According to his confession, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed beheaded Daniel Pearl “with [his] blessed right hand”. He masterminded 9-11 “from A to Z” and many other attacks. Really bad guy, if all this is true.
He spent six months in Guantanamo and allegedly over 3 years in a CIA-run prison before that. So at minimum, this guy has been waterboarded, subjected to heat and cold, loud sounds, various kinds of psychological strain, and who knows what else.
So how trustworthy is his confession? You do all that stuff to me, I’ll cop to assassinating Abraham Lincoln.
If someone believes torture is OK provided we’re really scared, and yet still somehow self-identifies as a Christian, I’m not going to argue with them about morals. But the practical problem with torture is that it undermines the credibility of any confession you get with it. Yeah, he’s probably the right guy… isn’t he?
I mean, this confession is pretty darned convenient for the administration. It wasn’t that “most-wanted guy” we haven’t been able to catch, no sir! It was this guy all along! We got him! Mission accomplished! We’re doing a heckuva job!
I want to believe it’s him, I really do. But…
I have serious doubts he’s responsible for all that, too.
It would be nice if they searched for independent corroborators before they released this information to the world. I doubt they did.
I have my doubts as well, especially when FAUX NEWS refers to him as KSM…
Confessions are unreliable enough as evidence – a lot of people confessed to the Lindburgh kidnapping for example. They probably do have partial independent confirmation with this guy but I wonder how much of that was obtained by torture.
I do not doubt the good intentions of those “fighting the war on terror” but torture is a bad bargain. To be fair and balanced to Faux news, they had some hard-nosed retired general on a few months ago who said something very similar. For purely practical reasons he was completely against torture.
I question the timing on this. Could it be the administration is looking for a distraction to inflate public opinion of them?
hang him.
You sure about that, GUYK? One of his crimes is plotting to assassinate President Jimmy Carter. Though MrsDoF points out that he would have been 17 in the last year of Carter’s administration. He was 13 when Carter was elected.
Sounds like this guy doesn’t have anything but bullshit to say… reminds me of someone… hmm… whom could I be thinking of…
An interesting take on this…
Good commentary by the Freakonomics guy. And I loved that one commenter’s angle: “As a veteran of search comittees I can tell when someone is padding their C.V.”
I thought SEB had a wide diverse crowd, Freakonomics is insanely diverse…
Whoops – false alarm on the torture thing. Check out Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confesses to confessing under torture.
Oh, wait…