Justice Anthony Kennedy opined, awarding Habeas corpus protection to illegal combatant non-citizens captured overseas bearing arms against the United States in violation of the laws and customs of war.

Justice Kennedy’s ruling will undoubtedly open a Pandora’s box of legal argument and judicial obfuscation which will effectively paralyze the Bush Administration’s hesitant and overly scrupulous efforts to bring mass murderers operating entirely outside the law to justice.

Five of eight members of the Supreme Court have demonstrated themselves to be self-important nincompoops determined to assert judiciary authority over the executive and to strike poses, while demonstrating a truly horrifying obliviousness to legal and historical precedent and common sense.

All this is, of course, the fault of the Bush Administration, which carelessly also overlooked all precedent, and then tried to invent new forms of military justice conformable to the whims, notions, and fantastical scruples invented by its opponents in the establishment media. President Bush and the rest of the civilian administration should simply have avoided injecting themselves into the matter, and thereby allowing entry to lawyers and courts, at all. The administration should have relinquished all authority connected with prisoners captured overseas to the military authorities.

Those military authorities should have authorized local commanders quickly and on the spot by drumhead courtmartial to establish the status of these kinds of prisoners as illegal combatants required to be condemned to death by military custom and law, and those local commanders should have been instructed upon such determination to hang them.

Another satisfied customer of Shearman & Sterling LLP

International Herald-Tribune:

Al-Arabiya television reports that a former Guantanamo detainee carried out a recent suicide bombing in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

A cousin says Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti released from Guantanamo in 2005, was reported missing two weeks ago and his family learned of his death Thursday through a friend in Iraq.

The cousin, Salem al-Ajmi, told Al-Arabiya on Thursday that the former detainee was behind the latest attack in Mosul, although he did not provide more details.

Three suicide car bombers targeted Iraqi security forces in Mosul on April 26, killing at least seven people.

Mosul is believed to be the last urban stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq.

His Wikipedia entry lists the US Military’s Administrative Review Board’s Summary of Evidence

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Abdallah Salih Ali Al Ajmi’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal, on (redacted) . The memo listed the following allegations against him:

The detainee retreated to the Tora Bora region of AF and was later captured as he attempted to escape to Pakistan.

On September 2, 2003 (just under two years after 9/11), four of Shearman & Sterling‘s finest Thomas Wilner, Neil H. Koslowe, Kristine A. Huskey, and Heather Lamberg Kafele filed a Petition for writ of Certiorari on behalf of Al Ajmi and eleven others.

Mr. Wilner wrote:

All these prisoners have asked for is a fair hearing, one in which they have the chance to learn the charges against them and to rebut the accusations before a neutral decision maker.”

————————————————-

Subsequently, the prisoner denied everything:

Al Ajmi denied participating in Jihad.

Al Ajmi stated he went to Pakistan to learn and memorize the Koran — he never traveled to Afghanistan.

Al Ajmi denied any contact with the Taliban. He acknowledged that he had previously confessed to the allegations he was being asked to comment on — but those were false confessions:

“These statements were all said under pressure and threats. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t bare [sic] the threats and suffering so I started saying things. When every detainee is captured they tell him that he is either Taliban or Al-Qaida and that is it. I couldn’t bare [sic] the suffering and threatening and the pressure so I had to say I was from Taliban [sic] .”

Al Ajmi denied participating in military operations against the coalition.

Al Ajmi denied being placed in a defensive position by the Taliban:

“I am not an enemy combatant. I said this only because I was under pressure and threats and suffering.”

In response to the allegation that he admitted spending eight months in the front line at the Aiubi Center in Afghanistan, Al Ajmi responded:

“I never entered Afghanistan. I never fought with anyone. My intentions were to stay four months only but under the circumstances I had to stay for eight months. I never fought. My intentions were never to go to Afghanistan my intentions were to go to Pakistan.”

————————————————-

Appearing again before an Administrative Review Board, he responded to board member questions:

Al Ajmi My role was [sic] in this Tabligh [sic] to call people to pray, to do good. To let people know that there is an end to this world so they can pray and do well.

Board Member Is it a religious organization?

Al Ajmi Yes it is.

