9/11 Mastermind Confesses to 9/11 and just about everything else, ever

[sspadowsky]

Hey, who says torture doesn't work? So far, I've read this morning that Khalid Sheik Mohammed has confessed to masterminding 9/11, the beheading of Daniel Pearl, the Richard Reid shoe-bomb incident, an attempt to assassinate Jimmy Carter, and damn near everything except JFK.

Don't misunderstand- I'm not saying he was a good guy, or that he wasn't necessarily behind these things, but the dude has spent about 2 1/2 years in the CIA's secret prison system. I'll bet he has confessed to JFK.

[mburbank]

I like the part where they ask him if he confessed to any of these things under duress and his answer is blacked out.

[Geggy]

say what, now?

[GAsux]

I don't doubt he was under some form of duress at various points over the last three years. But I don't think that had a single thing to do with his confessions.

I believe he overstated his role significantly, either to protect the people around him or is an egomaniac who wanted to portray himself as a more important figure than he really is.

Or a combonation of both. But I think his confessions had little to do with torture, whether it happened or not.

[mburbank]

That could well be. But that has no bearing on wether it's okay to torture people, hence the redaction, which is pretty much as good as an admission, because why would you redact "No, I got a room with a whirlpool tub and they put a mint on my pillow every night"

Hopefully they will prosecute him on what they have hard evidence that on no way relies on his confession, which is probably plenty. I wouldn't be surprised though if they can't resist taking it all at face value and saying "See? See who we caught? This guy didn't just do 9/11, he's like, responsible for EVERYTHING BAD! That's how great a job we did."

[GAsux]

I haven't seen whomever "they" are say anything of the kind. In fact, I've seen a few official statements regarding the fact that the government's position is that his involvements are probably overstated.

And I made no allusion to whether torture is right or not. I simply stated that I'm not .05% convinced that said possibility of torture affected his "confessions". Im certain that there are people who've probably made confessions under duress to avoid maltreatment, but I don't believe this is one of those cases.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Yeah, I mean if you're going to blow this way out of proportion, you might as well have fun with it the way Geggy does.

"I don't believe he did all these things, because I know he DIED two years ago!!! Geeeeegggy!"