Bin Laden: Moussawi not a 9/11 Hijacker
Anyone who has actually read a transcript of anything Zacarias Moussaoui has said has immediately recognized that he is not a high-powered al-Qaeda operative on the model of Muhammad Atta. In fact, anyone who has half a brain has been able to see that Moussaoui is just mentally disturbed. I.e. he is one bulb short of a chandelier. That doesn't mean he is insane or could not cope with daily life. Mental disturbance exists on a broad spectrum. Moussaoui, if he had not come under the influence of bad characters in a London mosque, might have gone through life as a ranting, odd bird. (You encounter people like that all the time on the streets of a big city. Also increasingly on the pages of our newspapers, but that is a different story).
No professional and highly competent terrorist organization would ever send a man like Moussaoui to do anything important. So it comes as no surprise that Bin Laden now says that he was not part of 9/11. Bin Laden quite plausibly, for a mass murderer and terrorist mastermind, explains that he would have pulled the hijackers out of the United States if he had heard that one of the team had been captured. Moussaoui was arrested two weeks before 9/11.
On the other hand, the old monster is blowing smoke up our posteriors when he says that there are no al-Qaeda in Guantanamo. The Pakistanis captured over 600 fleeing Arab members, and turned most of them over to the US. This part of what Bin Laden says is just manipulative. He is trying to convince Muslims that the US only has innocents in custody, and that it was unsuccessful in capturing the real al-Qaeda operatives. It did have a handful of innocents in custody. But most of these guys (who should be charged and put on proper trial) were on the battleground trying to kill our guys. The late comedian Richard Pryor once made fun of those silly liberals who thought only innocent people are in prison. He said he had visited a penitentiary, and there were Mofos and father molesters in it, or words to that effect.
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/24/2006 06:14:00 AM
Click to join Infoco
8 Comments:
Finally, someone talks sense about Moussaoui.
I do, however, have to disagree with you about Guántanamo. YES, Bin Laden is exploiting it, YES I'm sure there are some guilty people inside it, but don't toe Bush's line and assume that everyone there is guilty. An Informant inside the detention center said he only thought 10% were guilty. FYI, the camp is growing, they just added more Saudis.
You said "It did have a handful of innocents in custody." It still does, and it's a travesty that the tribunals haven't proceeded, or that people like Khalid Sheikh Muhammad haven't been put on trial. (Oh whoops, we tortured him, we can't face a trial or use his confession now can we?)
Now there's a dilemma which crystallizes the irony of our times! Who do you mistrust least when they tell you something about Guantanamo: Bin Laden or the Pentagon??
"The Pakistanis captured over 600 fleeing Arab members, and turned most of them over to the US."
My question to Professor Cole is whether we are certain that all of these 600 Arabs were involved in plotting acts of terrorism or were all part of Bin Laden's group.
Sure they may be working for an Islamic State in Afghanistan, or may have come to fight American troops expected to overthrow the Taliban. But in that case it would have been better to treat them as prisioners of war.
Until evidence is released, or as Professor Cole recommends that they are tried in a court of law - Bin Laden and others will have the opportunity to manipulate opinion, and considering how negatively Guantamano prision is perceived over the Muslim world, this would be relatively easy.
Prof. Cole, I think you should reconsider your characterization of the prisoners in Guantanamo as having been on a battlefield trying to kill our guys. By 'our guys' do you mean the Northern Alliance, and are you including fighting before 9/11?
It appears our government will continue to operate its clandestine prisons and will subcontract its torture to subordinates such as Egypt, Syria, and Pakistan.
It also appears there will no admission of error ever and that anyone snatched up, imprisoned, and tortured for a period of time will not be able to sue the Government for such a mistake since such an error is considered to be a national security matter and not subject to judicial review.
As the GOP seems to anticipate a possible loss in the the House and erosion of their current Senate numbers as well as a serious loss of Republican governors in 2006, the drums of war beat ever louder for us to invade Iran. Watching the Jerusalem Post and some rightwing commentators, it seems Iran will have a nuke with delivery system by 2010. It seems the canard about requiring Jews to wear yellow stars has taken on a life of its own. Reports sensationalize that either there are trace amounts of high grade uranium found on some of their equipment or that they managed to refine some of their own uranium seems to mean to some people that Iran wants to nuke NYC or DC. Now we hear that if we do invade Iran that there are secret cells of Iranian operatives everywhere waiting to spring into action.
At this point it seems our chances of invading Iran is about 25%. Anyone think differently?
I am surprised and appalled at your view of the men held at Guantanamo. Did you not hear of or read the National Journal covery story from February of this year by Corinne Hegland?
Here's a summary of its key conclusions by the NJ editor, Stuart Taylor:
-------------
Corine Hegland's exhaustively researched cover story in this issue -- studded with probative details and human stories that every serious student of the war against terror should read -- provides powerful evidence confirming what many of us have suspected for years:
A high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men now held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone on "the battlefield in Afghanistan" (as Bush asserted) while "trying to kill American forces" (as McClellan claimed).
Fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members.
Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans.
The majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly doubtful reliability.
-----------
end excerpt.
There may be some detainees at Guantanamo who were terrorists or truly in combat against U.S. soldiers, but they are a small minority. And all should have been treated as prisoners of war and given the protections of the Geneva Conventions. If they had been, most of them would now be out of that prison, and the others would be being tried for their crimes.
As it is, we have subjected hundreds of men to indefinite, extended, illegal detention and abusive treatment, along with pointless interrogation. And we have nothing to show for it. Indeed, the lawlessness with which Guantanamo was set up has come back to poison this country, as well as shaming us before the world.
Where did you get the idea bin Laden said there were no al-Qaida members in Guantanamo? If the
Associated Press translation of the tape is accurate, then bin Laden only says that some are not members of al-Qaida, some of those are opposed to al-Qaida's methods, and none of them were involved in September 11. A reasonable inference from the (translated) text would be that some are members of al-Qaida.
Dear Dr. Cole,
Since none of these men have been tried in any court of law with any sort of rules of evidence, we really don't know exactly how many there are who ARE members of any terrorist group. Whether they should be covered under the Geneva Convention or not, if we consider ourselves civilized, we ought to do SOMETHING that conforms to SOME notion of due process.
Does the idea of HABEUS CORPUS mean anything to the Bush Administration? Even if we tried them publicly in a kangaroo court, at least we'd have some idea of what we are talking about. But, no matter what they have done or we think they have done, letting them rot away without any contact with their families or with legal counsel is monstrous, inexcusable and unforgiveable and only increases the hatred for us in the Arab World.
When we lock them up like this and torture them, we make ourselves NO BETTER than bin Laden. As far as I am concerned, I am an American citizen and am in some way responsible for what WE do. What bin Laden does will be judged by God, and what WE do will also be judged by God, and you and I will have to answer for the sins of the Bush Administration, not bin Laden's.
Post a Comment
<< Home