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Guantanamo Show Trials Re-Started
Obama is re-starting the trials of Guantanamo inmates, including the alleged mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
I have no idea whether or not Mr. Mohammed is a terrorist whose actions killed innocent Americans. If he is, I hope he is convicted and put to death. A decorated 20-year CIA veteran, who Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh called "perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East”, and whose astounding career formed the script for the Academy Award winning motion picture Syriana (Robert Baer) raised serious doubts in Time Magazine about Mohammed being the 9/11 mastermind. But his innocence or guilt is beyond the scope of this essay.
What I am against is convicting this guy without due process of law under the United States constitution.
Show Trials
The trials will be held in Guantanamo, which is a huge step backwards. Obama had agreed to try suspects in American courts, which would thus follow the Constitution and the rule of law.
Indeed, the town of Hardin, Montana requested that 100 Gitmo detainees be sent to its empty prison, and Congressman Jim Moran said that detainees could be tried in his Alexandria, Virginia district. So there was willingness by Americans to hold the Guantanamo inmate trials here.
Instead, we appear to be to Guantanamo "show trials".
Specifically, as of 2008, the former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions disclosed that the trials have been rigged to prevent the possibility of acquittal. Specifically, the head of the Guantanamo tribunal -- who is actually in charge of both prosecuting and defending the suspects -- told the former chief prosecutor:
Wait a minute, we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals, we've got to have convictions.
In addition, three other Guantanamo prosecutors -- Maj. Robert Preston, Capt. John Carr and Capt. Carrie Wolf -- "asked to be relieved of duties after saying they were concerned that the process was rigged. One said he had been assured he didn’t need to worry about building a proper case; convictions were assured."
The head of the tribunal also said that -- even if the defendants are somehow acquitted -- they may not be released from Guantanamo.
And MSNBC speculated that the U.S. put a "stun belt" on alleged terrorist Moussaoui during his trial to keep him in line:
No wonder the American Bar Association, "which the Pentagon had said would help arrange such representation, has refused to participate because it objects to the trial procedures." And no wonder the defense attorneys who have agreed to represent the defendants say that the process is completely unfair. See also this interview.
Torture
Former Congresswoman and prosecutor Liz Holtzman makes a good point:
The criminal justice system identified and convicted some of those involved in the 1993 World Trade Center attacks. By contrast, not one person has been prosecuted for the 9/11 attacks, although seven and a half years have gone by. Even Khalid Sheik Mohammed, one of the masterminds of 9/11, is unlikely ever to be convicted in US courts because he was repeatedly subjected to torture. Significantly, the cruel and torturous methods used on detainees never yielded enough information to capture Osama Bin Laden or his chief deputy. So much for the claims of torture's efficacy.
Before you protest that we didn't torture them, please note that the chief lawyer for Guantanamo litigation - Vijay Padmanabhan - said that torture was widespread. And Susan J. Crawford, the senior Pentagon official overseeing the military commissions at Guantánamo — the novel system of trials for terror suspects that was conceived in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — told Bob Woodward:
We tortured Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture.
In fact, the type of torture used by the U.S. on the Guantanamo suspects is of a special type. Senator Levin revealed that the the U.S. used torture techniques aimed at extracting false confessions.
McClatchy fills in some of the details:
Former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration...
For most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."
It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document...
When people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued."Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam . . .
A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.
"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."
"I think it's obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq)," [Senator] Levin said in a conference call with reporters. "They made out links where they didn't exist."
Levin recalled Cheney's assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.
In other words, top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage. See also this and this.
Paul Krugman eloquently summarized the truth about the type of torture used:
Let’s say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.
There’s a word for this: it’s evil.
The Accused Made Up False Statements to Stop Torture
The Miami Herald ran a story entitled "Alleged 9/11 mastermind: `I make up stories'", noting:
Accused al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed complained that interrogators tortured lies out of him...
''I make up stories,'' Mohammed said ...
In broken English, he described an interrogation in which he was asked the location of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
''Where is he? I don't know,'' Mohammed said. 'Then he torture me. Then I said, 'Yes, he is in this area or this is al Qaeda which I don't know him.' I said no, they torture me.''
This is not new. It has already been documented that Mohammed confessed to crimes which he could not have committed, and that he said that he gave the interrogators a lot of false information - telling them what he thought they wanted to hear - in an attempt to stop the torture.
Indeed, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told the Red Cross:
During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop. I later told the interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I'm sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts being placed in the U.S.
And see this Washington Post report.
The Telegraph also noted:
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times in one month, and “confessed” to murdering the journalist Daniel Pearl, which he did not. There could hardly be more compelling evidence that such techniques are neither swift, nor efficient, nor reliable
Dick Cheney claimed that waterboarding Khalid Shaikh Mohammed stopped a terror attack on L.A., but as the Chicago Tribune notes:
The Bush administration claimed that the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed helped foil a planned 2002 attack on Los Angeles -- forgetting that he wasn't captured until 2003.