Board Member Al Ajmi I believe that your dedication to your religion is genuine, what direction or path will that dedication take should you be released?

Al Ajmi For peace.

————————————————-

Al Ajmi was repatriated to Kuwait November 3, 2005, where he was freed on bail, while he awaited trial. His trial began in March 2006, and he and five others were acquitted on July 22, 2006.

On April 26, in Mosul, seven members of the Iraqi security forces were killed by suicide car bombing, thus proving the excellence of the legal services provided by leading American law firms like Shearman & Sterling.

————————————————-

Hat tip to Major DRH.

Baltimore Sun:

Part 1

Part 2

Sample (from Part 1): On why Due Process is not applicable to war-time military operations:

The strictures that bind the Executive in its role as a magistrate enforcing the civil laws have no place in constraining the President in waging war:

Soldiers regularly in the service have the license of the government to deprive men,the active enemies of the government, of their liberty and lives; their commission so to act is as perfect and legal as that of a judge to adjudicate …. Wars never have been and never can be conducted upon the principle that an army is but a posse comitatis ofa civil magistrate..

Military Commissions, 11 Op.Att’y Gen. 297, 301-02 (1865) (emphasis added); see also The Modoc Indian Prisoners, 14 Op. Att’y Gen. 249, 252 (1873) (“it cannot be pretended that a United States soldier is guilty of murder if he kills a public enemy in battle, which would be the case if the municipal law was in force and, applicable to an· act committed under such circumstances”).. As Attorney General Speed conciuded, the Due Process Clause has no application to the conduct of a military campaign:

That portion of the Constitution which declares that ‘no person shall be deprived… of his life,liberty, or property without due process of law,’ has such direct reference to, and connection with, trials for crime or criminal prosecutions that comment upon it would seem to be unnecessary. Trials for offences against the laws of war are not embraced or intended to be embraced in those provisions…. The argument that flings around offenders against the laws of war these guarantees of the Constitution would convict all the soldiers of our anny of murder; no prisoners could be taken and held; the anny could not move. The absurd consequences that would of necessity flow from .such an argument show that it cannot be the true construction-it cannot be what was intended by the framers of the instrument. One of the prime motives for the Union and a federal government was to confer the powers of war. If· any provisions of the .. Constitution are so in conflict with the power to carry on war as to destroy and make it valueless, then the instrument,instead of being a great and wise one, is a miserable failure “a felo de se.”

I thought it was a fine piece of work, placing the issues in the correct historical perspective, citing proper precedents, and arriving at just and accurate conclusions. The Bush Administration ought to have released it immediately upon its production, and staunchly publicly defended it.

Alex Gibney (William Sloane Coffin’s stepson) sporting orange ribbon

The Washington Post reports on Tinseltown’s latest de rigeur fashion accessory seen everywhere at the recent Academy Awards celebration.

There was a dollop of politics. When Alex Gibney won for his documentary “Taxi to the Dark Side,” about the use of torture in the war on terror, the director said he made it to honor his father, a former Navy interrogator, who was outraged at abuses revealed at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. “Let’s hope we can turn this country around and move from the dark side to the light,” Gibney said.

Out on the red carpet, Paul Haggis (the director whose “Crash” won Best Picture in 2006) said he didn’t know what accounts for all these deeply dark, brooding, troubled films. But isn’t it obvious, he asked, flashing an orange ribbon on his lapel. Orange, why orange? “It’s Guantanamo,” his Max Azria-clad wife, Deborah, said, showing off her orange bracelet, which read: “Silence + torture = complicity.” Suddenly, we noticed — orange ribbons and bracelets everywhere.

Paul Haggis & Deborah Rennard

79-year-old Bay Area Congressman Tom Lantos is unfortunately a moderate liberal and a democrat, but he is also a Holocaust survivor and a refugee from Hungarian Communism.

AP reports that some visiting leftwing Dutch legislators recently tried telling him that the US should close its Guantanamo Bay internment facility, and Tom Lantos put them in their place.

Dutch lawmakers who visited the Guantanamo Bay military prison this week said they were offended by a testy exchange in Washington with a senior congressional Democrat.

The lawmakers said that Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told them that “Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay.”

Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, was responding to arguments that the United States should shut down the prison, located on a U.S. naval base in Cuba, the lawmakers said. Mariko Peter, a member of the Dutch Green Party, who began the exchange with Lantos, said she took notes of the remarks. …

Before the Guantanamo exchange, the lawmakers had discussed a debate in the Netherlands about whether the country should maintain its 1,600 troops serving in NATO’s Afghanistan operations.

“You have to help us, because if it was not for us you would now be a province of Nazi Germany,” Lantos said, according to the Dutch lawmakers.

“The comments killed the debate,” said Harry van Bommel, a member of the Socialist Party. “It was insulting and counterproductive.”

There are times one really wishes Tom Lantos was a Republican.

Abdullah Mehsud aka Noor Alam

AFP details the unhappy end of one of the innocent lambs unjustly detained by the Bush Administration. Poor Abdulah Mehsud was captured at Kunduz in Northern Afghanistan in December of 2001 and detained for 25 months before being released in March of 2004.

A former Guantanamo Bay prisoner wanted for the 2004 kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan blew himself up with a grenade during a clash with (Pakistani) security forces on Tuesday, officials said.

One-legged Taliban militant Abdullah Mehsud killed himself to avoid capture after troops raided his hideout, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP. …

“Abdullah Mehsud blew himself up with a grenade and died when security forces raided his hideout. Three of his accomplices were arrested,” Cheema said.

Mehsud, 32, became the leader of Pakistani Taliban insurgents based in South Waziristan in 2004, after Pakistani forces launched military operations in the troubled tribal region.

In October 2004, Islamic militants led by Mehsud pressed their demand for an end to the army moves by kidnapping two Chinese engineers working on a multi-million-dollar hydroelectric dam project in South Waziristan.

One of the hostages died in a botched rescue bid in a major embarrassment for Pakistan, which counts China as its closest ally and biggest military supplier.

Mehsud, who spent 25 months in the US-run “war on terror” prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba until his release in March 2004, escaped after the incident.

He had been hunted by Pakistani forces ever since. Officials said he had recently been involved in lauching cross-border attacks on NATO and US-led forces in Afghanistan.

“Intelligence reports pointed out his presence at a house and security forces mounted the raid. He sneaked into Zhob from Waziristan,” Cheema said.

Zhob, in southwestern Baluchistan province, borders South Waziristan.

The militant leader and his companions exchanged heavy gunfire with security forces for hours after the house was surrounded late Monday, police said.

“When our forces finally entered before dawn this morning a man blew himself up to avoid being captured. He was identified later as Mehsud,” Zhob police chief Atta Mohammad said.

Six leading liberal international do-gooder organizations, including Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and NYU School of Law, Human Rights Watch and Reprieve, have issued a report titled Off the Record, which allegedly identifies 39 individuals secretly detained in the War Against Terror.

The list, compiled on the basis of public sources, government officials (i.e., Pouting and Leaking Spooks), and witness interviews, includes: “off the Record”

Individuals whose detention by the United States has been officially acknowledged and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown:

1. Hassan Ghul

2. Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi (Abu Bakr al Azdi)

3. Ali Abdul-Hamid al-Fakhiri (Ali Abd-al-Hamid al-Fakhiri, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi)

Individuals about whom there is strong evidence, including witness testimony, of secret detention by the United States and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown:

4. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar (Abu Musab al-Suri, Umar Abd al-Hakim)

5.& 6. Two, possibly three, Somalis [Names Unknown] (one of whom is either Shoeab as-Somali or Rethwan as-Somali)

7. Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan (Abu Talha, Talaha)

8. Abdul Basit

9. Adnan [Last Name Unknown]

10. Hudaifa

11. Mohammed [Last Name Unknown] (Mohammed al-Afghani)

12. Khalid al-Zawahiri

13. Ayoubal-Libi

14. Abu Naseem

15. Suleiman Abdalla Salim (Suleiman Abdalla, Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed, Suleiman Ahmed Hemed Salim, Issa Tanzania)

16. Yassir al-Jazeeri (Yasser al-Jaziri, Abu Yasir al-Jaziri, Abu Yassir Al Jazeeri, Yasser al-Jazeeri)

17. Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman (Asadallah)

