Lawyers Press Case That 9/11 Confessions Given to F.B.I. Are Tainted

No sympathy here for some those who murdered 3,000 on September 11th. Our intelligence agencies are held to the highest standards and are filled with those who can sniff out the most accurate information in the world. Other intelligence agencies over seas agreed on the matter. This man plotted the murder of some 3,000 people and yet we debating whether it was just? Only in the United States are we so privileged to debate such a thing. Thank goodness we are a free country and have the freedom of speech. This valuable right is what allows us to constantly judge and critique even the best agencies in the world, to keep them the most accountable.

Everywhere we turn life is a conflict. The FBI wants backdoors to our phones. NO! The FBI investigates Trump. Yes! The FBI lies to suspects but prosecutes those who lie to them. No! Trump fires the FBI director and authorities conclude that's obstruction of Justice. Yes! The FBI tries to benefit from torture, but not be held accountable when the prosecutions fail. NO! The FBI protects us from Trump, Mocsow Mitch, and Putin. Yes!

This is the future of the American Police State. There is no doubt that the "Cleansed Interview" decision will eventually make its way into criminal court and be used as a justification for criminal interrogations involving torture. Police officers will be allowed to torture and attack suspects, as long as the confession is taken by a "good cop" who did no harm. The current SCOTUS has keen ability to justify acts like this.

I am a moderate progressive and compared to the ego maniac bigot Trump, Bush 2 looks like a hero to me. Having said that Bush 2 has an indelible stain on his record with this issue. Many Presidents condoned torture sub Rosa. Bush 2 was the only one to make it official US policy. He should be hauled before The Hague for this that will forever be a dark stain on this country.

As much as well all want to punished the architects of the events of 9/11, it should be done in an open, legal way, subject to the scrutiny of all. All of this hidden torture, clandestine FBI-CIA cooperation merely muddies the historical waters and prevents responsibility from landing where it should. How much easier it would have ben to try them open on American soil! Have we now become the land of the insecure and the home of the fearful?

Good Luck to the defense team on this one since any and all information gotten from the defendants is tainted. This reads as a standard kind of plaintiff / defendant argument about what is admissible evidence in a criminal conspiracy case; however, it really isn't. It is the story of a cover-up of a national security story that won't go away. If the USA was Russia or China, this kind of Guantanamo "justice" would work since there wouldn't be an attempt to create an appearance of an authentic justice system; as this matter of closing the books on 9/11 stands, we are a nation with a veneer of transparency and open-ness and honesty, but in reality, on this national security issue, we are as opaque as a piece of coal. I think it is time for a Truth Commission with full subpoena powers to investigate all aspects: pre-planning, day of event, and national security / criminal investigation of sites.

This article illustrates once again that Donald Trump, who openly advocates torture as a legitimate tool in interrogations of prisoners, isn't simply an aberration of American views. He is the logical culmination of the Bush and Cheney doctrine that the ends justify the means, as occurred at Abu Ghraib in the Iraq War. Even Obama couldn't close down the Guantanamo Bay prison after pledging to do so. Every reasonable person understands that mistakes can be in the heat of the moment, but cold, calculating torture occurring over months and years and then justified by legal argument is unconscionable. If you behave like a monster to combat a monstrous enemy, haven't you become exactly what you are fighting against?

Mr. Mohammed and the four accompises should never be released. We can and should correct our lapse(s) into torture--for our sake, not theirs. They are not American citizens and are not entitled to a speedy trial by a jury of their peers. Who would those peers be, I wonder--twelve other accused terrorists, guilty to their chins, whose cases are on the verge of being thrown out on a technicality?

