Guest blogged by David Swanson
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the corporate “mainstream” media make quite a pair. We’re hearing a very “balanced” debate over whether KSM should be tried in New York City, and whether the most insane objections to that proposal are really insane or not. But what are we not hearing?
We’re not hearing that trying criminals for the crime of 9/11 ought to have been what we did years ago, rather than waging wars in response to a crime. We’re not discussing the possibility that had alleged 9/11 criminals been tried years ago rather than being imprisoned and tortured together with hundreds of innocents depicted as subhuman monsters, the “war on terror” might have been replaced with simply the wars on Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis. What effect might that have had on Americans’ willingness to surrender their Bill of Rights? We aren’t hearing about that.
And that’s only the tip of the iceberg about what we’re not hearing…
Aside from a column by my friend Ray McGovern, not of course published by the corporate media, what are we hearing or seeing about KSM’s motive? Isn’t motive a traditionally important element in a criminal investigation? We’re told that putting KSM on trial would give him a platform for propaganda, but we’re not told what that propaganda might be. If it were really so pernicious, why not expose it and refute it? Isn’t that what societies that believe in free speech do with misguided speech? Don’t they defeat it with more and better speech? Or is that only when it can be done without using the word “Israel”?
Outside of progressive blogs, we’re not hearing that giving a somewhat fair, if less than speedy, trial to those most likely to plead guilty or be convicted, and a less fair military trial to others, and no trial at all to others still, reveals this show of justice to be a sham. If KSM were acquitted, President Obama would order him imprisoned outside the rule of law until he dies. If he is found guilty, as everyone universally expects, he may be officially murdered by the United States, motivating others to take up arms against a nation that wages and funds illegal wars, imprisons people without charge, tortures, kidnaps, renditions, and executes.
If the justice system is bent to ensure that KSM is convicted or permitted little opportunity to speak, will that bending have any permanent repercussions for our justice system? Or, to move in the other direction, having determined that “military justice” is not good enough for alleged mass murders, must we continue to pretend that it is good enough for members of the military? Can we not admit everyone into a single and improved justice system? We’re not hearing that discussion.
An improved justice system would require the admission into court of videos of all confessions and interrogations. This would not include admissions made to a journalist prior to imprisonment, as in the case of KSM and Al Jazeera, but would include all interrogations since that time. And in KSM’s case it might include video of the “interrogation” of his children. Years ago, allegations were made that the United States had tortured his children, including in little-heard-of manners, such as locking a child in a box with a supposedly deadly insect. More recently, secret memos emerged showing the United States to have authorized just those techniques.
If this were a story about missing sex tapes, the media would be all over it. A story about the possible torture of children is far less interesting. It might open up difficult questions, such as whether someone who has been endlessly tortured, and whose children may have been tortured, can — while still in the custody of the torturers — give an un-coerced confession. Questions might even have to be asked about leniency in sentencing for someone who has already served time and been horribly tortured.
If this were a story about a singer or actor or athlete, we’d see investigations of the time KSM spent attending college in North Carolina. Why didn’t the Americans he lived among persuade him of how horrible it would be to murder people in this country? Our media pundits are completely incapable of asking such a question without either blaming KSM’s American acquaintances for his crimes or declaring KSM to be an inscrutable monster whose thinking is of absolutely no interest.
Other questions might be asked as well, such as why Dick Cheney and his supporters never talk about the two memos anymore. Remember the two memos that Cheney claimed would show that the torture of KSM and others revealed important information that saved lives? The memos are now public and show nothing of the sort. Nor was torture needed in order to prosecute KSM himself. In fact, as Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, the ability of the government to prosecute him without using evidence obtained through torture demonstrates that torture was not needed for that purpose. But why are we not talking about the two purposes torture actually serves? We know it does not produce useful information, but we also know that it produces desired lies, such as agreement to false rationales for war. And we know that it scares people, both people who fear they might be tortured and people who fear the wild beasts depicted as reachable only through torture.
As Glenn Greenwald has touched on, behaving as though terrorized, irrationally unable to believe an alleged terrorist can be held in a cell and tried in a court, is to give in to the terrorism. Worse, it is to advance it. More Americans are more terrorized following TV discussions of KSM’s possible prosecution than were beforehand, because the voices on the TV promote the terror rather than the prosecution.