18. Majid [Last Name Unknown] (Adnan al-Libi, Abu Yasser)

19. Hassan [Last Name Unknown] (Raba’i)

20. [First Name Unknown] al-Mahdi-Jawdeh (Abu Ayoub, Ayoub al-Libi)

21. Khaled al-Sharif (Abu Hazem)*

Individuals about whom there is some evidence of secret detention by the United States and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown:

22. Osama bin Yousaf (Usama Bin Yussaf, Usama bin Yusuf, Usamah bin-Yusuf)

23. Osama Nazir

24. Sharif al-Masri (Abd-al-Sattar Sharif al-Masri)

25. Qari Saifullah Akhtar (Amir Harkat-ul-Ansar Qari Saifullah)

26. Mustafa Mohammed Fadhil (Moustafa Ali Elbishy, Hussein, Hassan AH, Khalid, Abu Jihad)

27. Musaab Aruchi (Mosabir Aroochi, Masoob Aroochi, Abu Mosa’ab al-Balochi, Abu Mosa’ab Aroochi, Musaad Aruchi, al-Baluchi)

28. Ibad Al Yaquti al Sheikh al Sufiyan

29. Walid bin Azmi

30. Amir Hussein Abdullah al-Misri (Fazal Mohammad Abdullah al-Misri)

31. Safwan al-Hasham (Haffan al-Hasham)

32. Jawad al-Bashar

33. Aafia Siddiqui

34. Saif al Islam el Masry

35. Sheikh Ahmed Salim

36. Retha al-Tunisi

37. Anas al-Libi (Anas al-Sabai, Nazih al-Raghie, Nazih Abdul Hamed al-Raghie)

38. [First Name Unknown] al-Rubaia

39. Speen Ghul

Flushed with self-importance, these enlightened organizations proceed to issue a series of “recommendations,” which are really demands.

The United States must cease use of secret or unacknowledged detention.

For those individuals currently detained by or at the direction of the United States, the United States and relevant foreign governments must:

Make known the names and whereabouts of detainees;

Provide immediate access by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to all detainees the organization seeks to visit;

Charge detainees with a recognizable criminal offense and promptly bring them to trial before a court that meets international fair trial standards or release them;

and Allow detainees access to lawyers and to communicate with family members.

The United States must not detain family members of terrorism suspects based on their family relationships.

The United States must make known the names, fate, and whereabouts of all individuals it has detained in the “War on Terror,” even if they have been released, transferred to the custody of another state, or are dead.

The United States must provide reparations, including compensation, to individuals it has secretly detained.

Other governments must not facilitate secret detention: they should not assist or cooperate in secret detention operations, and should disclose information about such operations that comes into their possession.

Brad Warbiany has been reading liberal journalists and democrats, and (worse!) taking their nonsense seriously.

Brad writes:

Fear has become the name of the political game, and the stakes are high. Unlike World War II, we’re not asked to ration sugar or observe meatless meals. Instead, we’re asked to suspend habeas corpus, willingly submit to National Security Letters and warrantless domestic wiretapping. Of course, we’re asked to provide implicit trust to the government to faithfully protect us, while acting as watchdogs to snitch on our untrustworthy family, friends, and neighbors at the first sign of wrongdoing. We’re watching as crucial controls on government, going back to the Magna Carta in 1215, are being removed…

There was never, ever any occasion from 1215 to the present day, in which prisoners of war had the benefit of habeas corpus. Still less, spies, saboteurs, and other illegal combatants, who did not even enjoy the privileges and immunities associated with the status of prisoner of war, and who were traditionally executed out of hand, by hanging.

What should still be regarded as determinative is the Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950), which held:

Modern American law has come a long way since the time when outbreak of war made every enemy national an outlaw, subject to both public and private slaughter, cruelty and plunder. But even by the most magnanimous view, our law does not abolish inherent distinctions recognized throughout the civilized world between citizens and aliens, nor between aliens of friendly and of enemy allegiance, nor between resident enemy aliens who have submitted themselves to our laws and non-resident enemy aliens who at all times have remained with, and adhered to, enemy governments. …

But, in extending constitutional protections beyond the citizenry, the Court has been at pains to point out that it was the alien’s presence within its territorial jurisdiction that gave the Judiciary power to act. …

If this [Fifth] Amendment invests enemy aliens in unlawful hostile action against us with immunity from military trial, it puts them in a more protected position than our own soldiers. …

We hold that the Constitution does not confer a right of personal security or an immunity from military trial and punishment upon an alien enemy engaged in the hostile service of a government at war with the United States.

