Proof that BDS is one of the least insane parts that is DU
JackRiddler (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-09-09 11:10 AM
Original message
"KSM" and his "Judge" in farce Gitmo "trial" - Latest news & saga to date
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x231259
Why all those quotes in the headline? Read on...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
Judge's Order Could Keep Public From Hearing Details of 9/11 Trials
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 7, 2009; Page A02
The military judge overseeing proceedings against five of the men accused of planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks signed an order designed to protect classified information that is so broad it could prevent public scrutiny of the most important trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to lawyers and human rights groups.
The protective order, which was signed on Dec. 18 by Judge Stephen R. Henley, an Army colonel, not only protects documents and information that have been classified by intelligence agencies, it also presumptively classifies any information "referring" to a host of agencies, including the CIA, the FBI and the State Department. The order also allows the court in certain circumstances to classify information already in the public domain and presumptively classifies "any statements made by the accused."
Three of the accused, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed,* the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, are defending themselves and, under the order, anything they say during the course of the trial could be shielded from the public.
"These rules turn the presumption of openness on its head, making what is perhaps the most important trial in American history presumptively closed to the public and the press," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. "If these rules applied in all cases, there would be no such thing as an open trial in America."
Late Monday, the judge appeared to have second thoughts about the breadth of the order...
SNIP (theirs, not mine)
* The Infamous "KSM" - A Resume:
- Pakistani born, raised in Kuwait, received his college degrees in North Carolina, supposed uncle to WTC 1993 bomber Ramzi Yussef, supposed "number three" and operations chief of "al-Qaeda" until 2003.
- Supposedly interviewed confessing his "mastermind" role in 9/11 in April, May or June 2002 by Al Jazeera reporter Yosri Fouda, who has made various conflicting claims as to how and when the interview happened. Fouda claims to have captured "KSM's" confession on a video that, however, no longer exists, except for the audio track in which, Fouda says, the voices were distorted to prevent identification.
See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
- Reported killed in Sept. 11, 2002 Karachi raid by Pakistani security forces.
- Reported captured in Mar. 2003 Karachi raid. (Man who looks like Ron Jeremies photographed in undershirt.)
- Reported held at undisclosed locations by CIA for several years before being brought as a "high-value prisoner" to the US torture and illegal detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
- Reported tortured by waterboarding and other means during this time.
- Supposed tapes made of said interrogations under torture later reported as destroyed by CIA.
See "Which lie should we believe? CIA admits it destroyed evidence it said didn't exist" at http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2007120816312...
- During said interrogations under torture, provided "confessions" to "masterminding" 9/11 and a long string of terror attacks, in some of which he could not have had even a peripheral role; including the beheading of Daniel Pearl -- which the family of the killed journalist hotly dispute, and for which Omar Saeed Sheikh is still on death row in Pakistan.
- Interrogations under torture of "KSM" and two other Gitmo prisoners provided most details of alleged Sept. 11th attack planning by "al Qaeda" as presented in The 9/11 Commission Report. Fully one-quarter of all report citations lead back to the testimony supposedly extracted under torture.
See http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/30/...
"The NBC News analysis shows that more than one quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al-Qaida operatives who were subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations is central to the Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks. The analysis also shows - and agency and commission staffers concur - there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, done specifically to answer new questions from the Commission."
- The supposed "KSM" in US custody has never been presented in a legitimate court proceeding, public venue (unless you count the closed Gitmo "court,") or even photograph or video.
- Now presented in court drawings as heavily bearded, "KSM" or the actor playing him currently trying to put in a guilty plea at the ongoing unconstitutional military kangaroo tribunal for 9/11 being conducted at the US government's Gitmo torture and illegal detention center. (Sorry if the terms get unwieldy when one avoids the euphemisms.
- And so the "judge" (i.e., the military officer presiding over the farcical travesty of justice) now set to kill the release of the transcripts, even from this tightly-controlled proceeding.
- As though there would be anything to hide in there, given that agencies can present their hearsay summaries as evidence without needing to identify sources or have accusers or witnesses appear directly in the proceeding.
Remember kids, case closed!
