The man who is guilty of everything

There is nothing like years of torture and painful incarceration to loosen someone's tongue.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man long alleged to have planned the September 11 attacks, has admitted responsibility for those strikes on the US and other al-Qa'ida operations, according to a transcript of a hearing taking place at Guantanamo Bay. There was no way to confirm the testimony as the Bush administration has banned reporters and lawyers from proceedings.

According to the transcript, Mr Mohammed told a hearing on Saturday that he was "responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z". He also apparently claimed to have planned assassination attempts on the former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and on Pope John Paul II. He also said he was responsible for the 1993 attack on New York's World Trade Centre, the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, and an attempt to bring down two American airplanes using shoe bombs. In all, he said he was behind 29 planned attacks.

I am surprised he has not admitted to assassinating JFK, Jack Ruby and starting world war 2
as yet. In fact, I am pretty sure he will soon admit to inventing a time machine and travelling back to murder Abe Lincoln. Given sufficient voltage and a pliant pair of testicles, the truth will soon be revealed and everybody will thank god that George Bush has been protecting freedom by incarcerating and torturing such evil-doers in Camp X-ray. Incredibly, a BBC reporter on Radio 4 this morning explained these confessions by saying that this was because Khalid was a 'boastful character' who wanted to come across as a true terrorist mastermind. Despite a brief mention of waterboarding he made no mention of any other torture that might have been inflicted on Khalid. The BBC taking US authorities at face value again? Surely not.

I dread to think of the horrors that have made this man admit to these crimes. It is something that fades from the public view thanks to our media who do not tell us each time that this man has been incarcerated and tortured for years. It reminds me of the feeling of horror, I felt when I learnt that the Turks had gotten hold of Abdullah Ocalan (not out of sympathy for the PKK but knowing their propensity for torture). Sure enough he soon appeared on TV to renounce all his previous misdeeds.

Turkish journalists who have interviewed Ocalan have come away with the impression of a "megalomaniac" and "sick" man who has no respect for or understanding of the "superior values of European civilization."

"Everyone should take note of the way I live, what I do and what I don't do," a December edition of the Turkish Daily News quoted Ocalan as saying in one of his many speeches.

Not recognising the superior values of European civilisation? I guess he deserved it then. If you need proof just look at his conversion to the values of western civilisation:

Since his incarceration he has significantly changed his ideology, reading Western social theorists like Murray Bookchin, Immanuel Wallerstein, Fernand Braudel^[20], fashioned his ideal society as "Democratic-Ecological Society" (later renamed as "Democratic-Ecological-Gender Liberationist Society" as it is in the current programme of PKK) and refers to Friedrich Nietzsche as "a prophet"

Proof indeed that electric shock therapy to the genitals and other forms of torture, are not only important for protecting us from the evil turrsts but also for converting them to see the light.