We are hearing about the need to avoid evidence obtained through torture. But at the same time we are hearing absolutely nothing about the need to prosecute the torturers and the creators of the torture program, at least one of whom, John Yoo, is given a platform as one of the disinterested media commentators in the MSM. This failure is an ideal way to create more KSMs. Why don’t we talk about it?
David Swanson is the author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union
Bingo, Lee Hamilton admitted it (of course, outside)@1:30 mark
Another one that seems to tell why they don’t want a public trial of KSM, oops
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...eature=channel
We need to study this stuff because our society has gone through major changes after 9/11 and due to this War on Terror. OUR Freedoms have been curtailed. Our treasury has been bankrupted. We need more investigative journalists and citizens to speak out confidently with these issues and the questions surrounding them. Thanks Brad Blog and David Swanson. And spread the news.
If Americans Knew What Israel Is Doing! VIDEO WAS CENSORED!
If Americans Knew What Israel Is Doing! VIDEO WAS CENSORED!
Finally someone agrees with me. My contention is that 9/11 was not an act of war by a foreign country but a mass murder. It doesn’t matter whether their motive was ideological, political or theological, the perpetrators are still criminals.
They belonged to a radical religious cult like the people who consider Dr. Tiller’s murderer a hero.
if these guys are convicted is “justice delayed,justice denied” gone forever?
will it be ok for the county prosecutor to lock a person up for years,torture them and then prosecute them?
Why don’t some of you people just admit that your problem is with Israel’s zionist wing that won’t cower before the islamofascists presently plotting the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel?
Let’s remember that there’s a smelly midget running Iran that wants to see Israel destroyed.
It’s anti-Semistism, pure and simple. See, I can play the race card, too, just like you people who consider attacks on Obama as racist.
There is of course plenty more the CIA-controlled mainstream media will not touch, and that has to do with the fact that the official 9-11 holds no water at all and that scientific analysis has proven conclusively that the towers were brought down by engineered thermite and traditional explosives in controlled demolitions. Which therefore makes any trial of KSM a FUCKING SHAM… and by extension, makes AG Holder and Pres. Obusha complicit for deliberately perpetuating the lie.
I can see a band of besheeted men on Arabian stallions affixing ropes to the bars and pulling down the prison walls to pluck their brothers from the jaws of “justice” before riding off to rape the shoppers on Fifth Avenue and pillage the trading floors on Wall Street….
David Black @8 foolishly said:
Um, because that’s not our problem. But why don’t you admit that you’re a little coward afraid of swarthy Mediterraneans who you think give enough of a damn about you, that they are hiding behind every corner, and merit the complete dissolution of our Constitution in order to protect us from?
Oh, noes! How will Israel and the U.S. possibly protect themselves from such a scary scary little midget! Better break out the duct tape and saran wrap right away!
I’ll be sure to let my family know that next time I’m home for Passover. Dope.
The War on Terror and Radical Islam are both hoaxes. As any investigator worth his salt would ask, “Who Benefits?” Qui Bono.
It isn’t about religion. Its about power and control. As Chomsky stated, “Israel is a forward military base for the Western empire”.
Its about oil, its about petro dollar hegemony.
It isn’t about KSM or Sarah Palin.
Thanks, Brad, I am aware that self-hating Jews exist in this world, who lean to the left and condemn Israel’s treatment of those po’ Pallys, the very same people who have been attacking Jews for the last hundred years.
Israel is the nation of our people. You either support her unconditionally or you don’t.
By the way, Brad, I lived there for two years in the 1970s and saw what islamofascist scum does to innocent Israeli women and children.
Perhaps you are Ok with seeing our people slaughtered. You sound like one that would have gladly boarded the trains to Buchenwald instead of resisting. Sorry, I don’t have time for people who gladly submit to the evil stench that want to kill Jews.
Why would any self-respecting Jew be concerned with how some arab terrorist scum is treated in jail?
Why are you worried about the “rights” of those who are trying to kill our people?
