Just as I hit the “publish” button, it appears that the AP article linked above is now identifying the soldier.

Amazing. Why havent the Taliban/Insurgents/AlQieda done this before ? Brilliant. Take U.S. military hostages, treat them humanely..stick to Geneva Accords and show the Americans up for the monsters they are. Maybe even trade prisoners if they can go for officers.
Publicize the some 2000 ‘Taliban’ who were mass murdered and thrown into mass graves…now being hidden…The Afghanis must do everything they can to take the high road and force the U.S.out. The Taliban are the creation of the U.S. anyhow..now they want to destroy their own creation. This is Pitiful. Get out. No excuses…oh, except if the U.S. could possibly just want an oil pipeline ??? naaahhh……

great diary Jim.

You should still have time to edit it, if you want to update.

Recommended. Thanks, Jim.

Quite a contrast between the picture above and those from Abu Ghraib. The Taliban captive is clean, wearing clean clothing, is not handcuffed, shackled or hung naked from cell bars or deprived of food and water for days.

hmmmm, now who is it that’s the inhumane terrorists in this war without end that the late, blundering, boasting ‘war president’ and his toadies in congress imposed upon all the people inhabiting Afghanistan in retaliation for an act that only a handful had any part in?

And now the U.S. commanders drag out Geneva??

I think I’ll leave it as is. I don’t want to drag the soldier’s name through this. That’s just more pain for the family and thinking about him as unidentified makes him stand for the potential that any US soldier captured is subject to torture because of what we have done to our prisoners.

Excellent diary and sharp argumentation. Exactly, how can thge U.S. complain of any treatment of their prisoners now? (Of course, any country can protest the torture of its prisoners.) But if that’s the worst done to a U.S. prisoner — exploitation of them for propaganda purposes — it pales next to the treatment meted out to prisoners at U.S. prisons from Bagram to the Salt Pit to Guantanamo, sundry prison ships, etc.

Thanks, Jeff. As also pointed out by acquarius74, the information available now does not make it look like this prisoner has been subjected to anything like what we have done to our prisoners (although we of course don’t know what is happening to him away from the cameras). Propaganda use is certainly a lot less disturbing than waterboarding or hanging.

Thanks, Jim. It’s just so wonderful of you to let us know how kind, well-intentioned and enlightened the Taliban are. We all have so much to learn from them.

From Tenet’s book (co-authored with Bill Harlow):

By the next morning, Sunday, March 2, US media outlets were carrying news of the [KSM] capture as well. Some of hte stories described the worldly KSM as an al-Qa’ida James Bond. To illustrate the point, they showed photos of him with a full beard wearing what were supposedly his traditional robes. It didn’t take long for Marty to phone me and relay his disgust at some of the coverage.

[snip]

“Boss,” he said, “this ain’t right. The media are making this bum look like a hero. That ain’t right. You should see the way this bird looked when we took him down. I want to show the world what terrorists look like!”

Turns out, our officers on the scene in Rawalpindi had snapped and sent back some digital photos of KSM just after his capture, so I suggested that Marty call the Agency spokesman, Bill Harlow, and work something out. Within an hour, Harlow was in CTC looking over a selection of photos that made KSM look nothing like James Bond. Together they picked out the most evocative photo. Then Harlow, armed with a digital copy, called up a reporter at the Associated Press and told him, “I’m about to make your day.” Asking only that the AP not reveal where they got the picture, he released the image of a stunned, disheveled, scroungy KSM wearing a ratty T-shirt. The photo became one of the iconic images of the war on terrorism. If we could have copyrighted it, we might have funded CTC for a year on the profits. Foreign intelligence services later told us that the single best thing we ever did was release that photo. It sent a message more eloquently than ten thousand words ever could that the life of a terrorist on the run is anything but glamorous.

Uhm. That’s an intentional mis-read and I won’t sit idly for it. The whole point here is to call out the military for hypocrisy on their calling out the Taliban for breaking international law. Yes, the particular crimes in this case are not as egregious as those for which we know US personnel are responsible, but you’ll note I was allowing for other atrocities by the Taliban being off-camera. Other serious war crimes by the Taliban are numerous and well-known but are entirely beside the point as long as the US fails to address those we have carried out.

Wow, thanks for the backstory on that photo. I’ve often wondered how the guy in the disheveled photo was picked out as the one in the others. I had a hard time at first believing they are the same person, especially because in the disheveled one he looks much heavier, too.

snark
But the Trad Med told me “enhanced interrogation” was ok.
/snark

Thanks Jim. Recommended.

