Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession ~ Count me skeptical

Yesterday, to great fanfare, the Pentagon released transcripts of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession of his role in 9-11. Mohammed, a high-level Al-Qaeda operative, has been in custody since 2003 or 2004 (depending on where you get your information - our government is so secretive, it's tough to tell). He was moved to Guantanamo Bay in September of last year. Funny how not too long after he gets moved to Guantanamo, he confesses. More on that last point later.

What really strikes me is how neat and tidy the story seems. To believe Mohammed, you'd think that he was responsible for every terrorist act since Watergate. Okay, a bit of hyperbole there, but take a read on some of the things he confessed to: Masterminding the September 11th terrorist attacks; the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic Ocean; the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; the Operation Bojinka plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower; the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63; planned assassination attempts on Pope John Paul II, Pervez Musharraf and Bill Clinton; planned attacks on Heathrow Airport and Big Ben clock tower in London; the Millennium Plot; and the murder of Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded in 2002.

Formerly a member of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organization in Kuwait, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, he was "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks." If all of this is true, great. But, will we ever know if it's true? This administration has lied so much, it's hard to believe what's true and what's not true anymore. When listening to the Bush Administration's spin on just about anything, I'm much more inclined to not believe it than believe it.
Following American politics today is like being an airline pilot, flying through a thick fog, who doesn't trust his instruments.

I'm highly skeptical of anything Mohammed says, and I'm not alone. One CIA official has been quoted as saying that anything Mohammed says should be treated with a high amount of skepticism, even referring to at least some of his confessions as white noise - useless chatter devised to get himself through another day's interrogation, and more importantly to send the U.S. government on wild goose chases. Unfortunately, our government has been on many of those before, especially since 9-11.

He's claiming responsibility for quite a laundry list of terrorism. Are we now supposed to believe that Osama bin Laden is inconsequential? The Bush Administration would no doubt love that, but I hope the rest of America isn't buying into this bull - the bottom line is that ultimately Osama bin Laden is responsible for 9-11. Not to go all X-Files on you, but The Truth is Out There.

I also find the timing of this announcement awfully convenient. In the last month, the Bush Administration has had these crises to deal with: Continuing debate on the troop surge, the firing of eight federal prosecutors, the Scooter Libby trial, the Walter Reed scandal, and a host of smaller prickly issues I'm sure Bush wishes would just go away. Many of above have been flashing hot lately, so why not release a bit of good news to get all of the bad press off the front pages of Websites and newspapers?

If you think this administration is above manipulating the press in that way, think again. A few quick examples...

1. In December 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured, conveniently right before the primaries for the 2004 election were set to begin. Patently absurd that it took the biggest and best military in the world nine months to catch him. Kind of like how absurd it is that we are going on six years since 9-11, and still no bin Laden. But, I digress.

2. The announcement of Saddam's verdict in his trial, 48 hours before the 2006 mid-term elections. When the press protested, Tony Snowjob had the nerve to go before the press and declare that the U.S. would never interfere with the Iraqi judicial process. Unreal. Press reports later confirmed that the actual verdict was not completely ready until four days later. Hussein heard that he was guilty, then had to wait four days to find out what he was guilty of. Yea, no tampering there.

3. In the spring and summer of 2004, anyone remember the numerous "terror threats" that were issued? You remember, the color coded system that we heard about all throughout 2004? Seems funny that we haven't heard about many of them since the '04 election. I expected to hear lots of them again in '06 before the November election, but we didn't. I half wonder that the reason we didn't is because of all of the negative press about Republicans trying to scare everyone to death before the '04 election. Have the threats gone away? I don't think so.

4. How about in February 2006, when Bush publicly boasted about the administration's foiling of a plot to blow up the "Liberty Tower" in Los Angeles. (He probably meant to say "Library" Tower, but, you know, a president can get the tallest building in LA wrong, especially when talking about its potential destruction when delivering a major anti-terrorism speech.)

What's more, we should distrust anything that might have been confessed to under any form of torture. I love analogies, so allow me to turn to a brilliant movie, Reservoir Dogs:

Mr. Blonde (played by Michael Madsen) is part of a criminal enterprise that just robbed a jewelry store. At the very beginning of the heist, the cops show up. Quickly. Too quickly in the eyes of the criminals. They begin to turn on one another. Blonde shoots his way out of the robbery, taking an officer hostage to get away. Mr. Blonde has just cut off a police officer's ear, trying to find out about a possible snitch in the group. Chris Penn walks in, and he starts screaming at Mr. Blonde, bellowing, "This guy will tell you he started the Chicago Fire if you beat him hard enough, but that doesn't fucking necessarily make it so!"

