KSM

There is big news today about the confession of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and 9/11. With everything that he has confessed to, there are still people who are "sympathetic" to him. People right here, Americans, living in America, people he would kill without blinking an eye. It's outrageous! My very dear friend Jack Kinsella of the Omega Letter wrote an article about it that is really spot on. WAKE UP PEOPLE! You CAN NOT NEGOTIATE with extremists who want nothing more than to break us to their will and be the power over us. If we keep on negotiating, soon we will have nothing left to give but the whole of our freedom and our very lives. It's time to put them out of the business of killing us once and for all.
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Did We Get the Real 9/11 Mastermind?

Nearly four years to the day from being captured in Pakistan in March, 2003, Americans have finally learned why the administration touted the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as a 'big get'.

It terms of whose hands were the most bloodstained among the enemy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was even a bigger 'get' than Osama bin Laden. Osama may have provided the leadership and funding, but it was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who did almost all of the actual killing.

Until today, we only knew Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the 'operational leader' of the 9/11 attacks. Now that redacted transcripts of his statement before the military tribunal hearing his case have been released, we've learned what the term 'operational leader' really meant.

It also helps to explain why there hasn't been a successful major terrorist attack against a Western target since the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing. We had the brains of the outfit in custody.

In a written statement provided to the tribunal, Mohammed confessed to "organizing, planning, followup and execution" of the September 11 attacks.

"I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z," Mohammed said, according to the transcript, released by the Pentagon last night.

Mohammed described himself as the “military operational commander for all foreign operations around the world” for al-Qaeda.

In addition to his written statement, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave a lengthy and evidently spontaneous speech in broken English to the three-officer tribunal hearing his case.

In all, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's statement admitted to planning more than thirty-one major terrorist attacks, including, but in no way confined to, the 9/11 attacks. Mohammed confessed to being the operational leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six Americans.

He confessed to being behind the Bali nightclub bombing in 2002. He admitted to planning and masterminding the aborted Richard Reid shoe-bombing attempt aboard a US bound aircraft.

Daniel Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Pakistan while researching a story on Islamic militancy. Pearl was lured into a meeting with KSM, tortured, forced to issue a videotaped 'confession, and was then beheaded on camera.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed admitted to being the masked man on camera who personally cut off Pearl's head.

In addition to the successful attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also confessed to planning the assassinations of Pope John Paul II, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, and former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.

In his statement, KSM outlined his plans for a second wave of attacks against US targets, including the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building in New York, the Library Tower in LA and the Plaza Bank in Washington State.

He also planned attacks against targets in New York's financial district, London's Heathrow Airport and Big Ben, and the Canary Wharf Building.

But wait! There's more! He also claimed he was behind the bombing of a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, frequented by Jewish travelers, and the launching of a Russian-made SA-7 surface-to-air missile at an airliner departing from Kenya.

In another plot, he planned to use airplanes flying out of Saudi Arabia to destroy buildings in Elat, Israel and a plot to destroy Israeli embassies in a number of countries, according to the statement.

He sent several mujahedeen fighters into Israel "to conduct surveillance to hit several strategic targets deep in Israel," according to the statement.

Also on his list of targets were American embassies in Indonesia, Australia and Japan; Israeli embassies in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Australia; airliners around the world; and nuclear power plants in the United States.

He said he managed “the cell for the production of biological weapons, such as anthrax and others, and following up on dirty-bomb operations on American soil.”

KSM also admitted to planning operations against US warships and oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Gibraltar and the port of Singapore. And he planned to bomb and destroy the Panama Canal.

According to the transcripts, a computer seized during his capture included detailed information about the Sept. 11 plot -- ranging from names and photos of the hijackers to photos of hijacker Mohamed Atta's pilot's license and even letters from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

And Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to meeting with American terrorist Jose Padilla in Pakistan in 2002 to plan 'dirty bomb' attacks against apartment buildings in major US cities.

Assessment:

KSM's confession and extemporaneous statement at his hearing are already being slammed by human rights' groups as being the product of torture.

This, despite the fact that KSM was questioned by a member of the tribunal about allegations that he had been tortured. KSM denied it.

Indeed, he seemed proud of his accomplishments, although he admitted to a tiny bit of remorse at the deaths of women and children in the 9/11 attacks. In his own eyes, however, he is a hero, victims notwithstanding.

As he explained to the tribunal, “What I wrote here, is not I’m making myself hero, when I said I was responsible for this or that. But you are military man. You know very well there are language for war.”

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, questioned the legality of the closed-door sessions and whether the 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?"

(KSM's body count runs into multiplied thousands and Roth is more distrustful of the United States than he is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?)

I was fascinated by the reaction from the Left following the release of the transcripts. They seemed almost disappointed.

The New York Times was almost sympathetic in its coverage, addressing KSM as "Mr. Mohammed".

The Times' noted, "there were suggestions in it that Mr. Mohammed contended he was mistreated while in the custody of the C.I.A. after his arrest in 2003," -- without mentioning that KSM specifically denied the torture claim before the tribunal.

The Times' even painted KSM as something of a martyr, writing, "[W]hile not contesting his own guilt, Mr. Mohammed asked the United States government to “be fair with people.” He said that many people who had been arrested as terrorists in the wake of 9/11 were innocent."

Later in the same report, the Times' repeated the same claim for added emphasis, writing, "He pleaded on behalf of some of his fellow detainees. “I’m asking you again to be fair with many detainees which are not enemy combatant,” Mr. Mohammed said. “Because many of them have been unjustly arrested.”

Sure. The guy kills thousands of innocents in sneak attacks, but the Times' is willing to accept his claim that his imprisoned compatriots are innocent at face value?

Let's see. This is the same New York Times that branded George W. Bush a serial liar -- but has no doubt that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is telling the truth about the rest of the Gitmo detainees.

After outlining KSM's confession, the NYTimes couldn't resist adding; "It is not clear how many of Mr. Mohammed’s expansive claims were legitimate," building on its theme that KSM's confession was somehow not as trustworthy as his claims that his fellow detainees were innocent victims of an unfair US prosecution.

And when questioned as to whether he was speaking under duress at the hearing, Mohammed said he was not. According to the New York Times, that was just another US-backed lie.

When it comes down to whether al-Qaeda's top killer is telling the truth or George W. Bush, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the more trustworthy source. Can the Times' REALLY believe that even Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is just a pawn in some insidious Bush administration plot?

This is deliberate, willful (and feigned) ignorance, and testimony to just how much the New York Times really hates the Bush administration. Since the NYTimes' doesn't mind repeating itself to make a point, I will do the same thing.

Osama bin Laden is still out there, somewhere. Ayman al Zawahiri releases another video threatening new attacks every other month.

But Khalid Sheik Mohammed was captured in March, 2003.

And there hasn't been a successful major attack on a Western target since. If the Times' is going to blame Bush for something, maybe it should blame him for that.

Fat chance.