Confessions Extracted Under Torture Are Worthless
by Ian Mosley
The latest bit of neocon propaganda which we are being fed in the run-up to Bush’s unprovoked attack on Iran is that an Arab named Khalid Sheik Mohammed has confessed to “masterminding” the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and personally beheading a Jew named Daniel Pearl back in 2002 as well. Why it took so long for Mohammed’s “confession” to be trotted out, no one is saying. His arrest was trumpetted as a great victory, but it hasn’t led to the arrest of Osama bin Laden. This raises the question: Can we believe anything from our government on the war on terror? Maybe this guy was running a falafel stand and just got swept in off the street.
According to the Sydney Herald, “‘I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,’ Mohammed said in a statement, read by a US military officer at the hearing held at the US camp for war on terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.” Mohammed supposedly said as well, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan.” No media or other impartial observers have been allowed near this man, so we have no way of knowing if Mohammed even said any such thing at all, under torture or not. (more…)