KSM's admissions won't quell idiot Conspiracies

**American Patriot** · March 16th, 2007, 23:01

KSM's World War
http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/...l?id=110009792

What his confession says about our enemy--and us.

Friday, March 16, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

In Cairo last year, Deputy Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohammed Habib told us that the 9/11 attacks were "great crimes," but that he doubted Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were responsible. It's probably too much to expect that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession that he "was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z" will sway minds like Mr. Habib's. But for the rest of us, the testimony by bin Laden's top operational lieutenant is a jolting re-education in the enemy we face.

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew," he boasted to a U.S. military tribunal on March 10, referring to our colleague Daniel Pearl. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."

One lesson of his testimony is the scope of his terror success, and his even larger ambition. Among the 31 actual events: The February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, chiefly carried out by his nephew Ramzi Yousef; the October 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali, in which 202 were killed and another 200 injured; the killing of two U.S. GIs in Kuwait the same month; the November 2002 hotel bombings in Kenya, in which 13 Israelis and Kenyans died; and the November 2003 attacks in Istanbul against Jewish and British targets, which killed 57 and wounded 700. That's roughly 3,280 murders.

But even this pales next to what might have happened had the U.S. not arisen from pre-9/11 complacency and gone on offense. By his own admission, KSM also planned attacks on targets in South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Israel, the Straits of Hormuz and Gibraltar, the Panama Canal, Brussels and London. He made extensive plans to assassinate Pope John Paul II during the pope's visit to Manila in 1995. He attempted to destroy an American oil company in Indonesia "owned," as he put it, "by the Jewish former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger."

Among other U.S. targets, there was "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid's failed attempt against American Airlines Flight 63 in December 2001, schemes to assassinate Presidents Clinton and Carter, and a "new wave" of attacks after 9/11 targeting skyscrapers in L.A., Chicago and Seattle, New York's suspension bridges and stock exchange, and nuclear power plants in "several U.S. states."

Perhaps most ominously, KSM also admitted to being "directly in charge" of "managing and following up on the Cell for the Production of Biological Weapons, such as anthrax and others, and following up on Dirty Bomb Operations on American Soil." Given such a confession, is it too much to ask the FBI to reconsider its dogmatic view that the 2001 anthrax attacks could only have had a domestic source?

No doubt many terror experts will declare that much or all of this is boasting, and perhaps some of it is. We can only hope so. And no doubt the truly credulous will assume it is largely a product of CIA coercion, as if the attacks KSM claims credit for had some other provenance.

But we think KSM's world of war makes clear that, if anything, President Bush understated the danger posed by the 14 "high-value" enemy combatants he transferred to Guantanamo last autumn. And it reveals just how terribly mistaken was the view of those who told us, pre-9/11, that terrorism was merely a law enforcement threat like any other.

That view permeated the CIA, where Paul Pillar helped run the Counterterrorist Center and wrote that "There is no . . . BinLadentern" akin to the old Communist Comintern. He denounced "overheated rhetoric that has spun out ever more frightening and unusual ways in which terrorism might inflict large numbers of casualties." And he deprecated President Clinton for ordering government agencies to examine the plausibility of a biological attack on New York City after he'd read "The Cobra Event," Richard Preston's 1998 novel on the subject.

When the 9/11 Commission concluded that the failure to avert that awful day was above all "a failure of imagination," the Pillar world view is Exhibit A. And we mention it here because now, after five years without a terror attack on U.S. soil, that view is making a comeback in the growing opposition to holding enemy combatants in Guantanamo or to warrantless wiretaps of al Qaeda.

As KSM makes clear, bin Laden and his acolytes declared "war" on the U.S. in his fatwa of 1998, a fact the U.S. only figured out on September 11. He professes to regret the death of women and children, but calls such indiscriminate killing "the language of any war" and justified by his religious motivation.

"For sure, I'm American enemies," said KSM in his broken English. For sure, too, he is a reminder of the evil that still confronts us in this conflict with radical Islam, and one that we underestimate at our existential peril.

**Sean Osborne** · March 17th, 2007, 13:53

Aarrgh!

That even such a venerable Opinion Editorial as that found in this edition of the Wall Street Journal would conclude with a "bottom line" as this one does stands head-and-shoulders high as proof-positive that the most basic identifier of the Islamist enemy remains completely unrecognized by those who compose such Opinion Editorials.

The evidence:

For sure, too, he is a reminder of the evil that still confronts us in this conflict with radical Islam, and one that we underestimate at our existential peril.

The basic truth:

Islam is the Arabic word which transliterates to English as "submission."

Islam further denotes the ABSOLUTE and TOTAL SUBMISSION by each individual to the dictates of Muhammed which he claims are the revealed directives of "Allah" as recorded in the Qur'an and expounded upon in the Hadiths.

The identified truth:

There is no such thing as "radical Islam."

There is no such thing as "moderate Islam."

There is only "Islam" - which is to say

There is only "Submission to Allah" or there is Apostasy.

PERIOD.

Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, Usama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri... all of the living and dead Islamists (i.e.: Submitters to Allah) not radical anything - they are the mainstream, fundamental that is Islam.

Jihad against ALL that is not Islam (Submitted to Allah) is their directive...

A global Islamic Khalifa (A global empire Submitted to Allah) is their objective.

This is the TRUTH regarding the evil that confronts us.

**American Patriot** · March 19th, 2007, 13:39

Sean,

There is no "truth" in that respect. You know why? Because people believe what they want to believe about things. The ONLY "TRUTH" are real, hard, verifiable facts.

What you stated is most likely the real deal, but you know what? No one gives a shit because they (anti-war protesters for example) think that we should be tolerant of others's beliefs.

Personally, I say screw that. Make this a real war and wipe out Islam. Then let's see what truths remain. What will remain is that Western Civilization and Christianity turned out to be worse than Islam if that were the case.

So you see, there are degrees of "truth" in this. I personally haven't seen any moderate Muslims yet, I've seen QUIET Muslims, and some of them are quiet in public, but not in private.

So the TRUTH is, we need to kick some ass, take some names and not be so hard on people who live in the west, because they want to believe something different from yourself, or me.

**American Patriot** · March 19th, 2007, 17:31

Here's another one:

World News

Huge hole blown in vessel
Terror Bomber Confesses

Updated: 16:12, Monday March 19, 2007

The suspected mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole has confessed to organising the attack, according to the Pentagon.

Seventeen crew members died when the US Navy destroyer was attacked in October 2000 while it was harboured in the Yemeni port of Aden.

Waleed Mohammed bin Attash's confession was revealed in the transcript of a Guantanamo Bay military hearing.

Bin Attash said he bought the explosives and recruited members of the team that rammed an explosives-laden boat into the side of the American ship while it was refuelling.

"I put together the plan for the operation a year-and-a-half prior to the operation," he told a military panel convened in the Cuban compound.
Bin Attash said he was with terror leader Osama bin Laden in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when the Cole was attacked.

Bomb mastermind

He also said he helped plan 1998 bomb attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 213, according to the Pentagon.

Two men - Jamal al-Badawi, from Yemen, and Saudi-born Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri - have been sentenced to death for involvement in the bombing.
The release of Bin Attash's transcript came five days after the Defence Department released the record of hearings held for three other high-value suspects at Guantanamo.

One of them, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, confessed to nearly three dozen plots, including the 9/11 attacks on the US, according to the transcripts.
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