Yeah, I remember when it came out there was a great deal of doubt that it was him. I’m actually surprised this passage never got more attention–it borders on illegal use of propaganda in the US (I assume the AP reporter was US based).

I glad that the whole point is to call out the military for its hypocrisy and other failings. We can agree about that, but I might suggest that the blame for most of the maltreatment of prisoners would best be assigned to other parts of our government.
I can’t see the need to throw obvious horseshit from and about the Taliban into your post and wouldn’t wish to be idle after reading it.

I have a lot of experience with horseshit. I shovel a lot of the real stuff every day. Kindly point out where you see it in the post. Show me the basis for:

It’s just so wonderful of you to let us know how kind, well-intentioned and enlightened the Taliban are.

in what I wrote.

Whew! Thank goodness we would never stoop to using photos of prisoners for propaganda. /s

Thanks for that story EW, I had not run across it before.

Great post Jim. This is exactly the sort of thing that has had me so torqued over our treatment of prisoners for years. We have sprinted away from the moral high ground straight down to hell. Doesn’t give us much of a vantage point for demanding that our service members and citizens abroad be treated well when they are held captive. Makes me so angry I can hardly see straight.

And macaquerman, go read the WaPo article EW discusses today. I can’t wait to read your apologia for the ghoul that brainstormed the idea of applying electroshocks to the teeth of Abu Zubaydah. Now tell me where you get off on chastising Jim for pointing out the hypocrisy of our government officials complaining about violations of international law.

We have no business whatsoever complaining about the conduct of others until we live up to our own so-called standards and put people in prison for torturing prisoners.

Jim, I’m overreacting to the picture and the penultimate paragraph and blaming you for some things written by others. I’m sorry for having done so.

Thanks. And thank you for the agreement on the central issue of the hypocrisy.

These are issues where it’s very easy to have a lot of passion. Just ask MSNBC about Marcy (tee hee).

Jim, here is the video of the Taliban prisoner by Reuters which I found. It shows him eating a meal with a glass of tea. There are breaks for ads but returns to more of the prisoner’s talk.

The link would not copy/paste, so my link may not work. If not, I’ll post a different route to it in a later comment.

Lest we forget, the US clearly propagandized Saddam Hussein’s capture and spider hole. It also propagandizing his execution, though he had nothing whatsoever to do with 911, Al Queda, the Taliban or UBL.

Gitmo is a huge propaganda tool.

The entire GWOT and the emotional appeals for the support of the troops conflated with support for the wars is fueled by raw propaganda.

Propagandists like Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck, etc are making millions of dollars cheerleading for the GWOT. They helped to conflate Saddam with Al Queda and 911.

Meet The Press invites Republican government public servants to control the message.

Controlling the message = propagandizing

Correction: The video is from AP online via Yahoo News. [the link works].

The soldier wants to come home. He calls on all Americans to bring home the troops.

Here’s a link to a YouTube of the video.

Jim,

What makes me the most bitter about this is that if Bush had remained focused on the Taliban in Afghanistan instead of haring off to Iraq this young man and his family would have never found themselves in this terrible situation. There must be a special level in a special hell for George W. Bush. Liar, war criminal, sorry excuse for a human being.

It is highly unlikely that photo is KSM. He was under surveillance for many years in connection with the first Trade Center bombing and the Bojinka Plot. There would have been many videos and photos of him. On the FBI’s wanted page, he never was wanted for anything other than Bojinka. There never was a photo of him on the wanted page until after his ‘confession’ for 911 and then they stared using this one. Considering that Bojinka information is still withheld by the US government, much is not yet known.

I lost all of my bookmarks last year and have been unable to find a picture that I’ve been looking for. It was a photo released by a soldier from inside a rendition flight in November 2002. Although the man’s head is covered, it is easy to tell from the body build and hairy back that it is the same man. If I ever find that photo, I’ll let you know. It is the man presented as KSM whether it is him, or not. Emphasis on Nov /02…remember that initial reports were that KSM died in the attack during which he was allegedly arrested. Much confusion as to whether KSM was indeed arrested in March 2003. KSM fingered Dr. Siddiqui and said she married his nephew who is in Guantanamo, also. He and his nephew haven’t seen each other. Although they are told in hearings that they can have witnesses, they are confined to written statements from the other. That would make a lot of sense if KSM is not KSM and his nephew would know that if he saw him. His children have been disappeared. They would know if he is their father, or not.

