Friday, August 01, 2008

Stating the Obvious

"You don't understand al Qaeda," 9/11 plotter says

"He was not a soldier, he was a driver," [Khalid Sheikh] Mohammed said according to a redacted English translation of his Arabic.

He described Hamdan, who has a fourth-grade education, as a "more primitive (Bedouin) person" who did not share bin Laden's ideology but wanted his money and was "only searching for pleasure and money in this life."

"He was not fit to plan or execute. But he is fit to change trucks' tires, change oil filters, wash and clean cars and fasten cargo in pick up trucks," said Mohammed, who called himself the military official responsible for overseeing al Qaeda cells abroad and "the executive director of 9/11."

... Prosecutors contend [Hamdan] had been part of a broad al Qaeda conspiracy since traveling to Afghanistan in 1996, and therefore shared the blame for al Qaeda attacks, such as the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in east Africa, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 and September 11.

Mohammed said those attacks succeeded precisely because they were kept secret from many members of bin Laden's inner circle, from other al Qaeda members and cells, from trainers at the camps and from what he termed "civilian employees" such as cooks, translators and computer engineers.

Referring to bin Laden, he said, "It is not logical that anyone who knew UBL or visited him or associated with al Qaeda (had) to be a terrorist trained to kill people as your bad media put it."

With the usual caveats about my ignorance and the risk of trusting the arguments of clever enemies, I'd say the mastermind killer's mocking makes more sense than the government's legal case.

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