Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Anyone who is suspicious of the "confession" of this man, please feel to read up on him. Please don't let your hatred of George Bush make you think he's some sort of patsy. He was also well-educated and well-traveled, an engineer.

If there was anyone who could be defined as a "ticking bomb scenario" it was this guy. If there is any one member of Al Qaeda who truly needed to be water boarded for intel, he is it. This is the guy that is the exception to the rule where even if it was illegal to torture him, you do it anyways.

Also, this creeps me out: Zawahiri actually visited my hometown and Taiwan in the 90's doing fund raising. (from the Looming Tower.)

UPDATE:

He "sang" to interrogators almost from the start, after his March 2003 arrest at a house outside the Pakistani capital. Much of the information in the 26 pages of released testimony has been long known.

I swear I read that he was water-boarded. Maybe he wasn't.

In his testimony to a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, released in redacted form by the
Pentagon on Wednesday, Mohammed claimed involvement in 31 attacks and plots. Some are almost surely true.

He was the mastermind of the 9/11 jetliner attacks and, in their wake, certified his bloodthirsty by personally beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl — bragging about it on the Internet then and in the testimony transcript of last Saturday.

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," he said. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."

His operations ranged from his admitted involvement in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, as well as a failed scheme known as Bojinka to bring down 12 Western airliners in Asia — claims that are well documented.

Less certain is his claimed role in the October 2002 bombings that killed 202 people in Bali, Indonesia, and aborted plots to assassinate former U.S. presidents and
Pope John Paul II.

"He's a boastful character. I think after four years of silence, he'd probably like to be up there with the likes of bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri as a major figure and ideologue, and impress people with everything he's done," said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistan-based author on Islamic militancy.

So there is documentation for many of his confessions, as I noted, and at least this story mentions them. As for the Bali bombings, this guy was living in SE Asia for many years - I would not be surprised if he was involved. Then again, he can only do so much, so maybe he is lying for effect, under duress, or boasting.

UPDATE II:

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

So, did he "sing" or did he have to be water-boarded? The Yahoo story says he "sang" almost from the beginning. This story says he had to be water-boarded. I guess those are not mutually exclusive.