KSM is given an interpreter at Guantanamo. Why? He is a US educated man who would have no doubt had to speak and write in English. He worked openly in Saudi Arabia at one point and was allowed to ‘escape’ by the US even though he was wanted for Bojinka. KSM dressed flashy and liked his women and his alcohol. Not the profile of a religious fanatic. When KSM appeared in court, no photos of him were allowed before, during, or after…hmmm.

Thanks, bb. Wasn’t KSM (or his stand-in) among those who appeared this past week at the tribunal with about 4 others – where the judge made the remark that “it’s all clear as mud”…?

Left you a message and just posted a diary on the win in the House for the wild horses.

Blue, here is the link to an Oct 30, 2002 article in Asia Times which tells the story of KSM’s death in the battle of 09/11/2002 and gives the two men’s pictures to which I believe you refer.

Within the article is the link to an article, also in Asia Times, dated 09/11/2002 about the battle in which KSM was allegedly killed. These articles speak of KSM’s wife and child, whereas KSM’s tribunal specifically refers to 2 children, a boy and a girl who were allegedly tortured by putting ants on their legs. The article also explains why the FBI did the switch in order to try to get KSM’s fellow AQ to continue to try to contact him, thus leading the FBI to them.

Both of these news articles in Asia Times, written at the time of these events, by persons closer to the culture of Afghanistan and Pakistan, deserve thorough study.

The last link I gave @27 does not work. Try the one. If it does not work, click the link in the Oct 30/2002 article, then click the Google suggestion link you will get due to the bad link in the article.

The point is moral authority is earned not presumed.

My attempt to fix the link did not work. Here is the link from my bookmarked page.

Capture me in Viet Nam.

I’ll tell you what you want to hear.

Think of the images of Saddam Hussein after his capture. And every other captive. In fact, how many images have we seen of captives being treated with anything other than humiliation?

I heard a minutes worth of NPR reporting this story while driving this afternoon.

They mentioned US officials calling this a war crime… but said nothing about the hypocrisy of it all.

From DKos:

by Antman11
Fox News guest wants Taliban to kill captured American soldier Sun Jul 19, 2009 at 02:12:10 PM PDT

I couldn’t believe my ears, but just minutes ago on “America’s News HQ,” guest pundit Ralph Peters suggested something to the effect that the Taliban should “save us the headache” and execute captured 23 year-old American soldier Bowe Bergdahl, because “it looks like” Bergdahl deserted his unit. While prefacing his comments by stressing that a military decision should not be made until all of the facts surrounding Bergdahl’s capture are determined, Peters then ignored his own advice and encouraged the Taliban to kill this young man. Fox News’ Julie Banderas was visibly shocked at the words coming out of Peters’ mouth, but did not challenge any of his statements before awkwardly ending the segment.

…

I’m sure Alicia Shepherd could explain that to you. Crimes are not crimes when we do them but they are crimes when the other guys do them.

OT- Frank McCourt has passed away at 78.

Did the same thing with the photo of Saddam Hussein-picked the one that made him look the most humilitated.

Thanks for the diary, Jim. I had exactly the same thought when I learned of the U.S. reaction to the video.

That one is a jaw-dropper even for Fox.

Insane! Got to find out more about that Ralph Peters.

i see no photos in that article.

To those who say that our court system can’t handle the detainees, here’s a court case that shows it can and also the problems arise when trying to follow the rule of law.

Viewpoint: Why a 9/11 “Plotter” Deserves a Re-Trial
http://www.time.com/time/world…..tter-daily

Newsweek’s Isikoff reported on what the DoJ under Bush said about evidence problems:

After the IG report reached Justice, a task force was set up in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Va., that reviewed about 20 criminal referrals of detainee abuse sent over by the CIA and military criminal investigators. Officials familiar with the referrals have said they were horrific: one involves allegations that a naked prisoner in CIA custody in Afghanistan froze to death after being left in a prison known as the “salt pit.”

But task-force prosecutors say they ran into a host of problems, including a lack of witnesses and forensic evidence, and declined to prosecute in all but one case. “We wanted to make these cases, but they just weren’t there,” says Rob Spencer, the former career Justice prosecutor who headed the task force until 2006. Ken Melson, who oversaw Spencer’s work and was appointed by Holder as acting Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives director, says the cases were “looked at aggressively” and without political pressure. “I think we made the right decision on these cases,” he says.

