from SLATE: >Yesterday's LA [TIMES] noted the "central contradiction" in the administration's moves against terror suspects, namely that small-time operators have faced court while higher-up men have been stuffed in secret cells somewhere. The LAT emphasized the administration's argument that it just wants to interrogate them. Lawyer David Cole, writing in the [Washington POST], offers a slightly different take:
>>[A]t a secret CIA "black site" prison, the United States is holding the alleged mastermind of Sept. 11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed. And at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it has Mohamed al-Qahtani, who the government now claims is the real would-be 20th hijacker. But the administration can't try either of these men, because any such proceeding would turn into a trial of the United States' own tactics in the war on terrorism. >>The CIA has reportedly water-boarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed—a practice in which the suspect is made to fear that he is drowning in order to encourage him to talk. And Army logs report that interrogators threatened Qahtani with dogs, made him strip naked and wear women's underwear, put him on a leash and made him bark like a dog, injected him with intravenous fluids and barred him from the bathroom so that he urinated on himself. With these shortsighted and inhumane tactics, the administration essentially immunized the real culprits, so it was left seeking the execution of a man who was not involved in Sept. 11. << < -- Jim Devine / "Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists." -- John Kenneth Galbraith.