From "Another take on the torture tapes," Dec. 12, 2007 at http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2007121211073...
Joseph Cannon in his blog of Dec. 10 recalls how past CIA claims of lost evidence later turned out to be untrue: "When the CIA tells you that a piece of evidence has been destroyed, you should react as skeptically as you would to the death of a Marvel supervillain."
One certainty is that the CIA lied, either when it told the 9/11 Commission that tapes of certain interrogations were never made, or else in its current claim that such tapes did exist but have been destroyed. This serves to underline the absurdity of accepting any CIA statements, any at all, especially about 9/11. By extension, the 9/11 Commission is yet again tainted for using the CIA's prisoner "transcripts" uncritically as a main source in its report; whether out of cynicism or unforgivable naivete is irrelevant.
It's near impossible to tell on how many levels the CIA can be (and probably is) lying about the torture tapes. They may be lying about having certain prisoners in the first place, about who they really are and what, if anything, they really did. What did these prisoners tell interrogators and was it true? When conscience or the law finally bites, can the torturer at least claim the information was good?
Were real interrogations recorded or were fake ones played for the camera? Were tapes destroyed or merely "disappeared," and either way, when and why? Cannon wonders whether the motive is to conceal the involvement of foreign agencies, like those of Israel or Saudi Arabia, in interrogations of U.S.-held prisoners. We wonder if some of the tapes will make the constructed nature of the official 9/11 fable a little too obvious. In the age of the Secret State we're all forced to play psychic: What do they want to hide?
JackRiddler (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-09-09 02:36 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. The saddest authoritarians are those who think they're free
Powerless to censor, they reach to ridicule.
JackRiddler (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-09-09 10:53 PM
Response to Reply #13
14. Do you believe in new and improved mouthwash? Dianetics, perhaps?
Edited on Fri Jan-09-09 11:07 PM by JackRiddler
If you want to take it there...
given the longstanding tolerance and cancerous growth of a privatized, black-budget, multipolar, secret and utterly corrupt para-state immune from oversight and investigation...
and given that para-state's long record of demonstrating that no crime, no lie, no murder or even genocide is morally off-limits if it is judged as worthy under its demented "national security" calculus...
...a radical universal doubt program has its temptations; but there's nothing suggesting, let alone requiring, the lengths your absurd comparisons suggest.
Just another strawman.
"KSM" is as packaged a product as anything the Office of Special Plans or WHIG produced. Perhaps you're the one who believes ads promising that Mouthwash X will make you sexy? How do you know that Jesus won't save you, or that L. Ron Hubbard didn't talk to aliens?
Perhaps you missed the part where "KSM" was reported killed in a Sept. 11, 2002 Karachi shootout, later "captured" nevertheless, then presented to the public in a deceptive way as a propaganda tool (by the CIA's admission to ABC), then tortured at undisclosed locations and held there for two years, then "confessed" to crimes he definitely did not commit, recorded during interrogations -- oh, wait, not recorded during interrogations -- oh wait, recorded but the recordings were destroyed,
etc. etc.
Are you suggesting any parallels in that story to the public and in many ways exemplary life of the president-elect?
And now the spectacle of your supposedly constitutional republic holding a military kangaroo court with secret evidence and testimony, absent witnesses and suppressed transcripts, justified by the doctrine that this is war and therefore the commander in chief is a unitary executive who can make and break laws as he pleases. This doesn't concern you, but me saying you know nothing about "KSM" does.
You know nothing about "KSM." You don't have the clearance to know. This should make you angry at a government that expects allegiance to its implausible truths solely on faith, or to the corporate media moutpiece for the faith. But you prefer to condemn those wh o commit lese majesty.
Why, I don't know, since it's so... superfluous.
State and media already amp out the official reality all the time, and do a much better job of damage control when their stories are doubted; they hardly need you to defend them. Perhaps it's simply that you so deeply identify with their power, that you feel its crisis as your own? That would be sad, not meaning that I'd weep, but in the sense of "pathetic."
Sophistry is one thing, my dear man, but you have to try. It has to actually mimic logic to mean anything.
Jack, deriding Strawmen...irony meter...broken...
