NYT's Shocking Guantanamo Editorial

The end of the world is upon us, perhaps not in an immediately apocalyptic sense, but the signs of the times are increasingly bizarre, and inexplicable things are happening. What else can explain the publication in today’s New York Times of a guest editorial singing the praises of the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center? After years of misleading and shallowly researched stories by its own staff recounting alleged torture and prisoner abuse by the U.S. military at Guantanamo, The New York Times revealed a glimmer of journalistic integrity by deeming Colonel Morris Davis’s “The Guantanamo I Know” as “fit to print.” Capital Cloak frequently decries liberal bias in the media, but is also fair in reporting when liberal media outlets like the Times make any effort to present both sides of an issue. If only it would happen more often!

Air Force Col. Davis, the chief prosecutor for the Defense Department in military commissions, which have come under fire from war critics and Bush administration opponents, provided specific details of the amenities afforded to terrorists housed at the Guantanamo detention center. Consider the following privileges prisoners there enjoy, keeping in mind that they are terrorists captured in battle with our troops or known to have plotted and carried out attacks worldwide, and decide for yourselves whether the notorious concentration camp-like descriptions of Guantanamo recklessly spoken by Democrats and gladly reported by the liberal media match the reality of life for prisoners:

The makeshift detention center known as Camp X-Ray closed in early 2002 after just four months of use. Now it is overgrown with weeds and serves as home to iguanas. Yet last week ABC News published a photo online of Camp X-Ray as if it were in use, five years after its closing.

Today, most of the detainees are housed in new buildings modeled after civilian prisons in Indiana and Michigan. Detainees receive three culturally appropriate meals a day. Each has a copy of the Koran. Guards maintain respectful silence during Islam’s five daily prayer periods, and medical care is provided by the same practitioners who treat American service members. Detainees are offered at least two hours of outdoor recreation each day, double that allowed inmates, including convicted terrorists, at the “supermax” federal penitentiary in Florence, Colo.

Standards at Guantánamo rival or exceed those at similar institutions in the United States and abroad. After an inspection by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in March 2006, a Belgian police official said, “At the level of detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons.”

Critics liken Guantánamo Bay to Soviet gulags, but reality does not match their hyperbole. The supporters of David Hicks, the detainee popularly known as the “Australian Taliban,” asserted that Mr. Hicks was mistreated and wasting away. But at his March trial, where he pleaded guilty to providing material support to a terrorist organization, he and his defense team stipulated he was treated properly. Mr. Hicks even thanked service members, and as one Australian newspaper columnist noted, he appeared in court “looking fat, healthy and tanned, and cracking jokes.”

Given the descriptions offered by Col. Davis and from the firsthand accounts I have been privy to, it would seem that terrorists captured in Iraq and Afghanistan and held in Guantanamo enjoy far better living standards and hygienic conditions than media darling Paris Hilton recently experienced in Los Angeles County jail facilities. Where were the calls from the liberal media to close down the L.A. County jails for their inhumanity? Where were the arguments that America is losing its moral high ground through its substandard prison facilities for convicted celebrities? Celebrities should be outraged that terrorists receive better treatment at Guantanamo!

Col. Davis performed a further act of educational service for liberals who insist that military commissions do not comply with Geneva Convention articles. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration did its homework on the legalities of the powers of a commander in chief and came to the appropriate conclusion that military commissions do in fact provide all of the fundamental guarantees of Article 75 of the Geneva Convention Protocol:

Each accused receives a copy of the charges in his native language; outside influence on witnesses and trial participants is prohibited; the accused may challenge members of the commission; an accused may represent himself or have assistance of counsel; he is presumed innocent until guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt; he is entitled to assistance to secure evidence on his behalf; he is not required to incriminate himself at trial and his silence is not held against him; he may not be tried a second time for the same offense; and he is entitled to the assistance of counsel through four stages of post-trial appellate review ending at the United States Supreme Court.

One myth is that the accused can be excluded from his trial and convicted on secret evidence. The administrative boards that determine if a detainee is an enemy combatant and whether he is a continuing threat may consider classified information in closed hearings outside the presence of the detainee. But military commissions may not. The act states, “The accused shall be permitted ... to examine and respond to evidence admitted against him on the issue of guilt or innocence and for sentencing.” Unless the accused chooses to skip his trial or is removed for disruptive behavior, he has the right to be present and to confront all of the evidence.

Despite all of these legal protections, none of which are offered to U.S. troops who have the misfortune of falling into terrorist hands, critics of Guantanamo have continued to argue that military commissions are unfair because hearsay evidence is permitted and considered for or against the defendant. U.S. criminal courts, where liberals apparently feel more comfortable about prosecuting terrorists, do not allow hearsay testimony. Col. Davis exposed the fallacy of this argument over the unfairness of military commissions and hearsay testimony by reminding critics of the following point:

…While this standard permits admission of some evidence that would not be admissible in federal courts, the rights afforded Americans are not the benchmark for assessing rights afforded enemy combatants in military tribunals.