Brad Warbiany continues:

The time comes that I have to ask myself a simple question: Is it worth it?

What level of uncertainty of a terrorist attack should we allow in our lives in order to be certain that we’re not subjects of a police state? It has become a sad state of affairs when I’m more concerned that the actions of my own government will cause me trouble than the actions of extremists who have sworn an intent to kill me. In a world where we’re asked to submit to intrusive surveillance on a daily basis, and further to do so gladly and “for our own protection”, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to simply take my chances without their blanket of security?

Might there be better ways of reducing terrorism than turning our own country into a prison, while engaging in a foreign policy which causes those who didn’t hate us 5 years ago to start? Nearly 40 years of effort have proven that our tactics in fighting a war on drugs have proven futile and counterproductive, while damaging American society in the process. Should we take a step back and evaluate whether our tactics fighting international terrorism have been futile and counterproductive, while damaging American society in the process?

“Turning our own country into a prison” is just a bit of an exaggeration, is it not?

What intrusive surveillance has the gentleman experienced? I wonder, outside the revolting and irrational practices of airline security, which have gotten worse recently, but which long predate 9/11 and the current administration, going back to the 1960s when Castro’s Cuban regime initiated the practice of airline hijacking.

The government is widely believed to be practicing some forms of mechanical surveillance, data-mining electronic and telephonic communications, in search of messages transmitted between terrorists.

This sort of thing has been going on for a very long time, all the way back to the WWII era, when the predecessor agency of the NSA was opening every telegram.

In 1945 Project SHAMROCK was initiated to obtain copies of all telegraphic information exiting or entering the United States. With the full cooperation of RCA, ITT and Western Union (representing almost all of the telegraphic traffic in the US at the time), the NSA’s predecessor and later the NSA itself were provided with daily microfilm copies of all incoming, outgoing and transiting telegraphs.

Are either Mr. Warbiany or myself really inconvenienced by the NSA’s Echelon program datamining our emails, presumably in search of such obvious giveaway signals as the presence of provocative texts like “Allahu Akhbar!”, “the anthrax is on the way,” or “the nuclear bomb goes off at noon”? Our emails are, in a sense, “read” by machines already simply in the process of being transmitted across the Net.

Do I really even care if some clerical employee pulls my sarcastic “Allahu Akhbar!” email out of the pile, and eyeballs it for a fraction of a second? Not much. In fact, a lot less than I like having to remove my shoes at the airport.

It is somewhat difficult for those of us on the sidelines to evaluate sensibly the necessity and propriety of the secret operations of our intelligences services in time of war. We do know, however, that no successful incident of mass terrorism has taken place on US soil since 9/11, and we have good reason to believe that there are a lot of people trying. So somebody, somewhere, must be doing something right.

As to international opinion, what can one expect? The international leftwing intelligentsia, and its media outlets, have always hated the United States. They hate the United States more vigorously when the United States actually does something in the world, it’s true. But it would be insane to base US foreign policy upon the preferences and desires of our rivals and adversaries, on the one hand; and even worse to base it upon the goofy and pernicious world view of the international community of leftist bien pensants on the other.

KSM tells a story exculpating some Guantanamo detainees, which could conceivably be true.

I’m asking you to be fair with Afghanis and Pakistanis and many Arabs which been in Afghanistan. Many of them been unjustly. The funny story they been Sunni government they sent some spies to assassinate UBL then we arrested them sent them to Afghanistan/Taliban. Taliban put them into prison. Americans they came and arrest them as enemy combatant. They brought them here. So, even if they are my enemy but not fair to be there with me.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in pre-capture days

In addition to his confession (published below), the DOD transcript contains a final statement by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed amounting to an apologia and justification.

KSM (through translator):

In the name of God the most compassionate, the most merciful, and if any fail to retaliation by way of charity and. I apologize. I will start again. And if any fail to judge by the light of Allah has revealed, they are no better than wrong doers, unbelievers, and the unjust.