Holder’s Probe Has Its Critics
http://www.newsweek.com/id/207399

If the Bush Administration under Cheney hadn’t spit on our tenets of justice and rule of law, our courts could have held fair trials for true terrorists. When human dignity and humanity is tossed aside we all suffer.

Oh my! you are right! I’ll go find the right link. Thanks.

Well, thank heavens he did not mention anything about a blow job! I mean, calling for someone to be killed is one thing, but BJ, out of the question!

Greenwarrior and all others: Correction to the link I gave for the pictures of the possible 2 KSM’s. Here is one of several I found.

Sorry for my mistake – been a long day.

Very interesting, thanks for finding the link. The hair and sideburns certainly do match for the imposter, but there’s something about the nose that bothers me a little (although less than the differences from the “real” KSM photos).

Jim and all: In the Asia Times articles I referred to above, you will remember it was the FBI involved in the battle on 09/11/2002 in which the article reports KSM was killed.

Now, here is the MSNBC version dated 03/15/2007 of the CIA’s version of the capture of KSM on 03/01/2003.

Sounds like a grade D movie to me, capped off with that alleged quote of the Muslim spy, “Do you think President Bush knows what I did?” To which Tenet allegedly said, “I know he does, for I told him.” [And Tenet strokes Bush’s ego nicely, doncha think?]

For now I’m going with the Asia Times accounts. FBI knew they had a martyr on their hands; had to cover that up – and ship the widow off to Egypt.
Will see what else I can find about the news as reported in the Asia Times back in immediately before and after 9/11.

Ah yeah! how laughable.International law exist.I thought it was “quaint” remember.But I guess if they waterboard this guy it won’t be a big deal.Karma is a b…h eh?

Neither side considers its “detainees” to be just prisoners of war.

Generally speaking, prisoner of war status is quite a bit better to enjoy than that of a criminal detainee. Waging war is not supposed to be, by itself, a criminal activity that even the party a soldier is at war with can treat as such, no matter how much violence that soldier inflicted before his capture. The only exception to the generally better status is the indefinite length of detainment, since it can go on until the war ends. This is expecially pertinent in this “Global War on Terror”, which may never end, turning military detention as a prisoner of war into an effective life sentence.

Of course, sometimes the violence that participants in a war use does not fall within the rules of warfare. If a participant in a war that you have captured can be shown to have committed acts of violence, against your side, or against civilians or other parties, that lie outside what war allows, then that detainee can also be treated as a criminal, charged with his crimes, and if convicted, subject to criminal punishment, including capital punishment.

One reason both sides in this GWOT tend to treat captured enemy as criminals is that both sides have adopted, as a matter of policy, violent means that are not legally permitted in war. While practice since WWII of even state actor militaries has allowed the free targeting of civilians, at least by indirect fires (i.e., My Lai type face-to-face killing of civilians will get you court-martialed, but Dresden and
Hiroshima were cool), the rules that make this quite illegal were never repealed, and all sides definitely consider any targeting of their civilians to be clearly criminal, however much they allow their own militaries to target civilians.

Quite apart from the use of unrestrained means in these recent wars, we have also seen a breakdown in the willingness to respect the fundamental principles of equivalence and mutual respect that allows a space for any law in the conduct of war. This law, because it is not imposed by some higher authority than the warring parties, must be based on their respect for each other. Both sides have to be able to view at least some defined and limited use of violence against them by the other side as not criminal acts, but the legitimate use of force, for the treatment of enemy detainees to be anything different than the way that that side would treat ordinary mass murderers. The general idea is that other states are allowed, as long as they observe the accepted limits, to use deadly force against us without the perpetrators being criminal, because they are recognized as the servants of a legitimate world power.

Now, treating the violence perpetrated by enemy soldiers as legitimate always presents a strain, because wars tend to start in situations of mutual accusations of bad faith, and involve death and destruction on a mass scale that tends to make both sides think of the other as immoral. And the either the cause of war itself tends to be the theory held by one or both sides that the other govt is somehow not legitimate, or the hostile acts tend to lead to that theory gaining credence. Our own Revolutionary War, for example, involved the Royal Army, especially at first, disinclined to treat soldiers on our side as anything but traitors and rebels illegitimately in arms agains their king, and thus any of our soldiers they captured as enjoying any status other than pre-trial confinement awaiting their eventual conviction and hanging for treason. Our individual state forces tended to treat any Loyalists as traitors for the same reason, and would often not take prisoners in battle. But both sides at least strived, at least officially, towards granting the soldiers of the other side the legitimacy or arms.

