You state the McClatchy piece is too long at 1300 words. What are we, morons?

-- ccputnam

I don't know. Since you misread and or misquoted the sentence that you've used to pose the question, I'll leave it to you to answer your own question.

(it's not very long:roughly 1,300 words).

--GlennGreenwald

You state the McClatchy piece is too long at 1300 words. What are we, morons?

I don't know enough yet to say if you're a moron -- though signs are certainly pointing in that direction -- but I can say that your reading comprehension skills are rather pitiful:

I really want to encourage everyone to click the link and read it in its entirety (it's not very long: roughly 1,300 words).

More of the same you can believe in--link @ sig.

(it's not very long: roughly 1,300 words)
_________________________________

You'll have to answer that question for yourself.

One item I would add to the scandal which is our "war on terror" is that we went into Afghanistan and paid extremely poor people $300 for each "terrorist" they named. (In the McClatchy story, it appears that our "terrorist" was named by a political enemy, with the same result.)

Really, which one of us could honestly say that, if we were dirt poor and our kids were chronically hungry, we wouldn't take the opportunity to "name that terrorist" about any unpleasant acquaintance?

Evidence which is paid for is, like torture, excluded or discounted in court because the truth value of the evidence is minimal.

As for the contention that Obama fears releasing Gitmo inmates that we have wrongly declared "the worst of the worst" because they might engage in terrorism later: Bush has already released some 500 "worst of the worst"; how does it harm Obama if he adds another 50-200 of them (we'll assume that some inmates are likely guilty and can be proven such)?

It seems to me that there is more meat to Obama's wrong-headed policy of indefinite detention than just a fear of "what if" there's another terrorist attack. What is the likelihood that we would be able to prove that such an attack was perpetrated by one of the "Obama 50" rather than the "Bush 500"?

Kudos to Glenn, Ms. Youssef and McClatchy for keeping us at least one step away from a life of total darkness.

I meant to say Iraq was a mistake, not Iran

"But I do not want to retaliate." -- Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil

You're a better man than I am, Wakil. How many American Christians, following the ordeal of being held in a cage for six years -- by captors who had both every reason and every means to know he was not an enemy to the U.S. -- would be able to follow their own purported religious teachings and just "turn the other cheek" ?

"It is my job as a tribal elder to suffer on behalf of my people."

Consider the level of suffering he's accepting in the name of governance, and then compare it to Sarah Palin's threshhold of suffering. My feelings sometimes get bruised by being the object of ribbing by the likes of David Letterman and Tina Fey. It's torture! So -- I QUIT!

I just have to wonder what in the world they are teaching at Journalism schools. Is it just ask a gov't official and report whatever they say? Has fact-checking and seeking different opinions become irrelevant? My local rag, Greeley Tribune, has a question line for readers. Someone asked if our District Attorney was violating campaign finance laws by doing spots on a local radio station. The reporter called the DA and asked him if he was violating the law. DA said no. Case closed. So it's not just the national elite media that has adopted this form of journalism, it's everywhere. No wonder our country is in such sad shape.

because its an important one to tell. I truly believe its sickening to hear these stories of people who are harrassed and imprisoned on false pretenses by a country whose founding legal principles are based on the assumption that its better to let the guilty go free than imprison someone who is innocent.

But the backstory here is that this is just another instance of a country (U.S.) jumping into a war against a country whose people we do not give a shit about let alone understand. Our willingness and desire to create a tangible enemy against whom we are fighting (where we are good, they are evil) out of a people we don't know anything about. Our willingness to believe the accounts of people in a country with a history of corruption and in-fighting has created this situation, where someone whose credibility if it were in the U.S. justice system would almost certainly be questionable, would be used as a material witness against another person. Our desire to seek cold-blooded retribution for the perpetrators of 9/11 has clouded our judgment.

While I agree with your criticism of our government's actions and am appalled by such, I find your use of vague absolutes and/or exaggerated declarations such as that above damaging to your credibility.

Youseff's piece was indeed good journalism, but did not disprove the government's allegations.

I didn't say that her piece disproved the accusations. I said the accusations have been disproven.

If that's not true -- if the accusation that he's an Al Qaeda sympathizer and enemy combatant weren't disprove -- when was he released from Guantanamo, to Afghanistan of all places? If evidence that he is a close associate of the Karzai government -- a former vehement opponent of the Tablian and Al Qaeda -- don't disprove the accusations, what would?

I'll acknowledge that what we know doesn't disprove the accusations with some sort of mathematical certainty. As you said, that can't be done. But all the known evidence - including the Bush administration's actions in releasing him -- constitute evidence disproving the accusations.

You continue to ignore, the current administration's claims of attempts to release detainees who cannot be released where they were detained because (1) it is not their country of citizenship, and their country where they hold citizenship refuses to take them (2) They will lack any civil rights in their own country. To date I have seen no investigative proof this is not true but instead opinions using one or two cases then applying those situations to broad swath of detainees.

The reason there is no groundswell on your point is that it's only tangentially relevant to the broad issue. Let's assume the administration's claims as you pose are true. How does this justify indefinite detention in prison camp without trial or process? The argument has never been that all these men are innocent, it has always been that they should have basic process to determine their innocence or guilt - this is a bedrock American value that's being trampled on in this unneccessary fiasco.

But in actually there is substantial reason to be skeptical of these claims. Are you arguing that these detainees actually PREFER to be locked up at Gitmo rather than returned to their countries where they will lack "civil rights" (the irony is oozing)? Where are the detainees who are claiming "keep me locked up in this prison. I'd rather be here than go home."? Oh wait, we cannot know because they have no voice whatsoever.