(see this confirmation from the BBC: "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ... was captured in Pakistan in 2003").
The Other Witness Against Khalid Sheik Mohammed
But a second witness - Abu Zubaida - fingered Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the 9/11 mastermind (Zubaida was subsequently severely tortured for many months. But he initially identified KSM even before being tortured).
So we have independent confirmation that KSM was the chief architect of 9/11, right?
Well, the New Yorker notes week:
The F.B.I.’s point man on the Abu Zubaydah interrogation, Daniel Coleman, had read Zubaydah’s diaries and concluded that he “had a schizophrenic personality.”
Indeed, the Washington Post noted in 2007:
Retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman, who led an examination of documents after Abu Zubaida's capture in early 2002 and worked on the case, said the CIA's harsh tactics cast doubt on the credibility of Abu Zubaida's information.
"I don't have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted," Coleman said, referring to the harsh measures. "He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn't believe him. The problem is they didn't realize he didn't know all that much."
***
Abu Zubaida ... was a "safehouse keeper" with mental problems who claimed to know more about al-Qaeda and its inner workings than he really did.
***
Looking at other evidence, including a serious head injury that Abu Zubaida had suffered years earlier, Coleman and others at the FBI believed that he had severe mental problems that called his credibility into question. "They all knew he was crazy, and they knew he was always on the damn phone," Coleman said, referring to al-Qaeda operatives. "You think they're going to tell him anything?"
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind writes that Coleman advised a top FBI official at the time:
"This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."
Note: Some reports state that at Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was killed years ago, and that the U.S. military is really holding someone else.
Update: A reader points out that a new investigation from January concludes that Mr. Mohammed did kill Pearl.
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I wonder how the author feels about KSM cutting of Daniel Pearl's head? I mean, is that considered torture? If so, then isn't OK to torture him? Maybe not, unless you subscribe to eye for an eye.
AgFiend:
dude, this is GW, his agenda ain't about the "others" doing torture. He has a different agenda.
And "balanced" isn't part of the agenda.
- Ned
Is Daniel Pearl the only guy who ever died in the ME? Is he the only guy who died in the ME who is worth caring about? Why do you keep bringing him up?
He didnt do it. Please read the Telegraph or Baer articles linked in the main post,
He did do it. It is proven. Please read this link from the Washington Post, that far right conservative news paper. They forensically proved it was him by mapping his veins that can be seen during the beheading.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/20/AR201101...
Thank you. I hadn't seen that. So why not try him in U.S. courts for Pearl's murder?
"Thank you. I hadn't seen that."
You sure about that George?
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/justice-department-plays-fast-and-loose-law#comment-1023356
Too busy, I guess, to see what my repsonse was when I asked you to talk to me in your own words.
No, I didn't see that. I got busy with something else and stopped reading that thread.
"No, I didn't see that. I got busy with something else and stopped reading that thread."
Of course you did ;-)
I posted one message in response to your asking for a "personal" post, and then stopped reading ...
Okay, nmewn, since you are playing the game of "you didn't respond to what I wrote, which means xyz"- which is a dirty trick played by shills - I will never respond to you again, sir. Goodbye.
"Okay, nmewn, since you are playing the game of "you didn't respond to what I wrote, which means xyz"- "
But you did George...unwittingly, in one of your comments to your post the very next day...don't make me embarrass you further.
"which is a dirty trick played by shills"
You shouldn't have said that George.
A smart former adjunct professor and present professional should know better.
"I will never respond to you again, sir. Goodbye."
Yes, of course...rise above the fray George...you have your sycophantic troll-bots to do the dirty work for you, no need for you to get your hands dirty defending your own posts.
Like you, I wanted to reach across...what I found was someone so locked in he was un-reachable.
You will recall (or not) I spoke of accountability & credibility. Many others said the same, some of whom I have disagreed with openly on other matters...you and you alone are accountable for what you post...I have yet to see a retraction so you must always be right...a phenomenal accomplishment.
The GoM story you followed was a hysterical screed about everything that could go wrong, would go wrong, the entire SE should evacuated, nuclear weapons should be detonated over tropical storms to prevent oil from coming ashore, that evolved, eventually, into the earth itself splitting in half and we would all die. You allowed this George, by not saying to your bots...show me what the hell your talking about or shut up.
The 911 stuff was a hoot. Again, people who liked you personally, with much more knowledge than your legion of troll-bots, tried to warn you off (with humor sometimes) that everything that had been said by you and them, had already been proven false.
