Because, you know, whenever one “lib” says Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be set free, then (wingnuts figure) all “libs” must want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be set free.
Idiots.
Hawkins has a couple more brain cells than many of the rest of his tribe, which is frightening. One wonders how they manage to dress themselves.
The real issue in the years to come is not what’s to be done with KSM. At this point he’s probably not capable of doing much but huddle in corners, hugging his knees and talking to his imaginary friends.
No, the real issue is going to be separating fact from fiction. After four years of detention and torture, KSM confessed to personally decapitating Daniel Pearl. I understand he confessed also to masterminding the September 11th attacks, the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and various other foiled attacks.
And maybe he did those things, or maybe he just said he did to stop the torture. We’ll probably never know, because cases grow colder as time marches on. And we’ll probably never be able to put KSM on trial.
Speaking as an eyewitness to the destruction of the World Trade Center, I would like to say that it is more important to me to find out who really was responsible than it was to pick a scapegoat that fits the Bush Administration’s propaganda du jour and torture him into confessing. KSM was a dangerous guy and (note this, Hawkins) I don’t advocate releasing him, but neither do I accept on faith anything the Bush Administration says.
ABC News reported yesterday that “enhanced” interrogation techniques were not just approved in the White House; they were choreographed in the White House.
Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.
The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.
At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
And anyone who doesn’t think Condi was keeping the President fully briefed on these meetings gets to sit in the corner wearing the dunce cap.
Rightie genius macsmind writes,
There is nothing inherently wrong with the President of the United States and his key advisors having such discussions on what to do with the tiny little fact the article misses that these were TERRORISTS that wanted to kill AMERICANS.
And we know that because the Bushies said so! Brilliant!
The phrase “war crimes” is being tossed about. I am skeptical the Gang of Six Plus One will ever be indicted in this country. However, their foreign travel opportunities may be severely limited in future.
Well, I’m sure the government of China can show them a good time. They have so much in common.
And of course the media never mentions anything about Al Qaeda being terrorists who want to kill us. A complete whitewash on that one.
…and since we KNOW that they are TERRORISTS who want to kill AMERICANS, we NEED to TORTURE them to discover all of their evil plots, even though John McCain – who has gone all soft on this anti-torture thing – has personally ADMITTED that HE and others LIED to their torturers in the Hanoi Hilton to make them STOP while at the same time DEPRIVING them of useful information. TERRORISTS wanting to kill AMERICANS are evil but stupid brown people, however, so these techniques are SURE to work on them, even if they ARE ILLEGAL under both US and international LAW (and I suspect John Ashcroft probably knew that Yoo’s work was a bunch of self-serving hooey)…
It’s too early to start drinking…
“Gang of Six, Plus One,” not bad. I was calling them “The Cabal of Pure Evil, and George Tenet.” (As Dave Barry used to say, good name for a rock band.)
I keep trying and failing to parse the quote from macsmind, as so often happens with these rightie ditherings. They’re always jumping from one point, thought or clause to another without grammatical or logical connectors, never mind actual evidence. I suspect too much meth.
And props to Jack K for satirizing the rightie addiction to random all-caps!
ABC News reported yesterday that “enhanced†interrogation techniques were not just approved in the White House; they were choreographed in the White House.
When I read that, I flashed on Bush getting his kicks as a kid, by blowing up frogs with firecrackers. Looking forward (I think) to Oliver Stone’s upcoming portrayal. I enjoyed his, let us say, impressionistic portrayal of Richard Nixon, I can’t imagine what he’ll do with someone as twisted as W.
I don’t understand Virginia’s comment #1. Bush and his minions constantly repeat AQ, or the Iranians, or anything they think will frighten us, even when there is little or no evidence for their claims (remember the bogus WMDs?). If anything the media is too cowed to poke behind this fearmongering facade. Most of them are just stenographers and useless.
moonbat — I believe Virginia was being facetious.
Not as if the Gang of Six, Plus One didn’t know what they were doing. Ashcroft: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.” A wonderfully totalitarian process — the meetings seemed to be mainly about getting everybody’s hands dirty and sharing complicity for Bush/Cheney’s pathological torture fixation. A way to silence dissent by compromising everyone. Talking about the meetings would be tantamount to confessing to war crimes. Where have we seen that before?
[Please review commenting rules. Comments promoting the “Bush was behind 9/11” nonsense are always deleted. Sorry. Repeated attempts to post such messages result in a permanent ban.
Simple fact: If Bush had been behind 9/11, the WTC towers would still be standing. — maha]
Sigh… I don’t know what to make of it any more. I think Madison Guy hit it right out of the ball park, but he failed to note that the fools in the Cabinet were so driven by self-righteousnesses that they would not have talked about meetings that didn’t put them in positive light – I think we have seen that in the Bob Woodward books.
Today after school was finished I was packing my bags and got into a chat with my professor who observed that people do not talk about what will happen in Iraq once we leave. I told him that no – one knew, but it is a moot point since every day we are there we create another 1,000 members of al-Quada. My line of reasoning, in addition to the observation that we now buy shoes made in Vietnam, ought to win every argument, yet as Maha posts, Wingnuts are Idiots…
And kudos to PFT, I will soon adopt that statement the next time I hear that rumor.
I think the people who claim the government was behind 9/11 are crazy.
But I know the people who think the government would never be behind an attack like 9/11 are crazier.
The 9/11 attacks worked, even more evidence that Bush couldn’t have been behind it. Why do righties who don’t trust the government to regulate the amount of mercury we can have in our water suddenly believe that it can regulate the extent of torture that is allowed, and then trust the information that is extracted as if handed down from god, allah, Buddha, Brahma, Ahura Mazda?