Yesterday was a good day for the View- other than a few bad jokes about Bush and Cheney, they stayed out of politics. They must have been saving up for today- what a mess!!

On Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:
Rosie’s overview of the situation is an okay recitation of the facts: “This man has apparently admitted to over 29 things that he says that he was solely responsible for. He did this confession while he was at Guantanamo. He was arrested and put in the care the U.S. in March 2003, He was then in a secret CIA prison and then he was brought to Guantanamo and then he confessed without reporters being present and without privy to a lawyer. He confessed to pretty much everything. He was responsible for the 1993 world trade center, for 9/11 from A to Z, for the shoe bomber… for everything… This man who has been in prison under the care of the United States government since 2003 and he just confessed to all of these crimes.”

The conversation spirals downward from there.

According to Rosie, the very fact that he has been in the care of the U.S. government should tell us all we need to know. He has been in SECRET CIA TORTURE prison.

She uses the picture of him in the paper today to belittle the relevance of his confession: “Doesn’t he look healthy.” She is trying to imply that he looks sick because of all of the torture he has been experiencing at the hands of our government.

Where are her handlers? How has she not seen this picture before? This is the picture the U.S. released of him immediately following his capture several years ago. He was captured in his sleep, hence the mussed hair. If he looks unhealthy it is because he had been on the run, living like a coward in the shadows. They use this picture purposely because it is not flattering. This is common practice in the media. (Ask any conservative how much they like many of the pictures used in print.)

Perhaps Rosie thinks we should let the liberals in Hollywood hire stylists for these people, give them makeovers and then let them talk to reporters and lawyers who will violate gag orders and spew their vitriol, or worse pass on information to other terrorists. (See Lynne Stewert)

Maybe he did give a false confession, or maybe some of his statements are true and some are false. Over the next several days, the media will investigate his statements and tell us what they want us to know.

Has this poor man been tortured? Rosie thinks he has been tortured every day, for years. Do we even know what torture is anymore? Apparently, underwear on people’s heads is torture. When I was growing up, some of the teenage boys I knew thought this was a particularly funny thing to do to their little brothers. They must be the guys working in the SECRET CIA TORTURE prisons.

Elizabeth goes on to make a very serious statement: “If he is admitting to these things, he should be tortured now for having a hand in 9/11.”

This is upsetting to Rosie. She only believes muggers of 100 year old ladies should be tortured. (See the blog posting on the March 12^th episode of the View.) She now clarifies that only if they have it on video doing it and we all saw it…should the mugger be punished to the full extent possible.

Here is the problem- these women should watch the news, read a newspaper… They might not know he is guilty because they haven’t personally seen a video of him conspiring with other fanatics to kill us. The thing is, our government knew, along with governments all around the world, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was an integral member of bin Laden’s network. His involvement has been extremely well documented by many sources. He has now acknowledged his involvement, possibly because he has finally realized his denials are known to be a joke. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Shaikh_Mohammed )

This man is not a criminal who should have rights to our judicial system, where he would have access to rules of discovery that would force the government to turn over information about the intelligence used to capture him, including names of informants… where information becomes part of a public record… where liberals with no common sense would advocate for his right to a jury trial. (By the way, the jury would probably need to be a panel of his peers, i.e.12 other fanatical terrorists. This would be the only way to ensure a proper amount of empathy be used to understand his intent.)

WAKE UP!! This man has been and continues to be a terrorist. If we released him today he would rejoin his terrorist friends and renew his efforts to undermine the west. Our military should hold him forever in the SECTRET CIA TORTURE prisons.

I hate beating a dead horse but Rosie and friends should read the Geneva Convention.

Article 4

A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces. (With the possible, and unfortunate, exception of Hamas, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas, in Palestine, members of terrorists groups are not members of the armed forces of a Party- a legitimate government. They are not members of an organized militia or volunteer corps fighting as a part of the military arm of a legitimate government.)

2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (Terrorist groups are not commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates even though there are loose networks of these people, all fighting for common goals like undermining freedom and non-Islamic religions and destroying the West, for example. Does anyone know specifically who is in charge of the Al Qaeda or the Taliban, right now? Can those fighting for these principles find their “leaders”?

(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (Terrorists hide behind civilian clothes so as to surprise their victims.)

(c) That of carrying arms openly; (Terrorists hide their guns, homicide bombs and other Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) under their clothes, in back packs, in trunks of cars or any other place they can find that will result in the most damage.)

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. (Terrorists do not follow the laws and customs of war. For example, they have BEHEADED those captured, even if those captured were journalists offering sympathetic coverage of their actions -the Taliban is threatening to kill a journalist in the next two days if their demands are not met. They threaten the lives of the civilians who assist the U.S. or Iraqi military. They do not warn the authorities before attacking targets so as to minimize civilian casualties...)

3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power. (Terrorists are not members of regular armed forces professing allegiance to a government. There is no “authority” that can be “not recognized” because there is no authority than can be recognized. Many of the terrorists in Iraq are believed to be Syrians or Iranians attempting to undermine the success of the new Iraqi government so as to prevent democracy from taking hold in Iraq.)

4. Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model. Terrorists do not accompany members of legitimate armed forces. Terrorists hope to destroy as many legitimate armed forces as possible.

5. Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law. (Terrorists are not members of the Merchant Marine.)

6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war. (Terrorists are not taking up arms to resist invading forces; the terrorists are the people invading non-occupied territories and they are the people threatening the inhabitants of those territories.)

B. The following shall likewise be treated as prisoners of war under the present Convention:

1. Persons belonging, or having belonged, to the armed forces of the occupied country, if the occupying Power considers it necessary by reason of such allegiance to intern them, even though it has originally liberated them while hostilities were going on outside the territory it occupies, in particular where such persons have made an unsuccessful attempt to rejoin the armed forces to which they belong and which are engaged in combat, or where they fail to comply with a summons made to them with a view to internment. (Terrorists do not belong to the armed forces of the government of an occupied country. The U.S. has interned the terrorists because of the threat they will rejoin other terrorists to persist in their efforts to harm Americans’ interests or America.)

2. The persons belonging to one of the categories enumerated in the present Article, who have been received by neutral or non-belligerent Powers on their territory and whom these Powers are required to intern under international law, without prejudice to any more favourable treatment which these Powers may choose to give and with the exception of Articles 8, 10, 15, 30, fifth paragraph, 58-67, 92, 126 and, where diplomatic relations exist between the Parties to the conflict and the neutral or non-belligerent Power concerned, those Articles concerning the Protecting Power. Where such diplomatic relations exist, the Parties to a conflict on whom these persons depend shall be allowed to perform towards them the functions of a Protecting Power as provided in the present Convention, without prejudice to the functions which these Parties normally exercise in conformity with diplomatic and consular usage and treaties. (The terrorists do not belong to one of the categories enumerated in the present Article therefore this provision does not apply.)

In conclusion, there are currently no provisions of the Geneva Convention that support the reasonable consideration of its application to those detained at Guantanamo Bay.

If this issue is so important to her, Rosie & Company should begin to work with their friends to convince the signatories of the Geneva Convention to update the language so as to protect the terrorists from the wrath of our government and our SECRET CIA TORTURE prisons.

She will find, much to her dismay, that most reasonable people can differentiate between people like those still held at Guantanamo and poor stiffs who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.