ZH commenter's come from very diverse backgrounds...there are doctors, lawyers, engineers, veterans, bankers, real estate brokers, pilots, carpenters, plumbers, stock brokers (past & present) etc...it runs the gamut, there is very little one can sneak by.
The gulf is healing, we are all still alive and we still don't have a coherent energy policy...you are reduced to the admission that it was in fact jihadis terrorists who did 911 and blubbering about how a sick fuck like KSM and his little dickweed nephews were treated after being shown it was in fact them who sawed off Danny Pearls head...because you didn't want the truth.
You refuse to post one article on the well documented fact Barry is a marxist (a "past" member of the New Party) who appointed a self avowed communist (Van Jones) to a paid position outside of Congressional oversight (un-Constitutional, check your avatar), a gaggle of Keynesian professors who are attempting to destroy the American, & by extension the worlds economy, who is right this minute using drones to attack foreign countries we have never declared war on...ala Iraq...ala Afghaaaneeestaaahn.
But of course, George is post partisan and fair, didn't he just ridicule Holder by name...oh, wait...no...someone had to remind him to do so...and to also remind him that Holder was instrumental in Marc Rich's pardon by Clinton.
So, goodbye George, I look forward to you doing a post trying to smear a well known grassroots movement...now that, my friend, will be fun ;-)
SeeYa
HAHAHA !!!
Hissy Fit!
What a hoot!
Buck up!
Quit eating your boogers!
You Big Baby!
And you...what does DavidPierre mean in Ojibwa?...warrior who runs away?...ROTFL!
You chose Vancouver Canada to call home and throw rocks from at your former "tribe"...any particular reason you prefer something closer to a monarchy to live under?...you do realize the Queen of England is imbedded in the Canadian constitution don't you?...with Prince Charles (he of the Wingspan Ears) the heir apparent?
Isn't the Queens viceroy named Steven Point in your neck of the woods?...and he was appointed by the Canadian Prime Minister and not voted on by the subjects...er, umm...the people into his present position?
Didn't Professor George explain any of this present day blue blooded history to you?
Stones...glass houses etc. DP.
So you are admitting that you are so ignorant that you would post crap as facts?
The murder did not take place under the jurisdiction of the United States.
The author really doesn't care. His first concern is how he can best blame the U.S. for....well anything. Common sense and reason are out the window.
I know. I don't understand why ZH gives him a platform. But hey this is America right? Any douche bag can say what he wants. It must sting to know that your America hating views don't fly with a majority of Americans.
Have you spoke with many amerikans?
I consider it a badge of honor that my views are not taken well by even a large minority of amerikans.
pods
They are enemy combatants and are not entitled to a civilian trial. Cry, whine, bitch and moan about it but THE LAW says they are not entitled to a civilian trial. The ACLU and all your FEELINGs about what is right do not matter.
http://bioterrorsurvival.com
yeah, yeah -and thanks to morons like you, and wonderful legislation like the Patriot Act, millions of Americans can and likely will be branded "enemy combatants' and dprived of liberty and basic freedoms.
I despise the ACLU -full of torture loving hypocrates like Alan dershowitz -but what would phony neo-conservatives like you know about freedom and civil liberties - why don't you start by reading Ron Paul's End the Fed, and then maybe you can open your eyes and figure out what the true conservatives think about torture. -
Enemy combatants? Why are they enemy combatants? Why are we fighting these wars?
Enemy combatant is merely a well focus- grouped phrase that removes all shred of humanity from an adversary.
Much like the new phrase "Islamic Caliphate". Sends shudders down the collective spine of middle amerika.
Their stuff is top notch, I will give them that.
pods
Or take the term "islamo fascist" ....who invented such a term? So now they are enemy combatants, who are thrown in some prison for years for who knows why. We invade countries based upon lies, they fight us, so now they are enemy combatants and should be dealt with in such a manner, never mind that these wars are also unconstitutional, that the aspect of armies filled with volunteers is also unconstitutional and never mind that the Afghans or the Iraqis or any Arab or Muslim person had absolutely nothing to do with 911, never mind all of that. Let us just watch these stupid trials that make a joke out of the rule of law because you know why? There is no freakin rule of law. That's why and who knows when there ever was one. What they do to these unlucky men, they will do to us all one day, mark my words..........to us all..........and yet the trolls argue stupid silly points that mean nothing and can't understand why their little worlds are falling apart.
Ironmaan,
Yep, when I had young souls subject to U.S. "law of land warfare", we played that way. Not so much these days, fricken lawawyz have perverted the law so that a kid who "percieves a threat" is now after the fact presumed to be a murderer.
Kinder, gentler ground-pounderz.
- Ned
{but it is all OK, 'cuz Eric Holderz law firm is getting its cut.}
.
That's exactly right. Military tribunals. That's what they are "entitled" to.
