Random News & Views Roundup

- Drudge reports a lie about CNN reporter Michael Ware. Powerline repeats it. Ware fights back with video. Power Line has to add a corrective update. Other right-wing blogs try to cover their sorry asses. It doesn't work. Just another day in the right-wing blogosphere. (Update: McCain is still living in Neverland.)

- The Supreme Court rules against the Bush administration in a global warming case. Senator Inhofe's head explodes and the Weather Channel's ratings go through the roof.

- What CNN didn't tell you earlier today: the missing American man in Kish, Iran is a former FBI agent. No one knows what happened to him. Was it smart for the State Department to reveal that information? I don't think so.

- US authorities snooping in your Canadian bank accounts? No problem. We all trust the Bush administration, don't we?

- More horror:

Baghdad - A truck bomber carrying food supplies killed eight Iraqi schoolgirls and a baby in the northern oil city of Kirkuk on Monday as suspected Sunni militants executed 21 Shiite workers north of Baghdad.

- Truth:

Terry Jones
Saturday March 31, 2007
The Guardian

I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.


It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn't be humiliated.

And what's all this about allowing the captives to write letters home saying they are all right? It's time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That's one of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.

The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn't rush into charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places it's just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example, have been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years, and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast to the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before the cameras!

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