” comes at the moment the imploding and scandal-ridden Bush-Cheney cabal faces intensifying political heat and public outrage.

More importantly, the KSM “confession” fails to address the most fundamental issues and unanswered questions underlying the “war on terrorism”:

Who or what is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

Like Osama Bin Laden, KSM remains a propaganda legend, and one of a multitude of 9/11 red herrings that the US government not addressed.

Mystery Surrounding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

A series of investigative articles by Chaim Kupferberg in 2002 exposed critical evidence and damning questions about KSM, “Al-Qaeda”, the ISI, 9/11, and the Bush administration’s guiding hand behind of all it:

9/11 and the Smoking Gun that Turned on its Tracker
June 2002 Plan to Market A New 9/11 Mastermind
The Recruiters of 9/11
Stacking the Patsies of 9/11

It remains unclear if KSM was captured in 2002, as purported, or if he was ever delivered into custody to be interrogated. In fact, many credible mainstream reports suggest that KSM is dead, and that he never made it into custody.

There is not a shred of verifiable proof to confirm any aspect of KSM—or the veracity of this new tribunal. We have only the word of a criminal Bush administration, and the CIA.

As written by Mike Ruppert in Across the Rubicon:

“The US government has failed to produce—publicly, or for the one failed 9/11 criminal prosecution in Germany of Mounir el Motassadeq—either bin al-Shibh or KSM as material witnesses. No mere mortal has seen either one of them since their reported captures. Credible reports have told us that KSM was killed. Any information alleged to have come from these ‘captured’ suspects has come in the form of ‘press-release prosecution’ by the government. None of it has ever been independently authenticated.”

This raises the possibility that the entire KSM legend is, like the entire “Al-Qaeda” legend, a lie; a blatant propaganda work.

The testimony itself (which is analyzed more fully below) is full of contradictions and unanswered questions. For sake of argument, even if a living KSM actually did, in fact, appear at a tribunal to be recorded, the overriding facts remain as follows:

1. If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is “Al-Qaeda”, he is a US intelligence asset.

2. “Al-Qaeda” is a US military-intelligence network, used exclusively on behalf of Anglo-American geostrategic war policy. “Islamic terrorism” (created by the CIA) and “Al-Qaeda” serve as the face of American covert operations and terrorism, and the instrument of the Bush administration. “Al-Qaeda” operatives were either witting or unwitting US and US-trained agents, operating in compartmentalized units, who were ordered and/or guided into fulfilling their roles.

Some “Al-Qaeda” stories, perhaps even KSM, are outright fabrications; utter fantasy.

The historical facts are amply documented and exhaustively spelled out in Michel Chossudovsky’s America’s “War on Terrorism” , Michael C. Ruppert’s Across the Rubicon, and a host of investigative sources.

It is ludicrous to believe the notion that KSM and “Al-Qaeda” assets alone could have carried out 9/11, an operation that necessitated years of US policy geostrategy to set up, the participation of US and US-affiliated intelligence, procedures carried out by American assets on US soil, control of the US government (command and control) via the highest levels of Bush-Cheney.

All 9/11 evidence points directly to the US government and the Bush administration, and nowhere else. No amount of disinformation changes, or hides, this fact.

KSM’s day at Gitmo

The fact that KSM’s confession comes by way of a military tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay complex immediately raises several red flags.

Gitmo itself is an illegal operation in its totality; the headquarters of the Bush administration’s criminal military prison camp and torture operation. Even mainstream corporate reporters (including Helen Thomas) have already raised questions about the possibility that KSM’s confession was obtained through torture. KSM said many times throughout his performance that he was under no duress, and merely “sang” voluntarily.

Nevertheless, Gitmo, and the role of the CIA interrogators, immediately taints the testimony.

KSM’s trustworthiness is yet another problem. According to the New York Times, “it is not clear how many of Mohammed’s expansive claims are legitimate.

In 2005, the Sept. 11 commission [itself a massive official cover-up] said Mohammed was noted for his extravagant ambitions, and, using his initials, described his vision as “a spectacle of destruction with KSM as the self-cast star, the superterrorist.”

A final problem: only KSM has “confessed”. Two other reputed Al-Qaeda operatives in custody, Abu Faraj al-Libi and Ramzi bin al-Shibh have refused to cooperate with US officials, until they could be tried according to proper judicial principles. Why? Which of the “Al-Qaeda” operatives are actually alive (if any)?