KSM:

For this verse, I not take the oath. Take an oath is a part of your Tribunal and I’ll not accept it. To be or accept the Tribunal as to be, I’ll accept it. That I’m accepting American constitution, American law or whatever you are doing here. This is why religiously I cannot accept anything you do. Just to explain for this one, does not mean I’m not saying that I’m lying. When I not take oath does not mean I’m lying. You know very well peoples take oath and they will lie. You know the President he did this before he just makes his oath and he lied. So sometimes when I’m not making oath does not mean I’m lying.

KSM:

What I wrote here, is not I’m making myself hero, when I said I was responsible for this or that. But your are military man. You know very well there are language for any war. So, there are, we are when I admitting these things. I’m not saying I’m not did it. I did it but this the language of any war. If America they want to invade Iraq they will not send for Saddam roses or kisses they send for a bombardment. This is the best way if I want. If I’m fighting for anybody admit to them I’m American enemies. For sure, I’m American enemies. Usama bin Laden, he did his best press conference in American media. Mr. John Miller he been there when he made declaration against Jihad, against America. And he said it is not no need for me now to make explanation of what he said but mostly he said about American military presence in Arabian peninsula and aiding Israel and many things. So when we made any war against America we are jackals fighting in the nights. I consider myself, for what you are doing, a religious thing as you consider us fundamentalist. So, we derive from religious leading that we consider we and George Washington doing same thing. As consider George Washington as hero. Muslims many of them are considering Usama bin Laden. He is doing same thing. He is just fighting. He needs his independence. Even we think that, or not me only. Many Muslims, that al Qaida or Taliban they are doing. They have been oppressed by America. This is the feeling of the prophet. So when we say we are enemy combatant, that right. We are….

The way of the war, you know, very well, any country waging war against their enemy the language of the war are killing. If man and woman they be together as a marriage that is up to the kids, children. But if you and me, two nations, will be together in war the others are victims. This is the way of the language. You know 40 million people were killed in World War One. Ten million kill in World War. You know that two million four hundred thousand be killed in the Korean War. So this language of the war. Any people who, when Usama bin Laden say I’m waging war because such such reason, now he declared it. But when you said I’m terrorist, I think it is deceiving peoples. Terrorists, enemy combatant. All these definitions as CIA you can make whatever you want. Now, you told me when I ask about the witnesses. I’m not convinced that this related to the matter. It is up to you. Maybe I’m convinced but your are head and he [gesturing to Personal Representative] is not responsible, the other, because your are head of the committee. So, finally it’s your war but the problem is no definitions of many words. It would be widely definite that many people be oppressed. Because war, for sure, there will be victims. When I said I’m not happy that three thousand been killed in America. I feel sorry even. I don’t like to kill children and the kids. Never Islam are, give me green light to kill peoples. Killing, as in the Christianity, Jews, and Islam, are prohibited. But there are exception of rule when you are killing people in Iraq. You said we have to do it. We don’t like Saddam. But this is the way to deal with Saddam. Same thing you are saying. Same language you use, I use. When you are invading two- thirds of Mexican, you call your war manifest destiny. It up to you to call it what you want. But other side are calling you oppressors. If now George Washington. If now we were living in the Revolutionary War and George Washington he being arrested through Britain. For sure he, they would consider him enemy combatant. But American they consider him as hero. This right the any Revolutionary War they will be as George Washington or Britain. So we are considered American Army bases which we have from seventies in Iraq. Also, in the Saudi Arabian, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. This is kind of invasion, but I’m not here to convince you. Is not or not but mostly speech is ask you to be fair with people. I’m don’t have anything to say that I’m not enemy. This is why the language of any war in the world is killing. I mean the language of the war is victims. I don’t like to kill people. I feel very sorry they been killed kids in 9/11. What I will do? This is the language. Sometime I want to make great awakening between American to stop foreign policy in our land. I know American people are torturing us from seventies. [REDACTED] I know they talking about human rights. And I know it is against American Constitution, against American laws. But they said every law, they have exceptions, this is your bad luck you been part of the exception of our laws. They got have something to convince me but we are doing same language. But we are saying we have Sharia law, but we have Koran. What is enemy combatant in my language?

