Look at Helen Keller. Notice how the biographies we see of her in our grade-school classes and in the mass media almost invariably stop when she hits the age of twenty? Even though she lived a good six decades beyond that? It's because she became a Socialist. She realized that the only reason she was able to interact with the rest of humanity at a high-functioning level was because she was lucky enough to be the daughter of the most important and richest man in her Alabama town -- and that most children didn't have that advantage.

Look at Martin Luther King. Notice how his biographies leap straight from the March on Washington to the Memphis balcony? It's because he spent the last years of his life fighting against America's involvement in Vietnam. (That's why the TradMed loves to talk about the "Dream" speech but never the "Drum Major" speech.)

They do it to all of them, Glenn.

While sweeping things under the rug is bad, so is a reflexive willingness to unquestioningly believe everything bad. Worse, parroting bogus accusations hurts the credibility of the people making them (unless of course they have the money and the media machine to cover their butts).

That looks to be a very different situation from what you faced. Did you face the risk of kidnapping the way Westerners do in Afghanistan and other parts of the ME?

But even setting that aside, there are other problems with the story tying US troops to what Dostrum did:

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2009/7/21/16249/3425/94#c94

...So is the one for this diary:  "NYT: Bush Admin. covered up Afghan massacre". Except the actual title of the NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/world/asia/11afghan.html?_r=1&hp)is: "U.S. Inaction Seen After Taliban P.O.W.’s Died".

That diary also says:

ccording to US government documents obtained by PHR, as many as 2,000 surrendered Taliban fighters were reportedly suffocated in container trucks by Afghan forces operating jointly with the US in November 2001.

But if you wade through the giant blob of fax images PHR put online, the only "government documents" that say that are clippings from wire services, forwarded by people saying "This bogus story is making the rounds,  and we need to rebut it".

What the documents actually written by the government say is:

1. There were no US military people operating in the area where the NA soldiers captured those Taliban,  "jointly" or otherwise, and

2. The Army medics who were at the prison when the Taliban arrived said that there were about 15 Taliban wounded who were either DOA,  or beyond saving,  and were buried in a mass grave nearby.

Now,  it's entirely possible that only some of the trucks made it to the prison,  and there really was a massacre:  what the medics didn't see doesn't prove anything.

But every time one of these PHR diaries gets posted,  there seems to be a new misrepresentation of the statements or documents they cite.  They're actually making their version of the story less credible as time goes by.

Mike Madden pitches them softballs like this article.

Especially considering the waves of hate being flung at him over it.

Her reflexive, white-hot hatred of Obama overrides her sense of fair play. As a look at her letters history shows.

As a large chunk of the letter writers here show.

That's why they're pushing this so hard.

I was wondering when CNN would stop letting Lou Dobbs get away with virtual murder on TV.

The callous moral idiots flogging videos and the woman-hating men thumping their chests could learn a thing or two from you, but that would require them to grow up and get some actual empathy (and not to confuse "reverence for life" with "Oh boy! Now I have a socially-acceptable excuse to attack women!").

For those who missed it, Weezil's letter is here: http://letters.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/07/25/lovely_life/permalink/42e62a0145579f5df26d22aae4613954.html I hope it gets the Editor's Choice mark because it deserves one.

Wow! Love all the "good Germans" here.

Oh, and by the way, wanna know why the charges against Gates were dropped and he was released right away? Because the arrest was illegal:

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/07/23/henry-louis-gates-contempt-of-cop/

If I were you, I'd learn how to spell before I went and accused someone of not being handy with the English language. Check on the two-by-four in your own eye before commenting on the dust mote in someone else's eye.

And to Vicki for sharing her story.

And yes, it's interesting how it's OK to "play God" and condemn a being to a painful, tortured existence rather than following God's obvious will and letting the being go back home.