There is no ban on hearsay among the indispensable rights listed in the Geneva Conventions. Nor is there a ban on hearsay for the United Nations-sanctioned war crimes tribunals, including the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The Nuremberg trials also did not limit hearsay evidence. Simply stated, a ban on hearsay is not an internationally recognized judicial guarantee.

While Democrats, anti-war demonstrators, and the eager liberal media pummel the Bush administration for allegedly denying captured enemy combatants due process under Geneva Protocols at Guantanamo, they either ignorantly or intentionally disregard the fact that their sacred Geneva Protocols have been complied with in full and the prisoner facilities are superior in all respects to the standards of prisons anywhere in the world. Col. Davis’s guest editorial proved once again that when it comes to the ridiculous accusations from the left that President Bush and Vice President Cheney committed alleged “war crimes” related to treatment of enemy combatants in the War on Terror, there is plenty of hysteria but no substance.

Congratulations to the New York Times for doing, in this case at least, its job by publishing a conservative rebuttal to 4 years of misleading and inaccurate liberal reports of conditions at Guantanamo. Perhaps the Times will now run a series of editorials in which it will seek to repair the damage it has done to worldwide opinion of President Bush’s integrity on this issue after relentlessly impugning it for years. I won’t hold my breath for that to happen. That truly would be a sign that the end is near.

Technorati Tags:Guantanamo, Prisoner Treatment, Military Commissions, Geneva Convention, Bush Administration, Torture, Hearsay, Enemy Combatants

CNN Insane To Jab At Reagan

As a conservative, I often question my sanity for spending time each day scouring the headlines and blog titles from liberal sources such as CNN, MSNBC, the Daily Kos, the Washington Post, etc. I know what I will usually find; melancholy accounts of the Iraq War, new revelations in the so-called scandals of the Bush administration, and unconcealed glee that the Democrats control the House and Senate. Each visit to these sites is a contributing factor to my gradually rising blood pressure, but it is important to monitor what is written and how it is presented to the public. While it is perfectly normal to question one’s own sanity for self-inflicting such political torment, it is not normal for a news channel to question the sanity of a revered former American president. That is, unless that channel happens to be CNN.

Thanks to an alert World Net Daily (WND) reader who, like me, wades through the media quagmire that is CNN.com, CNN was caught in the act of linking Ronald Reagan with “insanity” through a news headline on the CNN.com main web site page. The reader alerted WND and screen shots were captured from CNN.com last night that clearly demonstrate CNN’s original headline and the one editors replaced it with after WND blew the whistle on them.

Headlines on respectable news sites are expected to refer in some way to the topic of an article, but CNN apparently went out of its way to link the terms “Reagan” and “insanity” with the clear knowledge that the AP article had nothing to do with insanity or any mental illness. Where did CNN get the idea to link Reagan with insanity? The AP article, titled “Reagan’s wit, humor comes through In detailed diaries,” included one vignette of Reagan’s struggle with then teenage daughter Patti, who despised the limitations a Secret Service detail placed on her activities. Reagan wrote of Patti’s tantrums and literal screams at him and the agents to get rid of her protective detail, “Insanity is hereditary. You catch it from your kids.”

That humorous (and true, as any parent of a teenager knows) remark by Reagan is the only reference to “insanity” in the AP article, but in referring readers to the story, CNN chose to replace the AP headline with a disingenuous and completely out of context headline of its own: “Reagan diary gives new take on insanity.”

This despicable act by CNN is an object lesson in why conservatives must and do track the news from a wide variety of sources, even liberal outlets that our natural instincts tell us are not worth viewing. While some CNN.com readers were misled by the deplorable headline in the time it was on the site, WND’s rapid reaction in confronting CNN was a victory for truth. Small victories often turn the tide of war. WND deserves credit for confirming the reader’s report and confronting CNN immediately about its misleading Reagan headline. It is no coincidence that all of the GOP candidates for the 2008 nomination are attempting to embrace Reagan’s brand of conservatism and to emulate him as much as possible in their campaigning. CNN cleverly (so it thought) understood that linking Reagan with “insanity” would also link anyone trying to imitate him to “insanity” as well, thus the headline was an affront to all Reagan conservatives.

This headline story had a happy ending, as reported by WND:

In the wake of WND's exposure, CNN.com changed the Reagan headline on its homepage, removing any reference to "insanity." The updated headline read: "Reagan's wit comes through in diaries."

From wit to insanity, and back to wit again. The truth took a major detour under the direction of CNN’s editorial department, but the truth, as it always does, overcame. CNN’s executives have been pulling their hair out wondering how Fox News rose to #1 and remains firmly entrenched in that spot. They also puzzle ‘till their puzzlers are sore over how to regain credibility and viewers. The solution to CNN’s woes is simple and scriptural, which explains why they have missed it for so long: “the truth shall set you free.”