KSM(through translator):

Allah forbids you not with regards to those who fight you not for your faith nor drive you out of your homes from dealing kindly and justly with them. For Allah love those who are just. There is one more sentence. Allah only forbids you with regards to those who fight you for your faith and drive you out of your homes and support others in driving you out from turning to them for friendship and protection. It is such as turn to them in these circumstances that do wrong.

KSM:

So we are driving from whatever deed we do we ask about Koran or Hadith. We are not making up for us laws. When we need Fatwa from the religious we have to go back to see what they said scholar. To see what they said yes or not. Killing is prohibited in all what you call the people of the book, Jews, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. You know the Ten Commandments very well. The Ten Commandments are shared between all of us. We all are serving one God. Then now kill you know it very well. But war language also we have language for the war. You have to kill. But you have to care if unintentionally or intentionally target if I have if I’m not at the Pentagon. I consider it is okay. If I target now when we target in USA we choose them military target, economical, and political. So, war central victims mostly means economical target. So if now American they know UBL. He is in this house they don’t care about his kids and his. They will just bombard it. They will kill all of them and they did it. They kill wife of Dr. Ayrnan Zawahiri and his two daughters and his son in one bombardment. They receive a report that is his house be. He had not been there. They killed them. They arrested my kids intentionally. They are kids. They been arrested for four months they had been abused. So, for me I have patience. I know I’m not talk about what’s come to me. The American have human right. So. enemy combatant itself, it flexible word. So I think God knows that many who been arrested, they been unjustly arrested. Otherwise, military throughout history know very well. They don’t war will never stop. War start from Adam when Cain he killed Abel until now. It’s never gonna stop killing of people. This it the way of the language. American start the Revolutionary War then they starts the Mexican then Spanish War then World War One, World War Two. You read the history. You know never stopping war. This is life. But if who is enemy combatant and who is not? Finally, I finish statement. I’m asking you to be fair with other people.

PRESIDENT:

Does that conclude your statement, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad?

KSM:

Yes.

PRESIDENT:

Alright.

Debra Burlingame, at the Wall Street Journal, explains how Kuwaiti oil money successfully transformed Guantanamo Bay detainees from bloodthirsty killers into a human rights worthy cause.

He was the first American to die in what some have called “the real war.” Johnny “Mike” Spann, the 32-year-old CIA paramilitary commando, was interrogating prisoners in an open courtyard at the Qala-I-Jangi fortress in Afghanistan when the uprising of 538 hard-core Taliban and al Qaeda fighters began. Spann emptied his rifle, then his sidearm, then fought hand-to-hand as he was swarmed by raging prisoners screaming “Allahu akbar!”

The bloody siege by Northern Alliance and U.S. forces went on for several days, only ending when 86 of the remaining jihadi fighters were smoked out of a basement where they had retreated and where they murdered a Red Cross worker who had gone in to check on their condition. Spann, a former Marine, is credited with saving the lives of countless Alliance fighters and Afghan civilians by standing and firing as they ran for cover. His beaten and booby-trapped body was recovered with two bullet wounds in his head, the angle of trajectory suggesting he had been shot execution style.

One of the committed jihadis who came out of that basement, wounded and unrepentant, was “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, now serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison. Another who was shot during the uprising and pulled out of the basement along with Lindh was Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi. Today, the 29-year-old is living somewhere in Kuwait, a free man.

The true story of Mr. Mutairi’s journey, from the uprising in Qala-I-Jangi to Guantanamo Bay’s military detention camp to the privileged life of an affluent Kuwaiti citizen, is one that his team of high-priced lawyers and the government of Kuwait doesn’t want you to know. His case reveals a disturbing counterpoint to the false narrative advanced by Gitmo lawyers and human-rights groups–which holds that the Guantanamo Bay detainees are innocent victims of circumstance, swept up in the angry, anti-Muslim fervor that followed the attacks of September 11, then abused and brutally tortured at the hands of the U.S. military.

