I came across this article by former PBS ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin in Salon earlier this week decrying the abolishment of the ombudsman job at many media outlets. It's an interesting subject to me, but the most interesting part of the column is unrelated to the ombudsman's job, it's this: The Middle East has always been […]
I wanted to highlight this sentence in a Washington Post report that has become boilerplate in any article involving waterboarding. Independent legal experts have called the technique torture and said its use is barred by U.S. laws and treaties under all circumstances. It's missing a word at the beginning: "Some independent legal experts..." The Post's […]
CIA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden confirmed Tuesday for the first time that the United States had used the interrogation technique known as waterboarding three times. Those waterboarded included: Abu Zubaydah, the man who planned the unsuccessful 2000 milennium attack on Los Angeles International Airport. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who masterminded the attack on the USS […]
The death toll may top 100 in yesterday's horrific attacks at a Baghdad pet market -- and that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is that the bombers weren't deluded and evil young men convinced that slaughtering innocents was their ticket to paradise and 72 willing virgins. Instead, the cowardly terrorists used […]
In an interview Monday, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs, said he was in favor of closing down the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There are good reasons to shut down Gitmo, and there are bad reasons. Good reason: All terrorist detainees have been given a fair trial and a public […]
New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt addressed the decision by that paper to hire Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol to write a weekly column. Much of Hoyt's column is critical of the decision, but he doesn't go as far as the fever swamp left as to suggest that hiring Kristol was beyond the pale. […]
Author/reporter Mark Bowden of "Black Hawk Down" fame had a piece in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer "In defense of waterboarding," that is well worth a read. No one should be prosecuted for waterboarding Abu Zubaydah. Several investigations are under way to find out who ordered the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, apparently an effort to cover […]
I nearly burst out laughing when I read this Friday afternoon. Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Friday rejected lawmakers' demands for information as the Justice Department investigates the destruction of tapes showing CIA interrogations of two al Qaeda suspects. In letters to the House and Senate Judiciary committees, Mukasey also said he would not appoint […]
Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Boumediene v. Bush -- something that it shouldn't be doing in the first place. The case presents the court with the question of whether terrorists captured on foreign battlefields and held in foreign lands have the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. This […]
Many Democrats and their allies on the loony left want to close down the terrorist detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because the international community has become convinced that all sorts of really bad things happen there. This, of course, ignores the fact that the terrorists are treated at least 1.5 million times better than […]