Even if simply accepted at face value (again, for the sake of argument), the tribunal, according to the complete transcript*, was a bizarre and at times humorous affair, supervised by unnamed US intelligence officers, and supposedly attended by KSM, a translator and a “personal representative”, purported to be a US Air Force lieutenant.

* http://www.defenselink.mil/news/transcript_ISN10024.pdf

According to the heavily redacted transcript, KSM is first asked about his English language skills. KSM, in bizarre fashion, responds by stating his preference for English, but works out an arrangement to have some of his statements translated. The rest of KSM’s statements (those not read by the personal representative) are rambling, disjointed, and full of poor English and non-sequitors. Does or does not KSM speak English well enough to toss around American-style slang?

The tribunal then lays out the list of claims against KSM, accusing him of “directing” the 9/11 attacks, based on evidence from computer hard drives seized during his arrest. The seized evidence includes pilot licenses for the 19 alleged 9/11 hijackers, copies of Internet chat sessions between the operatives, spreadsheets of money transfers, and operational procedures and training guides for Al-Qaeda cells.

Despite the fact that every one of these claims has been debunked or saddled with unanswered questions, KSM mounts no defense.

KSM then suggests, in a strange exchange with the tribunal, that he was mistreated (tortured) by CIA interrogators after his arrest in 1993, and after his transfer to Guantanamo in 2006. This portion is heavily redacted.

It is at this point in the proceeding that KSM, suddenly and unbidden, “spills his guts”.

KSM proceeds to claim, in the perfect vernacular of an American, “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z”.

The “personal representative” (the US Air Force officer) then reads a long list of admissions allegedly written by KSM. KSM declares that he, not Osama Bin Laden, was the “operational commander for all foreign operations” for Al-Qaeda, as well as the leader of “media operations” (under Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri).

KSM claims responsibility for the thwarted 1995 Operation Bojinka bombing-hijacking, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, attempted bombings of landmarks in New York, Chicago and London, a bombing of the Panama Canal, attacks of US and Israeli embassies around the world, and the Bali terror bombing. KSM also claims responsibility for assassination attempts against former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Pope John Paul II, as well as for directing Al-Qaeda attempts to develop chemical weapons and dirty bombs.

In addition to these extravagant claims, KSM claims that he “shared” responsibility for the murder of Daniel Pearl. The Pearl murder, according to KSM, was not an Al-Qaeda operation and “not connected to UBL (Osama bin Laden)” but a “Pakistan Mujahadeen” operation. He suggests here that Pearl was connected to the CIA and the Mossad.

The new twist on the Daniel Pearl murder fails to answer the many unanswered questions raised by the analysis of the Pearl murder by Kupferberg. Interestingly, both versions point to the involvement of Pakistan’s ISI, a virtual branch of the CIA. In fact, the KSM version even more emphatically implicates the ISI. And, by extension, the CIA.

Bush administration desperation

Kupferberg wrote the following in 2002:

“It remains to be seen how the authorities will conclusively deal with the festering anomalies surrounding their three prize catches - the elusive Binalshibh, the perhaps dead Khalid, and the perhaps fictitious Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi. Nevertheless, it is a safe bet that in the meantime, the authorities will continue to weave ever more complex and murky tapestries around the personalities of these operatives, employing the mercenary talents of writers like Gerald Posner to add to the crumbling sediment of ‘facts’.”

If we assume that the KSM “confession” is, like the rest of the “Al-Qaeda” operation, another grotesque propaganda fabrication, it speaks volumes about the current mindset of the Bush administration’s intelligence apparatus.

The festering administration is now so desperate to revive the power it seized with 9/11, that it has not only continued to spew old 9/11 lies and thoroughly debunked criminal deceptions (such as the link between 9/11 and Iraq, still militantly repeated by Dick Cheney), it appears to be ready to rewrite the script entirely, even it means contradicting their previous conspiracy theories.

For what reason has KSM been tagged as the “mastermind” of 9/11, after years spent insisting that Osama Bin Laden and Mohammed Atta were the “ringleaders”?

Why is KSM being named (“confessed”) as the man solely responsible for virtually every major terrorist attack and plot since the 1990s? The Bush administration is clearly desperate to create the appearance of triumph for itself in its waning months. Is the Bush administration (Karl Rove) attempting to script a final propaganda“ triumph” with the certain secret execution of KSM, the 9/11 “mastermind”?

Will all of the red herrings, including Osama Bin Laden, be found, and then “put down” in spectacular fashion, allowing Bush-Cheney to declare themselves “winners of the ‘war on terrorism’” by 2008?

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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