I think you need to review some history of the Holocaust. Perhaps you didn’t grow up in a household amid survivors where everyday you were reminded of how sick this world is when it comes to regarding our people.
“Manufacturing enemies they are” – Yoda
The war on terror is projection.
Anyone who cites the beliefs of one of the more egregious self-hating Jews like Noam Chumpsky loses their credibility with me. Remember that this is the same guy that didn’t have a problem with communism as a form of government. I still remember his paper from 1976 praising Pol Pot.
Chumpsky hates Israel because leftist creeps like him see the nation as nothing more than an extension of the equally hated American defense foreign policy strategy.
He’s rather show sympathy for those that are killing his own people. Right, that makes a lot of sense.
Conspiracy theories are for the mentally insane.
David Black: Did you watch the video posted in comment #5 ???
David Black: reading your comments, it sounds like Israel is #1 and the United States is #2 for you. For me? The United States is #1 because I’m an American citizen. I’m worried about our bleeding finances in the wars of lies, health care for all, U.S. problems. Israel has universal health care for all, we don’t. Are you concerned about that?
One more thing: the “definition man” David Black defines self-hating Jews as Jews who don’t agree with him, like Chomsky and Brad…and I guess Glenn Greenwald, or anyone who’s Jewish and doesn’t agree with him. Maybe the Zionists are “self-hating Jews” according to someone else’s definition. We all saw what the Zionists did in Gaza, the war crimes using high-tech weapons on helpless civilians, killing over a thousand of them. Who’s killing who right now, David Black? And who’s supplying them the weapons?
Sad isn’t it? Black and his ilk are acting just like the people his Grandparents (rightfully) despised oh so many years ago. History does repeat itself, only the actors change.
“…those po’ pallys”? Seriously?…
I hate this ugly shit, but it must be exposed.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmem....php?ref=recdc
It’s rather telling that you don’t cite the number of muslim clerics who each day teach muslim children that Jews are related to apes and pigs and must be destroyed.
My people have been taking shit from the rest of the world for five thousand years, especially from arab and muslim dogs in the middle east, and you wonder why we have to constantly fight in self-defense for the preservation of our homeland?
Some of you people really need to read your history and stop putting every race, ethnicity, culture, religion, etc on the same moral plane.
I’m sure someone is about to spout off about the so-called “ZOG conspiracy.”
Most kooks do.
Unfortunately, I’m on the road, so don’t have time to respond to the bulk of David Black’s regrettable, self-loathing, U.S.-loathing commentary. But if you wonder why Israel’s people continue to be in danger after all these years of “unconditional support” from the U.S. and Mr. Black, look no farther than the thinking on display here as illustrated by his embarrassing comments.
For folks out there who aren’t Jewish, I promise that not all of “our people” think like him. Thank God. On behalf of “my people”, however, I apologize deeply for folks like Mr. Black who succeed in feeding into every regrettable prejudice against the Jewish people.
If it were up to the cowardly appeasers who cower before islamofascists instead of fighting them, Israel would have been wiped off the map already.
You don’t extend your hand out in friendship to snarling dogs. You kill them.
Homo sapiens are a violent and warring species. That will never change Accept that reality and stop hoping for a world that will never exist.
Again, I am sure people like Mr. Friedman would have compliantly boarded the train to Buchenwald and died like sheep awaiting slaughter.
It’s so easy for you people to opine from behind your computers when you haven’t ever put your own lives at risk or helplessly watched people die from enemy fire before your very eyes.
Sad, confused, fossil David Black @27 said:
Good name-calling! That’ll show me!
Make sure not to tell Nixon, or he’ll have to go back and kill China! And don’t let Ronald Reagan know that he’ll have to go back and crush the USSR!
At least David Black and his violent and warring (and self-destructive) friends , anyway.
Nah. No matter how hard you wish, David, you won’t live forever.
No doubt. I’ve got quite the track record here of putting up with bullies and fascists. Good luck on your crusade, David, I’m sure many folks buy into your tired, self-loathing rhetoric.
No doubt. Thanks for giving us all a lesson in reality, David. We’d be lost without great patriots (of Israel), such as yourself.
