(no subject)

[Donna Halper]

>Keating wrote--
>Second, everyone here should be listening to John Loftus reporting on the 
>superb John Batchelor show on RKO. John Loftus has spoken with the 
>principals and Newsweek's error was that the prisoners themselves were 
>doing the Koran destruction, and there was another incident, not involving 
>the Koran. The reporter's source got confused between the two, and made an 
>error.

Yes but stories of brutish and bigoted tactics by interrogators HAVE been 
verified in the past. Given what was done at Abu Ghraib and what has been 
done in extreme secrecy at Guantanamo Bay by interrogators who in one case 
used sexually suggestive tactics (like putting fake menstrual blood on a 
detainee and then not permitting him to wash before prayer), and given that 
released prisoners HAVE asserted that their holy book was mocked and 
desecrated as a tactic to break their will, there is a larger question 
here. It's easy to pile on and blame Newsweek, but riddle me this: if 
prisoners ("detainees") can be held for 3 years with no charges and nobody 
is permitted to see how they are being treated, doesn't this lend itself to 
abuse?  I don't care if these are the worst people in the history of 
humanity-- the fact that we are not allowed to know what is being done to 
them so many years after 9/11 is not healthy for a country that is supposed 
to be a democracy.  If they are guilty of something, charge them and send 
them to trial.  If they are not guilty, send them back to their 
countries.  But the media are the watchdogs of a democratic society.  Not 
allowing them to do their job, and then condemning them if they get 
something wrong, is hypocritical.  All political leaders try to keep the 
press at bay at one time or another.  But in this case, it's a bad 
situation and Newsweek's error,  compounded by excessive secrecy from this 
administration, is just fueling radicals in other countries who will use 
any excuse to riot.