The Bungled Hunt for 9/11’s Mastermind: KSM

[xchrom]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13054/the_bungled_hunt_for_9_11s_mastermind_ksm


While waging the so-called war on terrorism, U.S. government agencies and the military have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory over and over. It is now well documented that bureaucratic feuding and miscommunications between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation allowed aspiring suicide bombers to make discoverable, suspicious journeys into the United States. Then the bungling by supposedly sophisticated intelligence agencies with huge budgets allowed those same men to learning how to fly commercial airplanes, hijack them and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

After 9/11, U.S. government and military inadequacies allowed Osama bin Laden – the financier of the attack and supposedly its mastermind – to remain at large year after year through the sabre-rattling George W. Bush administration, until his inelegant death by a Navy SEAL team directed by President Barack Obama in May 2011.

Now come two persistent journalists to spread the message that the bungling reached farther and deeper than previously documented. It turns out that bin Laden was not the mastermind of 9/11 and other deadly attacks on the United States and allied nations. The actual mastermind is named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known primarily by his initials: KSM. It took American terrorist hunters more than a decade to chase down KSM while he continued to control death squads around the globe. But even with the capture of KSM in 2003, American interrogators failed to eliminate his influence, while simultaneously believing his lies that squandered precious resources on what can be colloquially termed a wild goose chase.

Seven years ago, Terry McDermott completed a book stunning in its degree of difficulty and its revelations. That book is Perfect Soldiers: The Hijackers – Who They Were, Why They Did It. Traveling around the world, placing his life in danger and doing his best to extract information from sources unused to inquiries from American investigative reporters, McDermott chronicled the pasts of the men who turned commercial airplanes into deadly missiles. It turns out – surprise! – that those hijackers and their mentors are flesh-and-blood humans with desires and grievances, much like anybody else. After reading McDermott’s revelations about them, it was no longer logical to think of them as demonized stereotypes who just happened to become mass murderers. McDermott does not excuse them. But he does explain them.

[liberal N proud]

1. So now bin Laden wasn't the mastermind but KSM was

Is this a hit piece to fault the Obama Administration for successfully taking out bin Laden?

This sounds like something the pundits could run with in an election year and claim that under Obama, the US assassinated bin Laden.

[xchrom]

3. KSM was always accused of being the master mind - as i remember it.

but he was a part of bin laden's crew.

[leveymg]

2. Gets the premise wrong - it wasn't turf and miscommunication -you've gotta wonder about the details.

Last edited Tue Apr 17, 2012, 08:43 AM - Edit history (1)

Nothing new here. This regurgitates the 9/11 Commission Report that also states that KSM was the "mastermind". That was reportedly his nick-name, "Mukta", "the Brain".

Too bad the CIA scrambled whatever brains he actually had, and he'll never be allowed to be interviewed by a non-gov't, nonmilitary, independent investigator.

[Ezlivin]

4. Translate "allowed" and "permitted" to LIHOP

It's amazing how much information the FBI and CIA had on all of the 19 alleged hijackers.

How could all the alleged box cutter-wielding Muslim perpetrators have been identified in less than 72 hours—without even a crime scene investigation?