The FBI, CIA, and other intelligence services know that torture has little interrogative value, that confessions and data obtained under these conditions are tainted and lack credibility for use in legal proceedings, yet they did it anyway because they could-- and because the goal was punishment without due process to send a deterrent message to the Middle East. This is just one example of why the United States refuses to submit to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

When I arrived, the barely visible east side of Ground Zero on 9/11 eve to help search for any survivors and be ready with first aid, after serving all day at St. Vincents Hospital, the closest functioning medical center, I was struck by a huge hole to the north of the towers. "When did that building come down?!" We exchanged very few words all night, but the tired dusty firemen in the haze, dejectedly responded. "They took it down. They just took it down." Building Seven was "taken down" during the time we were desparate to find any living souls. I've never understood why a responsible press and government did not investigate and report on the tremendous effort, at that crucial time, to "take down" a forty something story building. And sure, I'll never agree with the decision of a few, to call for vengeance and go to war, when NYC streets were filled as far as the eye could see with citizens saying no blood for oil. We got calls from all around the world in solidarity on 9/11 on how to face our common threat. Yes, immediatly from Russia and Iran as well... to help us in anyway needed. Iran had been fighting Al Queda long before us. The good wisdom and care, ignored, and kept quiet. We know how to make the world better for all of us. a hint.... it needn't involve bombing, assasinations, torture, and esp. our renewing our nuclear weapon arsenals! The real solutions and answers are still there. Lets listen and with urgency take them up!

Col. W. Shane Cohen, the judge in this matter, ought to address a list of questions to each side, and demand particularity. If the responses fail to justify further hearings as to any of the accused, then those accused should be freed and permitted to leave the US. If the responses fail to demonstrate admissible proof as to any crime that would warrant penalty beyond that served, then they, too, should be freed and permitted to leave the US. As to any that remain, hearings should be pursued to determine the trial facts in issue, and a trial should be held as to those facts. Any thing short of the foregoing is a violation of the rights of the defendants or of the people of the United States, or both.

We will never know the truth unless we waterboard the torturers.

This is confusing. What you're saying is the anti-American, chicken-livered, America-hating, stay at home cowards who urged us not to become a nation of mindless torturers... Those with the gall and the insufferable arrogance to chastise monsters like, oh The Great Mind of Evil - Dick Cheney, a blubbering font of unfocused hatred and violent rage, might undermine their own cause by casting off the restraints and going full-bore water torture on people because they look like Arabs might undermine any real search for justice... That those who spent all their energy convincing us to abandon every core principal of being an American in a challenging world and substituted ego, hatred, unfocused violence and a lust for vengeance (The Dickster, again)... Those who saw a massive political opportunity in our sorrow and pain and refocused it as Nazi-movie parodies of patriotism waving little flags around everywhere and arrogantly proclaiming themselves above the law because they were leading this God-awful parade... You're saying those guys were wrong? And now they've blown their case by being bad as they wanted to be? Huh. Someone should tell Liz. And Mitch.

This is exactly why we oppose torture. It's not just out of the goodness of our hearts.

It's easy to say that the defendants (assuming, for the moment, that they are guilty) had no regard for the rights of the 3000 murdered on 9/11 - so why should we respect their rights? But that's the difference between the murderers and us, a liberal society. Otherwise they win: and I don't want that to happen.

The fact that reforms were carried out in the Guantanamo system does not paper over the original concept, cooked up in Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld's minds (among others) - and these guys are the ones who should be on trial today for letting down America. For forgetting everything that was learned over centuries of religious inquisitions from France, to Spain, Italy, Portugal, and the New World. For forgetting what Stalin and the Nazis did. For forgetting what the Vietnamese Communists did to US POWs including the late Senator John McCain, and what North Korea and Syria continue to do until this day. If we can't agree on the evil of torture, what can we agree on?

It does not look good for NYT to place such an important criminal activity in their "Politics" section. We can go, land and come back from Moon, but cannot find truth about the names involved in 911 plotting. Are we knowingly producing a conspiracy theory.

These guys are guilty as hell, and yet, we should let them go because our "intelligence" people are so stupid, they had to resort to torture. No way would I want my children to go into military service, now that the United States has made it clear that torture is ok in military conflict.