What is different now, so much that it has become the standard since WWII, is that it is now considered, at least as the official position of governments, unpardonably weak to recognize any legitimacy to opponents in war. We were never at war in Vietnam, because we refused to recognize the govt of North Vietnam as a legitimate govt, or the VC as anything but criminals violating the laws of South Vietnam. We nevertheless extended, as a matter of policy if not always in practice, EPW treatment to captured NVA and VC, at least while in our custody. But we refused to follow the Geneva Convention provision against handing over EPWs to third parties liable to not respect their EPW status, and handed over essentially all of our captives to certain death at the hands of the govt of the South. For propaganda/ideological reasons, we could not take any view of the status of our captives in that war as anything but murderers under South Vietnamese jusrisdiction.

War has become so much a crusade of the Righteous against the Wicked in our minds, that Dubya unironically thundered against treating al Qaeda as “merely” criminal, but insisted that we must go to war with them to show the proper resolve. Prosecuted as criminals, of course, they would have been subject to the death penalty, but as prisoners of war, would have to be treated in most respects with the same honor and dignities accorded our own soldiers. Well, that would have been so before the inversion of values that allows nothing but demonization of all who might even think of opposing our violence with force of their own.

No..I never mentioned this before. Once I made a passing reference to not thinking KSM was KSM, but did not give reasons why. You found the look alike pictures. I am looking for a picture actually taken during a rendition flight in Nov 2002. It is good that you brought up these pictures because most people probably did not know of them.

I disagree with Bollyn. We have the fake KSM and we have Ahmed Abdul Qudoos. They are not the same person. KSM resides at Guantanamo and Qudoos went home 25 days after his arrest. There are differences in the nose, ears, mouth, and hair line. The most obvious difference is in the beard. Quodoos went home with the same dark long dark beard he was arrested with on March 1. Actually, the grey sideburn looks doctored with 3 odd circles downward from the smear of grey that has black lines on each side that doesn’t look like hair. His family showed his disability certificate on March 3 so everybody knew he was not KSM. He was kept in custody while the fake’s picture was shown to the US and presented as a new capture. The MSM psyops was done at this time and it worked for 6 years because nobody in the media ever questioned whether this was indeed KSM.

http://www.dawn.com/2003/03/27/nat6.htm

Thanks, Blue. I’ve got a lot of backtrack and fill-in searching the foreign news articles for what really went down back in 2001 1990s on to today. For now, my guide is the question: “What is the opposite of what we were told?”

the photos of qudoos and the fake ksm don’t look like the same person to me either. in addition to the features you’ve noted, the eyebrows also don’t look the same to me.

“It’s a real sign of desperation and inappropriate criminal behavior on the parts of these terrorist groups, so we are going to do everything we can to get him.”–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

“Inappropriate” criminal behavior? So what then would be “appropriate” criminal behavior? How does one parse that sentence?

“Appropriate” criminal behavior would be that by GWBush, et. al. See the great comment by gtomkins @ 48 for more.

If that videotape vioaltes international law — and I believe it does — then of course so do the photos of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in his underoos and Saddam Hussein after the “spider hole” capture, all of which were used by the Bushies for “propaganda purposes.”

I agree with you.

“The big news of the week was supposed to be the pre-trial hearing of the five men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, but in the end this too was a damp squib. No one turned up at all in the morning, after the men refused to leave their cells, and in the afternoon, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the unarguable showman of the group, refused to attend, as did Ramzi bin al-Shibh, even though the hearing was convened to deal with ongoing issues regarding his mental competency, and that of another of the five, Mustafa al-Hawsawi. Al-Hawsawi, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Walid bin Attash eventually turned up in the courtroom, but there was little activity.

According to Reuters, “al-Hawsawi soon demanded to leave after complaining he would not be allowed to speak,” and “bin Attash, given five minutes to address the court, complained that the presiding judge, Army Colonel Steven Henley, had not responded to letters the five men had written to him ‘a long time ago.’” In the only flicker of the dissent normally associated with KSM’s presence, he explained, “If you don’t have enough patience to take this case, just give it to a different judge. We view the judge and prosecution as one person. There’s no difference.” Later, bin Attash showed his disdain for the proceedings by throwing a paper plane — fashioned, presumably, from his court papers — at one of his co-accused. “

http://www.andyworthington.co……ls-resume/

from what I can recall, pictures of the Nazi prisoners at Nuremburg show that they looked quite well taken care of.