Is this the man?

So the Bush Administration has finally tortured someone into taking the blame, or the credit for 9/11.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has confessed to planning the 9/11 attacks according to a transcript released by the Pentagon Wendesday. Mohammed admitted to not only planning the 9/11 attacks but a string of other attacks too. While it might not be mentioned in the report, he has also confessed to the killing of Nicole Brown Simpson and Laci Petterson.

In a statement he claimed to be responsible for the attacks from A - Z. Mohammed also talks about being tortured by the CIA, but we are told that he was not under duress when he made the confession.

Let me step out of this news stream for a moment and just discuss. We know that torture has been a tool used by the CIA and the armed forces in the interrogation of detainees. We know that when you torture someone for long enough they will tell you what you want to hear, if it is true or not. While we do not know if he was being tortured at the time of the confession, just the fear of being tortured again, could lead to a false confession it would seem. I find it hard to sit here, and with any confidence in this administration say that this man is responsible for the crime.

What could the motive for such a release be? Well, you have a war in Iraq, that while it may be looking better, is still looking very bad. You have failing talks between the government and Iran, over nuclear issues. The deal with North Korea, while it has some differences from the deal of President Clinton, still has critics angry. The war in Afghanistan is not going as well as anyone would like it to. The search for Usama Bin Laden has come to nothing after all these years of searching for him. At the end of Bush's term in the White House, he will by most accounts have accomplished very little. That is unless he was able to bring the person who planned the attacks on our country to justice, and not only our country but Isreal, and a string of other innocents.

The White House has put itself into this box, where it has locked the public out of the process of justice that is taking place for prisoners of this war. We have no way of knowing what kind of circumstances this statement was made under, and if this is an accurate understanding of the statement. When an administration has been found to have attempted to cheat the public on such a wide range of issues from Iraq, to fired prosecutors, to the leaking of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, it cannot really expect much public trust. The nation may or may not extend the little trust they have left for the government to this statement, but I will not.