Got the F*cker. Khalid Sheikh
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- if you don't know who this guy is, or if you're confused about who's who in Al Qaeda, you don't get much bigger than this guy. I'd say he's a more important catch than Osama bin Laden or Ayman Al-Zawahiri (probably the only two guys above Mohammed).
If you're confused about this, think of it this way: After Enron, they didn't arrest Kenneth Lay -- they arrested Jeff Skilling. Skilling knew everything that was going on; Lay didn't. There's a point in some companies where the highest-ups don't know what goes on, and they let their "lieutenants" do all the major work.
That's exactly what this was. Mohammed is the head of operations, so to speak, of the entire operation. He knew everything about everything. And while the odds are that he won't sing, taking him out of the loop is sure to cause some disruptions in operations. Here's to hoping the CIA got his laptop (and with it, every name, address, and phone humber of every Al Qaeda cell here and abroad). And failing that, here's to hoping that the CIA doesn't follow the letter of the law when interrogating him.
I say bust out the bastanada.
UPDATE: This reminds me. I haven't told nearly enough people what I think should be done about the memorial to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (Khaled Skeikh Mohammed plays a key role, so it's related.) Now that the new design has been chosen for the WTC site, I'll have to forward this to the designer toute suite.
The idea is that on ground level -- or below it, if you prefer -- there's a memorial to the victims of the attack. And a museum, detailing the events. You can picture it: there's a timeline along one wall; there are photographs of all the hijackers and where they came from; there are monitors with translated videos of Osama bin Laden. (There are probably pictures of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, too -- they say he was the chief planner of the attack.)
So as you wind your way through the museum, you get the story of what happened on that day. And then -- you come to the end.
Right in the center of a plexiglass-enclosed cylinder, you see Osama bin Laden's head -- his real head, mind you -- encased in plastic. And pouring down on his head, inside this plexiglass enclosure, is the entire sum of the new WTC complex's sewer system, routed to rain down on this exhibit twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year, for the rest of eternity. The torrent of sewage would rain down on Osama's head forever.
I think a memorial like this would: 1) make people understand the magnitude of the lives that Al Qaeda took that day; and 2) show them that justice will be done, and that even in death, you don't get away with that shit.
Posted by Matt at March 1, 2003 5:17 PM