I'm sure you can see where I'm going here - just because someone confesses to something under torture (something that is oft-speculated about in Guantanamo Bay, where Mohammed is being imprisoned), that doesn't mean it's true. Often, it's not.



Of course, Sean Insanity was all over the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confession, treating it like the Bush Administration had just captured the real man responsible for 9-11, Osama bin Forgotten.

It's funny to hear Insanity talk about Rosie O'Donnell's "irresponsible rhetoric," something which he has a Ph.D. in. Wait, I forgot - he's a college dropout. Scratch that. By the way, I'm in no way defending O'Donnell - a true blabbermouth moron.

I got a kick out of Hannity's leading questions to Slade Gorton in this piece, too, especially when he said to Gorton, "So, these statements [by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] were not made under duress, RIGHT?" Of course, Hannity didn't get the answer he wanted, as Groton stated he wasn't sure under what conditions Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's statements were made. Swing and a miss for Insanity. But, that never stops him.

The thing that enrages me the most about this particular piece of footage is Insanity's beating the oft-beaten drum about the United States refusing to take bin Laden when he was offered, during the Clinton Administration. This has been thoroughly debunked, yet the right won't give up on this story. Hey, it's the old adage of the right - keep on repeating a lie, over and over and over, until people begin to believe it. And there are many who believe that Clinton refused to take bin Laden into custody, but that we could have. (By the way, can there ever be any sort of national debate, specifically when it's about the GOP's bread and butter, the War on Terrorism, without bringing up Bill Clinton's supposed "shortcomings"?)

I'm not going to get into this again here, other than to briefly say this about Clinton and terrorism. Yes, the Clinton Administration could have done more to combat terrorism - Clinton himself will freely admit that, and he has, very publicly, on many occasions. But, he did as much as he could at the time. Clinton tried to increase the terrorism budget, but was rebuffed by the GOP-controlled Congress every time he did it. When he once closed off Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, he was called "hysterical" by many people, almost all Republicans. What's more, Clinton gets very little press about the various successes in combating terrorism that happened on his watch.

The evidence is strong, given by people who were inside the Bush Administration prior to 9-11, that Bush and his cabal did little to combat terrorism. In fact, John Ashcroft even cut the terrorism budget in the summer of 2001, a few months before the attacks. Then there's the August 6, 2001 memo, entitled Bin Laden determined to Strike in US, which was included in the presidential daily brief, that gets consistently ignored, and conveniently forgotten, by the likes of Sean Insanity. But instead, let's keep harping about Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Advisor, about taking some classified documents from the National Archives. What's more important here?

About those files that Berger took ~ he pleaded guilty to taking classified information, and was sentenced to pay a $50,000 fine, two years probation and 100 hours community service. And he also lost his top secret security clearance for three years.

But, morons like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Insanity won't let a good conspiracy theory go. The Wall Street Journal, which has one of the most conservative editorial pages in the country, wrote this about the Berger incident:

Justice says the picture that emerged is of a man who knowingly and recklessly violated the law in handling classified documents, but who was not trying to hide any evidence. Prosecutors believe Mr. Berger genuinely wanted to prepare for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission but felt he was somehow above having to spend numerous hours in the Archives as the rules required, and that he didn't exactly know how to return the documents once he'd taken them out... We called Justice Department Public Integrity chief prosecutor Noel Hillman, who assured us that Mr. Berger did not deny any documents to history. "There is no evidence that he intended to destroy originals," said Mr. Hillman. "There is no evidence that he did destroy originals. We have objectively and affirmatively confirmed that the contents of all the five documents at issue exist today and were made available to the 9/11 Commission."

Keeping sizzling that Berger though, Hannity. Some sheep are bound to believe you.

The things that I loved most about Insanity's rant in the clip above is the "death score card" that Faux News posts about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which totals 3,197.

Hmm. Let me think about that for a minute. That number, 3,200, that means something to me. Where have I seen that before?

Oh yea, the number of Americans killed in Iraq since the war began four years ago this Tuesday. (The current total sits at 3,204 at this writing, with 12 more inconfirmed.)

Whether you agree with the War in Iraq or not, don't buy into all of the spin about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's "confession," specifically from an administration that's in as much political trouble as this one. (Bush's approval ratings remain in the toilet, at 30 percent. The most recent Newsweek Poll rates his embattled Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, more popular than he is. Ouch.)

In my humble opinion, it's probably just another clumsy attempt by Bush and his cabal to reintroduce common knowledge into the mainstream media as "news" in order to turn around the president's sagging approval ratings.

Only time will tell if it's another Mission Accomplished by President Bush.