Back in 2003, when US forces first took custody of the notorious Al-Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, there was much speculation about what his capture might signify. Some thought he might possess information about other planned operations, some predicted his loss would fatally damage Al-Qaeda, some guessed his arrest would lead to additional arrests. Others, among them Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, used his capture to float interesting theories about torture: When and how it might legitimately be used, for example, given a candidate who might seem so clearly deserving of it.
Here is one thing nobody predicted back in 2003: That when the notorious Khalid eventually stood before a Guantanamo Bay military tribunal and took responsibility not only for the Sept. 11 attacks, the deadliest crime ever carried out on American soil, but also for the horrific death of the journalist Daniel Pearl and some two dozen other operations, the world would greet the confessions with skepticism and indifference.
The Daily Telegraph, normally the most pro-American newspaper in Britain, wrote that it hardly mattered whether Khalid was guilty, since whatever conclusion is drawn by the military tribunal that will try him, “the world will condemn the procedures by which the verdicts were reached.” Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung concluded that “the Bush administration has nobody but itself to blame for the fact that the actions and motives of the perpetrator are now playing second fiddle to the practices used by the Americans in fighting terrorism.” In many places, the confessions, which took place nearly a week ago, still have hardly attracted attention. A small part of this international indifference perhaps derives from the transcript of the confessions, which seem boastful and exaggerated. (What else will he confess to? The murder of JFK?) Most of it, though, surely comes from the widespread, indeed practically universal, assumption that Khalid was tortured, not in theory but in practice.
Certainly during his hearing at Guantanamo Bay, there are references to “certain treatment (he) claimed to have received,” though the relevant parts of the official transcript remain classified. But the assumption that Khalid was tortured comes from the fact that, as we all now know, the White House, the Pentagon and the Justice Department were also debating the merits of torture about the time of Khalid’s capture. Alberto Gonzales, then White House counsel, now better known for his disastrous performance as attorney general, had advised the president as early as 2002 that torture might be permissible under certain circumstances. And all of us have seen the pictures from Abu Ghraib.
It is true that the administration has now stated clearly that torture, at least by the administration’s definition, was not used in Khalid ‘s interrogation. (“We don’t do torture” is how the White House press secretary cavalierly put it.) But even if we were to give the administration the benefit of the doubt, which hardly anyone will, the circumstances of Khalid ‘s detention have been unacceptable by American standards. Even if he was not tortured, he was held in secret, extralegal and completely unregulated conditions, possibly in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, certainly under nothing resembling what we in the United States normally consider the rule of law, either international or domestic. The mystery surrounding his interrogation — when it was carried out, how and by whom — renders any confession he makes completely null, either in a court of law or in the court of international public opinion.
This is concrete proof, as if more were needed, that it is not merely immoral to operate outside the rule of law; it is also ineffective and in fact profoundly counterproductive: There is no proof that it produces better information but plenty of evidence that it has discredited the United States. Indeed, there could be no more eloquent condemnation of the Bush administration’s torture and detention policies than the deafening silence that followed Khalid ‘s confession: Who could have imagined, in September of 2001, that one of the deadliest terrorists in history would admit to the destruction of the World Trade Center — and that the world would shrug its shoulders?
