Mute Button

by dday

Digby already mentioned the scene at Guantanamo late last week, with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed basically playing ringleader and bullying his fellow detainees into ditching their lawyers and becoming martyrs, which the government was all too happy to see happen, since those Gitmo defense lawyers have been effective advocates and effectively our only chance to determine the extent of the horrors practiced upon those detainees. There’s more about that in this WaPo article.

KSM also denounced the US Constitution for allowing same-sex marriage, which should create a nice little jig for the religious right to dance around. He also said this:

Mohammed continued: “We have been five years under torturing,” he said, and yet are being told to listen to American attorneys they’ve barely met. “All of this has been taken under torturing, and after torturing they transfer us to Inquisitionland in Guantanamo.”

“I hope you can reconcile your concerns” about his religious duty with the issues involved in self-representation, Kohlmann said.

“You will continue now to the end, to the plea guilty?” Mohammed, more eager than impatient.

“Yes,” the judge said.

But I’m not entirely sure how that WSJ reporter heard it, because the entire trial was tape delayed for journalists.

Mohammed appeared to have equal disdain for the process, but he only briefly mentioned his “torturing” at the hands of U.S. officials, something he acknowledged he was warned not to mention in open court, lest a security official hit a button muting the audio to observers in the courtroom and at a media center nearby. That button was pushed at least a few times on Thursday when detainees appeared to discuss elements of their early captivity in secret facilities or the way they were treated.

“All of this has been taken under torturing,” Mohammed said. “Then after torturing, they transfer us to Inquisition Land here at Guantanamo, and you tell everyone to sit down, sit down.”

I’m sure the muting out of the circumstances of the torture was entirely for our protection. And national security reasons, of course. Those interrogation techniques were vital to protect the nation, after all, but mustn’t be remarked upon in public. Otherwise someone might remember them.

That’s some Orwellian shit right there.

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