Mohammed’s Confession

Americans have gotten a wake-up call from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. With his 'œchilling' confession before a tribunal in Guantánamo last week, the captured chief of operations for al Qaida has reminded us about the horrific ambitions of Islamic extremism, whose magnitude many have forgotten in the five years since 9/11. Mohammed proudly said he was 'œresponsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,' and confessed to playing a role in more than 30 other terrorist plots or attacks. He was part of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing, which killed 202. That same year, he said, 'œI decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl,' the executed Wall Street Journal reporter. Years before that, Mohammed says, he plotted to bomb landmarks such as the Empire State Building and the Panama Canal. This grotesque litany shows 9/11 was no 'œaberration,' and that the threat posed by radical Islam is 'œneither a figment of President Bush's imagination nor a byproduct of the Iraq war.' Â

'œBut consider the source,' said the Baltimore Sun. As the 9/11 commission pointed out, Mohammed has a 'œdecidedly grandiose view of himself and his role in al Qaida.' He's essentially taken credit for most of the terrorist acts committed by that organization and confessed to a wide array of plots that were previously unknown, such as schemes to assassinate Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. It's entirely possible that he's feeding his enemy misinformation to confuse us or to shield other terrorist cohorts. That's why it was a mistake not to prosecute Mohammed in the American justice system, said Anne Applebaum in The Washington Post. Instead, he was interrogated in 'œsecret, extralegal, and completely unregulated conditions' in a CIA prison abroad, where he claims to have been tortured. Torture is well documented to produce bogus confessions, so how do we know what's true and what isn't? In 'œthe court of international opinion,' Mohammed's confession was viewed with even greater skepticism—proving that interrogating captured terrorists outside the rule of law is not only ineffective, it's 'œprofoundly counterproductive.'

You must be joking, said David Rivkin and Rich Lowry in the New York Post. Mohammed and his cohorts are no ordinary murderers. They are unlawful enemy combatants who target civilians on purpose, 'œin violation of the traditional laws of war.' Al Qaida has forsaken the norms of civilization and the Geneva Conventions, and does not deserve their protection. Extending Mohammed—'œan enemy of humanity'—the rights of an American citizen, and trying him in an American court, would have been even more absurd.

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The Boston Globe

Daniel Byman

Slate.com