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June 6 2009 NYTimes echoes Pentagon Lies re: Guantanamo prisoner releases

This piece was triggered by Isabel Macdonald's May 27 piece, NYT's Pentagon Propaganda: Misleading Report on Guantnamo and Terrorism. She's the Communications Director of Fair, a fact-checking organization.


There are adequate federal prison facilities to safely detain even the total number of Guantanamo prisoners, should that be necessary. No one has escaped from our federal maximum security facilities, ever.

The "released prisoners return to terrorism" reports from the pentagon have been debunked repeatedly.

The NYTimes allowed itself to print "1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight" without the fact checking that would have allowed its readers to see that:

-the pentagons counts are bogus, including freed men who merely wrote op-ed pieces or appeared in anti-war videos,

-the counts do not bother to exclude some who were never in Guantanamo,

-the counts failed to indicate that the so-called terrorists were never convicted of anything.

The article never even mentioned the fact that the 1 in 7 number included mere suspicious estimations in its totals.

That some prisoners are radicalized in our prisons, from torture and exposure to immoral inhumane treatment may very well be true, but this would not apply to those in solitary confinement. 

The scare-mongering tactics of the right wing fundamentalists like Chaney and his gang of neocons do not deserve major headlines. Their empty ideas perhaps deserve a mention on page 23 about the baseless arguments that they persist in putting forth, but certainly not the opinion-shaping headlines the NYTimes chose to give them.

There is a need for youth education in the country that will enable tomorrows adults to guard themselves against the ever increasing news-for-sensationalism reportage we are subjected to. Perhaps it is also time to add morality education to our journalism students. Then future reporters might not be so apt to lend their names to quasi-truths.

Debunking sources:
Denbeaux 12/10/07 [PDF]
Huffington Post, 3/13/07
Washington Independent, 1/23/09

Y'all have a good day now.

b

Oct 8 2008 No news is good news from Baghdad

We called Dunia's family, in Baghdad, to see why she had stopped posting. Her dad has severely restricted her internet use now that school has started. He's quite serious about this and Dunia will have to prove herself on her exams if we are to hear her words again.
You can encourage her by writing To: Dunia

Send your words to [email protected]

Here's her last missive:

Hello Mr. Bruce Wallace
 you message forced to write to you....because i felt you are honest.Each time my friends write to you i make fun of them because I don't believe in words only without actions.

you are asking about our families!? I think you are the only one in this ugly world who asks about us and our families. I feel we are alone in this world. I feel we are cursed by people called American and Iranian and neighboring coward countries. I am sorry if I hurt your feelings but this is how I feel....please accept my feeling.

You have said :(I hope for your safety and that soon you will feel a change to more peaceful times.) When? when this will happen? we are losing patience if there is any! I don't know why we are a live? to see people die? or to lose our people one by one day after day.

It is early in the morning now and we have electricity. Clap for us because we have electricity this morning and I am writing to you.tell your students that we don' deserve this way of treatment.Tell them we want to be thier friends but we can't.We are not people of violence or terrorism.We are known of our generosity and kindness but your war kills everything.We want to be friends but we can't.it is very difficult to move in the street to go to the net store to send a message.Sometimes there is no electricity, other times there is curfew and sometimes we feel hopeless.What is the benefits of our words if there is only echo you hear?!!! We are tired of see blood everywhere .ruins everywhere.tired unhappy people.the walls in our house are bored of seeing our faces every day and every hour. your students dont ask about politics but our lives have nothing but politics and bombing ,shooting and killing.I am afraid we are going to change our (Sabahalkhair)=good morning into (mino mat
alyoum?) = who died today? I amgoing to answer your questions and ask my friend to answer to if they have electricity!

