Hollow victory

So it turns out one of the first inmates at Guantanamo Bay to be tried under the military commissions, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was responsible for pretty much everything bad that has happened in the last ten or fifteen years.

According to numerous news outlets, Mohammed has confessed to being behind the attacks on September 11, the Bali bombing, the World Trade Centre bombing in 1993 and having personally beheaded Daniel Pearl, an American journalist. But it doesn't end there, he admits to plotting to kill all sorts of people, from Bill Clinton to the Pope and an intention to blow up a whole lot of other stuff like US embassies, the Panama Canal and Big Ben to name a few. All up, according to the Pentagon, a total of 31 terror attacks either planned or executed.

It is also rumoured that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was behind the JFK assassination and if you play the episode of the Simpsons where Monty Burns gets shot backwards at 9 minutes, 11 seconds, Mohammed can clearly be seen handing Maggie Simpson a gun.

Cheap shots aside, this is precisely the sort of result that will raise more questions about the handling of Guantanamo prisoners (sorry, "unlawful enemy combatants" - no "prisoners" at Guantanamo) by US authorities than it will satisfy the general public. Already, there is considerable scepticism surrounding these reports.

See THIS is where rendition, ghost flights, "vigorous" interrogation techniques, questionable military commissions and general aresholery leads. Sure they've got a confession, but who is going to believe for a second that this individual was personally responsible for all of those events? Not after he has been in custody for six years. Not after his written accounts have been hit with the big black censor's texta, most notably in places where claims of torture seem to be made.

If he really DID do all these things and signed a confession, then why not put him in front of a legitimate court. Imagine how much greater the victory would be if they could place him in front of an impartial judge and gain a conviction using the laws of evidence, without hearsay and with confessions under dubious circumstances struck from the record. A conviction in a court of law would be a far more convincing demonstration that they have not only got their man, but that he actually did commit the acts he has apparently confessed to.

But no. This confession comes in a place where the law does not extend, where the rules of the Geneva convention are barely recognised and when they are, new terms are invented to circumvent them.

If it's a victory at all, it's a pretty hollow one.