Mr. Mutairi was among 12 Kuwaitis picked up in Afghanistan and detained at Guantanamo Bay in 2002. Their families retained Tom Wilner and the prestigious law firm of Shearman & Sterling early that same year. Arguably, it is Mr. Wilner’s aggressive representation, along with the determined efforts of the Kuwait government, that has had the greatest influence in the outcome of all the enemy combatant cases, in the court of law and in the court of public opinion. The lawsuit filed on their behalf, renamed Rasul v. Bush when three cases were joined, is credited with opening the door for the blizzard of litigation that followed…

Mr. Wilner, a media-savvy lawyer who immediately realized that the detainee cases posed a tremendous PR challenge in the wake of September 11, hired high-stakes media guru Richard Levick to change public perception about the Kuwaiti 12. Mr. Levick, a former attorney whose Washington, D.C.-based “crisis PR” firm has carved out a niche in litigation-related issues, has represented clients as varied as Rosie O’Donnell, Napster, and the Roman Catholic Church. Mr. Levick’s firm is also registered under FARA as an agent of a foreign principal for the “Kuwaiti Detainees Committee,” reporting $774,000 in fees in a one year period. After the U.S. Supreme Court heard the first consolidated case, the PR campaign went into high gear, Mr. Levick wrote, to “turn the Guantanamo tide.”

In numerous published articles and interviews, Mr. Levick has laid out the essence of the entire Kuwaiti PR campaign. The strategy sought to accomplish two things: put a sympathetic “human face” on the detainees and convince the public that it had a stake in their plight. In other words, the militant Islamists who traveled to Afghanistan to become a part of al Qaeda’s jihad on America had to be reinvented as innocent charity workers swept up in the war after 9/11. The committed Islamist who admitted firing an AK-47 in a Taliban training camp became a “teacher on vacation” who went to Afghanistan in 2001 “to help refugees.” The member of an Islamist street gang who opened three al-Wafa offices with Suliman Abu Ghaith (Osama Bin Laden’s chief spokesman) to raise al Qaeda funds became a charity worker whose eight children were left destitute in his absence. All 12 Kuwaitis became the innocent victims of “bounty hunters.”..

Mr. Levick maintains that a year and a half after they began the campaign, their PR outreach produced literally thousands of news placements and that, eventually, a majority of the top 100 newspapers were editorializing on the detainees’ behalf. Convinced that judges can be influenced by aggressive PR campaigns, Mr. Levick points to rulings in the detainee cases which openly cite news stories that resulted from his team’s media outreach.

The Kuwaiti 12 case is a primer on the anatomy of a guerilla PR offensive, packaged and sold to the public as a fight for the “rule of law” and “America’s core principles.” Begin with flimsy information, generate stories that are spun from uncorroborated double or triple hearsay uttered by interested parties that are hard to confirm from halfway around the world. Feed the phonied-up stories to friendly media who write credulous reports and emotional human interest features, post them on a Web site where they will then be read and used as sources by other lazy (or busy) media from all over the world. In short, create one giant echo chamber.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal featured a lead story about the Bush Administration’s failure to convict Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Toronto-born jihadi captured as an illegal combatant in Afghanistan in July of 2002, after he had thrown a grenade which fatally wounded Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer, a US medic.

Efforts to bring Mr. Khadr to trial via one of the Bush Administration’s controversial military tribunals has been dogged by litigation, and the prosecution has found it impossible to get intelligence agencies to open their secret files or to obtain testimony from the eyewitnesses, military personnel who are inaccessible because they’re serving during wartime at remote locations around the world.

The frustrated Army prosecutor Major Groharing nonetheless defended this preposterous and futile enterprize, arguing:

The difference between us and al Qaeda is that when we had him on the battlefield, we didn’t summarily execute him.

The Bush administration, and Major Groharing, are both crazy.

The attempt to deal, in peacetime and civilian fashion, via legal trials with attorneys, witnesses, and appeals to higher levels of the judiciary, is simply incompatible with the exigencies of war.

Mr. Khadr was an illegal combatant, bearing arms against the military forces of the United States. He violated the customs and usages of war by attacking a medic. He was never entitled to quarter. He should not have been made prisoner. He should not have received medical attention. He should merely have been summarily executed on the spot at the time.

Our cause being just, our conformity to the customs and usages of war, our not firing on medics are all quite sufficient to distinguish us from al Qaeda.”