Those Poor Terrorists....

Today was "Sympathy for Terrorists Day" at the Seattle Times. There were three stories in the A section dealing with the lives of Guantanamo Bay detainees and Iraqi suicide bombers.

The worst of the three was the "Close-Up" piece on page A3. The relatively new "Close-Up" page has more and more begun to resemble an Op/Ed page, rather than an objective, in-depth news forum. Today, the Times looked at the detainees and interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. The first thing I noticed in reading the piece is how the Times glosses over the crimes committed by these terrorists. The only reference to crimes is the nebulas assertion that they are "accused of links to the fallen Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terrorist network". This makes it sound like perhaps Osama bin Laden's barber may be detained. I hate to always go back to Abu Graihb, but the Times never failed to detail the terrible acts committed by US soldiers. In a piece this size, one would expect a more detailed description of who these people really are and what they did.

And speaking of Abu Ghraib, the Times doesn't miss an opportunity for a cheap shot. About halfway through the piece, we get the sentence "Before moving this spring to the Abu Ghraib prison, the US-run prison in Iraq where some troops are accused of abusing detainees, Guantanamo center's former commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller...".
Is there any point in reminding us what went on in Abu Ghraib? Well, yes, because clearly the Times is attempting to make connections between Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Apparently, the Times believes conditions are very bad at Guantanamo: "twenty-one detainees have tried to kill themselves in 34 incidents" and "...other groups contend prolonged detention has harmed detainees' mental health...the result of harsh interrogation techniques". Boo-hoo. And it is so unnecessary, the Times believes, because "few detainees at Guantanamo still retain any value as sources of intelligence about terrorist activities".

It amazes me that liberals in one breath complain that Bush did not do enough to stop the attacks on 9/11, yet in the next breath they complain about the status of the terrorists in Guantanamo, that the Patriot Act goes too far, and they whine every time a terror warning is issued by the administration. As I've said before, there is NOTHING Bush can do to satisfy them or quell their hate.