Any Jew that isn’t a patriot for Israel is a self-hating Jew. A self-hating Jew also sheds sympathy of the very subhumans that want to kill their fellow Jews and destroy their homeland Israel.
“Good luck on your crusade, David, I’m sure many folks buy into your tired, self-loathing rhetoric.”
Yes, it’s so tiresome, yet there’s a revered leader and political party in Israel that agrees with me! Ever hear of Binyamin Netanyahu? Isn’t he the Prime Minister of Israel? Ever hear of the Likud party? Doesn’t a dominant right wing coalition run Israel right now?
Hmm, some eight million people over there must agree with ME. Doesn’t say much for YOUR crusade. But as long as you have the left wing world press corps elite and pseudo-intellectual scum like Noam Chumpsky and Howard Zinn, you’ll believe you have some say in the matter, won’t you, bubbie?
Seriously, David? You’re still here?
Just FYI:
Sorry to hear you’re not from here, David. I mistook you for a U.S. citizen. Nonetheless, by your stellar logic, I guess Hitler must have had it right. 88 million agreed with him.
As I said, good luck on your crusade. We’ll keep fighting for truth, justice, the American Way — and yes, even the best interests of Israel — even if you don’t seem to give much of a damn about any of ’em.
No need to apologize for him Brad, we all have bigotry in our “people” groups.
How would you like to live with the fact that the last political discussion you had with your father before he died telling you, he, as a WWII infantryman that Hitler was right?
I don’t know in what context he was saying that, I only know he had an eternal hatred towards “do gooders”, meaning (I think) liberals in general.
You don’t see me running around waving a Nazi flag.
It was more like a punch in the gut. It broke my heart.
…oh, and it is possible he was bomb throwing, he tended to do that when he was losing an argument 😉
I think that to make myself feel better. :sigh:
David Black said seriously on 11/18/2009 @ 6:10 pm PT:
“Why would any self-respecting Jew be concerned with how some arab terrorist scum is treated in jail?
Why are you worried about the “rights” of those who are trying to kill our people?”
Let me play a word game here and switch some nouns:
Why would any self-respecting German be concerned with how some Jewish terrorist scum is treated in jail?
Why are you worried about the “rights” of those who are trying to kill our people?
I think David Black needs to review some history of the Holocaust.
Same evil, different place.
This is why lib egalitarianism is a foolish way to look at the world.
Equating what Israel does in self-defense of her people and homeland with what nazi Germany did decades ago is patently absurd.
Some of you people must of failed your history classes, because you did not learn anything from them, except that there are haves and have-nots engaged in class warfare.
By the way, I am an American citizen, but I am a Jew first. My racial heritage trumps my citizenship.
I want him to explain in detail what role Osama Bin Laden played in the planning and financing of the attack.
The most wanted website maintained by the FBI lists the alegations against Osama Bin Ladin in conection to the 9 11 attacks. There are none.
Here ya go Tunga, all interpol has is “subject to UN sanctions” on him. From 1998. No Tim Osman in his aliases either.
http://www.interpol.int/public/...1998_20232.asp
Thanks floridiot. Tunga remembers OBL said just before he graduated from harvard engineering school in 1976 he intended to bring down the west. We also informed a friend (based on Debka reports posted @ worldnetdailey) that OBL was going to bring down the WTC with planes four months before it happened. Tunga would like to belive his days of being a useful idiot are over. Who really knows? Beni Bhutto?
David Black conveniently ignores the fact that Israel was formed by a process of appeasement with Jewish terror groups like the Irgun and Stern Gang who killed British civilians until they got what they wanted. Once Israel was formed, those KNOWN terrorists took positions of high office in the new government.
Don’t be a hypocrite. At least know the history of the country you’d rather support over the US.
There’s a word for putting your own ethnic group ahead of anything else.
@David Black #34, “My racial heritage trumps my citizenship.” You sound like a klansman. One of their slogans is “My skin is my uniform.”
I saw a really interesting documentary on HBO last night about the Mumbai terrorist attack. The sole survivor was viewed on camera as he was interrogated by an Indian interrogator. There was NO TORTURE involved and the young man spilled the beans completely. He seemed to TRUST the interviewer.