I thought I'd chime up with my own tuppence worth on some issues that are raised by the recent Khalid Sheikh Mohammed debacle...
The first thing I'd like to say is that it appears to have been widely appreciated just how ridiculous the "confessions" obtained by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed appear to be. For those who don't know (if you have been living under a rock for the past week), Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has admitted to being the mastermind behind every terrorist atrocity, real and imagined, since about 1980.
My main point is this: whilst many of us accept that at least some of these confessions seem a little spurious, how, therefore, can we accept any of them$%:
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I'm not going to go through and list the 30 crimes that he has admitted to. Nor am I going to talk about the fact that, after 4 years of rigorous interrogation and probing, potential for torture, and generally inhumane treatment, even I might admit to things I did not do. No, I'm not. What I am going to say, though, is what this whole fiasco means to me.
Firstly, the very fact that the American's have chosen to announce their crime solving and terrorist-busting prowess to the world in this way suggests either a naivety beyond belief, or, more worryingly, a complete underestimation of the world's ability to make their own conclusions. The persons responsible for announcing this "great" achievement obviously thought that the rock throwing masses would actually buy this story - or they believed the confessions themselves$%: I'm not sure which notion worries me more: that those responsible believed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's alleged confessions; or that they made (some of) them up, and expected us to$%:
Perhaps more worrying, though, is my main point. As we all seem to have realised that these confessions are invalid and "not worth the paper they are written on" (incidentally, how there ever came to be a transcript of secret interrogations is beyond me too) what does this mean for the The American War on Terror (or T.W.A.T, as I have seen it described)$%: What of WMD$%: What about all the terrible things we were told Saddam Hussein had done$%:
What, now, do we make of those first assertions that it was all Osama Bin Laden's fault$%: What of those videos we have all seen, you know, the ones where Osama Bin Laden admits to being a nasty pasty$%:
After we have all finished resoundingly poo-pooing these confessions, perhaps we may consider this point more carefully: if these aren't true, then what is$%: Is Osama Bin Laden really responsible for all the attacks on the west of which he stands accused$%: Could those videos not have been hoaxes or mock-ups$%: What of all the other countless things we have been fed, through the media, about various unsavoury characters, and their alleged misdemeanors (issued perhaps with the goal of creating one enemy with whom blame could be laid for everything, in order to help a War on Terror which would otherwise seem an incredibly large and impossible task)$%:
I 'd like to see some evidence. For example, how many of us who watched the Osama tapes on the news (at least the little sound-bity excerpts that they showed our tiny attention spans) and read the little subtitles at the bottom actually know what he was saying$%: By this I mean how many of us can speak Arabic$%: Further, how many of us actually know that this was absolutely, definitely, Osama Bin Laden making these wild claims$%: Very, very few. Yet we accept them as true.
Is it too much of a stretch of the imagination to conclude that such stories may not be as valid as they first appear$%:
I admire the American political publicity machine. Really I do. Who else could push their ideas and agendas forward so quickly and easily, and have them picked up by so many news stations across the globe$%: Who else could make an allegation without producing a shred of evidence (by this I mean actual valid evidence, which would have to be produced to accuse an ordinary man of an ordinary crime) and turn certain individuals into public enemy number 1 (and 2,3,4 etc)$%:
But, alas, I fear with this one they may well have shot themselves in the foot. Once people begin questioning the validity of your statements, you are surely in trouble of never being believed, not unlike the boy who cried wolf.
Perhaps it is precisely this kind of behaviour which has helped turn those people who are Anti-West against the west. I'm not saying that I condone any of the terrorist acts, indeed, I find them abhorrent. However, what I am saying is this: the actions taken by the American government in releasing the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "confessions" is indicative of either incredible arrogance (in expecting to be believed) or extreme stupidity (in believing the confessions themselves).
It is not hard to imagine (though it might require a degree of empathy) how one brought up in the Middle East, or of such extraction, upon whom western interests have had, in their opinion, a manifestly adverse impact on their community and/or country and/or region, might be a little perturbed at having this done by a west which has, as it's one superpower, a country and Government which is perceived as either a) incredibly arrogant or b) extremely stupid.
This, surely, cannot help things$%:
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