JackRiddler (1000+ posts) Sat Jan-10-09 12:50 AM
Response to Reply #19
20. It doesn't matter who you think that guy is.
You don't know. You're not allowed to know, in the way that you are allowed to know about far less important criminal cases. That's the point. And you apparently don't care. It seems more important to you to insult me and misrepresent me. This is puzzling, since anyone reading your falsehoods about what I said can read what I actually said one inch above or below your post.
Remember: "Last one to post in this thread wins!"
hint- Jack thinks that KSM, isn't. It's an actor.
JackRiddler (1000+ posts) Sat Jan-10-09 09:18 AM
Response to Reply #21
22. Who is a cynic?
Edited on Sat Jan-10-09 09:19 AM by JackRiddler
Cynicism is a philosophy and attitude.
Attitude is not what makes the "KSM" stories dubious and unacceptable as evidence with regard to Sept. 11th.
Rather:
- inherent implausibility of the stories;
- conflicting reports (often from same source);
- context of 9/11 lies and cover-up generally;
- track record and known conflicts-of-interest of the sources;
- withholding of records and expectation one must believe on faith;
- atmosphere of fear (questioning encourages more "terrorism");
- admitted use of torture;
- admitted destruction of evidence, although even this may be a lie;
- illegal and unconstitutional show trials with secret evidence and absent witnesses;
- defining nature of 9/11 as a cause for war and positively absurd terror policies (i.e., a whole system that cannot afford to have the official story topple)
...
Under these circumstances, it's sweetly reasonable to doubt, it shows sound mental health and self-confidence. It's highly cynical to uncritically propagate and even enforce faith in the "KSM" story.
The boy in the story who said the emperor was naked was exuberant, not cynical.
But, in the story, the Emperor was indeed naked. No one is arguing that the Emperor was not naked, or that the Emperor was naked on purpose... MINOP?
JackRiddler (1000+ posts) Sun Jan-11-09 12:27 AM
Response to Reply #25
28. Are you saying these family members knew "KSM" before his "capture"?
That's a hell of a conspiracy allegation! How dare you?!
Of course that's not what you mean, but what the ****: boloboffin lives by the strawman, so why can't I shake one too?
And I do understand why you need your emoticons to do the laughing for you!
So, as you say, a couple of Pentagon-cleared relatives of Sept. 11 victims were allowed into the gallery for the Gitmo tribunal, separated from the courtroom by six-inch glass. And they saw a bearded guy there, whom they presumably had never seen before in their lives; as I said, "KSM or the actor playing him."
How could they know that this "KSM" really was the mastermind, that the story he told under torture was true, that this was indeed the real "KSM," or that he even has the same mind as he did in 2001, given the transformations and traumas people undergo when the CIA bundles them into a bag and keeps them in a dungeon for a few years? (If you bother to answer that, then this time please without ignoring the long list of "KSM" story absurdities, contradictions and known lies detailed in this thread and in the 9/11 Timeline at historycommons.org.)
Okay, okay, we know this isn't about logic or standards of evidence, and this time you'll come back with a bigger laugh icon, or throw in the phone book again. At the moment, it's about you using the relatives as human shields for justifying your belief, against any reason, in the government's faith-based bullshit.
You keep condemning me and appealing to ridicule for supposedly saying it is an actor, though of course anyone who can read knows that's not what I said. You're the one who claims the true identity of the supposed captured "KSM" person seen by the relatives can be known. You're the one who offers only ridicule as an avoidance mechanism, against the many, many reasons cited here to exclude the government's KSM stories as evidence of anything, regardless what the truth may actually be.
How sad for you!
Jack. Did you know KSM before 9/11? How do you KNOW it's an actor?
seemslikeadream (1000+ posts) Sun Jan-11-09 12:50 PM
Response to Reply #30
32. Make us some rain JackRiddler, make the truth grow tall
Rainmaker, rainmaker The sky is gray just by the
touch of your hand Rainmaker, rainmaker Make me
some rain, make all my crops grow tall
Rainmaker, rainmaker The sky is gray, the ground
is so hard It's been cracked by the sun Rainmaker,
you know my work's never done
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK1k4y0EttQ
SLAD drops acid.
really.