They are not American citizens, and haave NO RIGHTS under the constitution.
Same as Americans in other countries. Commit a crime, you are prosecuted under THIER law, not our law.
Period.
thank you for making that comment. it captures in a brief and succinct manner, everything that is wrong with this country. you are a true american...and I mean that will all due offense.
So others do not have the same rights as US citizens?
Where did our rights come from? The constitution?
Nope. They are merely secured by the constitution.
By the way, if you are deemed an enemy combatant, you have no "rights".
You can bark all you want to the Syrian interrogator, but it ain't gonna matter.
Either you stand for all having inalienable rights, or none.
pods
The Socialist/Progressive notion of "Moral Relativism" now comes forward displaying it's poisioned fangs in it's slathering maw of depravity! Hope all you Decepticrats and Republicons enjoy getting chewed on!
And our law says indefinite "detainment" while being tourtured?
USA USA USA
Proud to me an Amerikan!
Fuck - people like you should move to China were you can thrive.
Mr Asshole
My hope is... that you and people like you experience what those held in gitmo would like to do to you. I will laugh at the YouTube video of them removing your head.
http://guerillatics.com
Well, if "our" government wasn't fucking these people for the past hundred years or so, maybe you wouldn't have to cower under your bed and wet your panties.
I would not want you, or any other asshole beheaded.
You are a moron.
Typical lefty...always hating on the USA. You must have loved the Obama appology tour, but I digress. I orginally just stated a fact. "they are enemy combatants and as such are NOT entitled to a civilian trial. Again...piss and moan all you want, they are not entitled. Regarding torture, stacking those murderers up in a naked pig pile and water boarding is not torture. What I would do to them is torture, and what they would do to you is torture. You are a silly, young, idealistic fool.
http://guerillatics.com
Why bother having even a military trial if the conclusion is gonna be: "lock'em up till they die!"?
Sorry, but Bush and his band of criminals fscked up big time by stomping on American values, leaving no room under all the hypocrisy for Justice. Now comes Obamatron and crew attempting to make political hay from conducting show trials! Each and every American that's ignored this clusterfsck, completely deserves the fate reserved for them in the coming Great Implosion!
You need to be more sensitive to Taliban culture of kidnapping infidels and removing the head from the body. Sensitivity training for you.
How many heads does a cluster bomb remove?
Not enough.
Oh I see. So, if they stuck a cluster bomb up Daniel Pearl's ass and filmed that going off, you'd get a kick out of that?
So what you are saying is there is moral equivalency between death on the battlefield and executing someone by cutting their head off. Are you retarded? If that is the case then we should immediately cut the heads off of everyone held at Gitmo. Pal your just stupid.
http://guerillatics.com
What is the morality of death on the battlefield in an immoral war?
You are saying as long as white people are doing the killing in the sanctified manner, ie. shredding men, women, and children with death from above it's blessed, but low-tech, doing it the old-fashioned way is somehow immoral by comparison.
I don't think you make sense.
It's you who are hopelessly conflicted.
You are a useful idiot. And Ol Joe would put your tukchass in a Gulag in a NY minute.
In what respect, Charlie?
A nice review of some key facts. However, what about right now?
The answer? Nothing will happen. Some national legal groups and attorneys(the ACLU, Margarie Cohen, etc.) will comment or try to file some lawsuit against Obama and the DOJ. It'll go thru courts and then it's no longer "news".
Anybody remember Jose Padilla? He's a U.S. citizen who was tortured and driven insane by the military. Walk down the street and ask the first ten people you meet if they know his name. If you're lucky, maybe 1 will.
What does that tell you? Not all but many people have an out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality. As long as it doesn't directly affect me, I don't wanna know. But, I can still bitch about how f****d up the system is.
Really? I wonder how Padilla feels about that?
He was tortured? When did news of that come out?
I think he was insane before he was taken into custody. He willingly went to Pakistan to live in a cave. Unless the CIA sent him there.
Did Obama actually keep 1 promise after 2 years?
All I remember from him was saying stuff like:
BOOO BUSH HERE!!!!
BOOOO BUSH THERE!!!
BOOOOOO BUSH THAT!!!!
BBWWWWAAAAA BUSH DID THAT!!!
BOOOBBBOOOBBOO BUSH DID IT!!!!
BUT WHAT DID HE DO UNTILL NOW?!!
So you're saying that because of the current POTUS' failings we should just let slide the egregious crimes of the previous administration?
wtf?
no
As fucked up as BHO is, I doubt that baa baa blacksheep is in his repertoire.
Trundle, h/t RK and VMF-214:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentleman_ranker
'damned from here to eternity"
- Ned
Obummer has kept plenty of promises, just none of the ones he made to the public or in his campaign.
I really, really never thought I would possibly say this, but he's starting to make GW Bush look good.