I don’t know. I’ll reserve judgment until I hear the opinion of a handful of pre-selected, unrepresentative residents of Standish, Michigan.

I read the transcript of his combatant status review trial that the ACLU foia’d, at about the time one of the commercials showing up on MSNBC was the Franklin Templeton ad where Benjamin Franklin’s engraved face shows up ubiquitously, inside and outside, all over the world, including on a building in an Asian harbor. And I wanted them to turn the camera on Guantanamo, I wanted a founding father to be looking down on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s hearing. I mean, I could cry. It’s Khalid Sheikh Mohammed there who’s talking about George Washington:

http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/csrt_ksm.pdf

DETAINEE: So, finally it’s your war but the problem is no definitions of many words. It would be widely definite that many people be oppressed. Because war, for sure, there will be victims. When I said I’m not happy that three thousand been killed in America. I feel sorry even. I don’t like to kill children and the kids. Never Islam are, give me green light to kill peoples. Killing, as in the Christianity, Jews, and Islam, are prohibited. But there are exception of rule when you are killing people in Iraq. You said we have to do it. We don’t like Saddam. But this is the way to deal with Saddam. Same thing you are saying. Same language you use, I use. When you are invading two-thirds of Mexican, you call your war manifest destiny. It up to you to call it what you want. But other side are calling you oppressors. If now George Washington. If now we were living in the Revolutionary War and George Washington he being arrested through Britain. For sure he, they would consider him enemy combatant. But American they consider him as hero. This right the any Revolutionary War they will be as George Washington or Britain. So we are considered American Army bases which we have from seventies in Iraq. Also, in the Saudi Arabian, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. This is kind of invasion, but I’m not here to convince you. Is not or not but mostly speech is ask you to be fair with people. I’m don’t have anything to say that I’m not enemy. This is why the language of any war in the world is killing. I mean the language of the war is victims. I don’t like to kill people. I feel very sorry they been killed kids in 9/11. What I will do? This is the language. Sometime I want to make great awakening between American to stop foreign policy in our land. I know American people are torturing us from seventies. [redacted] I know they talking about human rights. And I know it is against American Constitution, against American laws. But they said every law, they have exceptions, this is your bad luck you been part of the exception of our laws.

I know, I know, they hate us for our freedom.

By the way, in the above he’s asking for fairness and mercy for other detainees who are not Al Qaida, nothing for himself — for himself he confessed to everything possible, took responsibility for everything, even things we know he couldn’t have done. How Not George Bush.

Good, unique article by Ray McGovern about the big why: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/111509a.html

Coleen Rowley, the FBI whistleblower on Moussaoui and 9/11, picked it up and posted it on Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coleen-rowley/khalid-sheikh-mohammeds-c_b_358629.html

I learned so much from it. “I did not know that!”