From The New York Times, no less!
Detainees Say They Planned Sept. 11
By William Glabberson
The five detainees at Guantánamo Bay charged with planning the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have filed a document with the military commission at the United States naval base there expressing pride at their accomplishment and accepting full responsibility for the killing of nearly 3,000 people.
The document, which may be released publicly on Tuesday, uses the Arabic term for a consultative assembly in describing the five men as the “9/11 Shura Council,” and it says their actions were an offering to God, according to excerpts of the document that were read to a reporter by a government official who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The document is titled “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations,” the military judge at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp said in a separate filing, obtained by The New York Times, that describes the detainees’ document.
The document was filed on behalf of the five men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has described himself as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
President Obama halted the military proceedings at Guantánamo in the first days after his inauguration, and the five men’s case is on hiatus until the government decides how it will proceed.
Several of the men have earlier said in military commission proceedings at Guantánamo that they planned the 2001 attacks and that they sought martyrdom.
The strategic goal of the five men in making the new filing, which reached the military court on March 5, was not clear.
In their filing, the men describe the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks and the killing of Americans as a model of Islamic action, and say the American government’s accusations cause them no shame, according to the excerpts read by the government official.
“To us,” the official continued reading, “they are not accusations. To us they are a badge of honor, which we carry with honor.”
It appears that the men wrote the document at meetings they are permitted to conduct periodically at the detention camp without lawyers.
In his brief court order describing the filing, the military judge who has been handling the case, Col. Stephen R. Henley of the Army, said the men sought no specific legal action.
Judge Henley ordered that the filing be released immediately, but officials said objections from lawyers for two of the men had held up release Monday.
All five of the men have said they want to represent themselves, but in the case of these two men, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the military judge had not yet determined their competency when the proceedings were halted.
Here's another take on the news...
Truther heartache: 5 Gitmo detainees admit to planning 9/11
This won't kill the 9/11 Truther Movement. That's because the movement is not grounded in reality and too many people have too much of an emotional investment in conspiracy to let it go.
But the confessions voluntarily given by the 5 Guantanamo detainees who are being charged with planning the 9/11 attacks should seal the deal for all but the looniest of 9/11 Truthers.
For the real 9/11 truther whackjobs, they will spin this as some kind of plot to deflect attention from the real culprits; Bush and the neocons.
We might ask these guys to get a life and come out from under the bed but then they wouldn't have anything to do with themselves. They'd have to go out and get a job - much too normal for them. So in the meantime, they spin ever kookier conspiracies and ignore all evidence to the contrary - including this.
This appears to be a challenge of some kind to the Obama administration who want to close Gitmo but don't know where to put the prisoners and has stopped the military tribunals even though they have no clue about how to proceed in dispensing justice.
Maybe they'll just make them swear on the Koran to be good little terrorists and not do it again, then let them go. Makes as much sense as anything we've heard from the Obama administration so far.
I wonder if this will change any minds in the conspiracy groups???
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