I usually wake up at 8:00 on Saturdays and Sundays .I m going to prepare the breakfast to my family. I will boil some eggs and i make tea,a big tea pot because we are a big family.7 members with no father.in these days we go no where but I will clean the house with my sisters and may be we will eat our lunch in the garden.the weather is warmer these days.

concerning the school: the last few days there were few students and 3 of my class hurt because of the last violence. one of the students lost her brother. he was shot by shia militia and he is shia.The teacher are changed ,we have some new teachers.some are nice ,some are not.my favorite teacher moved to the north of iraq after kidnapping her son though they released him but she decided to leave.She gave a lot of mony to save him.
Our schools are boring and my mother never asks me about homework.She is worried all the time about my brothers, she doesnot know where to hide them. She cares about their safety more than us the girls.She loves us all.She is a good mother.when there is shooting she can't sit or stand but she starts to jump over the same place and rubbing her hands asking about my brothers if they were at home or out.

There was hard shooting in the last days and even bombs but we are not allowed to see or have a look .Our mother wont allow us to do that.

the electricity will be off.

Say hello to your students.
Bye Dunia(not my real name)

Send your words to [email protected]

Aug 19 2008 No war, no Iraq, no problem

I know my head is often buried in Iraq, but this feels quite ridiculous. We wander the monuments and museums of the capital city of the U.S.A. and hear no, see no, and speak no Iraq Occupation. Well, we do speak of it from time to time as something triggers our consciousness; a soldier in camouflage uniform, a flag on a middle-east embassy, Arlington National Cemetery...there are plenty of reminders here for us.

Across the world, 6211 miles (9996 km) away, life in another capital city is said to be returning to normal. but the pace of the return is similar to the rate at which Earth's orbit shrinks closer to the sun. Baghdad is certainly safer today than it was a year ago. There is less killing, less kidnapping, and less violence in general. But the wounds are deep and many are still festering.

As we plan our next fund-raising endeavor we face the harsh fact that Americans are less and less sympathetic to the plight of innocent Iraqi civilians. Here in our nation's capital the Washington Post had no mention of Iraq on its pages today. It is becoming harder and harder to remind Americans about the terrible devastation we engendered in Iraq; the lives lost, the millions of physically wounded, the millions of families crushed by hardships...why we even forget that today there are many neighborhoods in Baghdad that still have no reliable water, electricity, internet connection, sewage, and employment.

Our meager assistance to widows in Baghdad is good, but so small as make us disheartened from time to time. We struggle on to raise money to send to these victims of our heartless occupation, and we struggle on to understand how to awaken the American consciousness, stir it to action, and help the innocent civilians of Iraq.

Any ideas?

[we're off to the Holocaust Museum. Perhaps there are answers there...]

in loving kindness,
B and N

Nov 13 2007 American Soldiers beat brother: children of family hate Americans

I hope your remember the post of email from Dunia and Ali, in the Women of Peace and Dunia and Ali categories. They were so angry. We didn't know why until today. We got an email from another Women of Peace member and she wrote:

"I am sorry for them because the American soldiers beat her brother in very bad way and arrest her father for few days then they released him but he was beaten."

OK. There are no verified facts here; just a report from a student to a beloved teacher. Yes, we assume it is true.
Yes, we can easily understand why there is so much hatred being born in Iraq.

Yes, let's bring the troops home now so we can get down to the real business of helping the innocent Iraqis build a new peaceful life. They don't need military action. They need practical support--power plants, water treatment plants, medicine, jobs...the real stuff of life.
b

Oct 29 2007 From New York to Baghdad - encouragement

Dear Dunia and Ali,
I am Shana and I live in America. I am also thirteen. I received your letters, and I want to encourage you because not all Americans agree and support what our country is doing to yours.

I understand what you said in your lettters and when I read them my heart hurt for you. I know that there is not much I can do for you except to pray.

I believe that our God sees and hears you and you should know that me and the community where I live are praying for you and other people who are suffering. Please try to forgive our country,. I do not know much about the situation yo are in, so I can't say much more, but be encouraged.
From Shana