Redstate

By Charles Bird Posted in War — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

It was welcome news when Michael Kinsley took over the editorial page at the Los Angeles Times. With new management, there is the hope that some of the dead wood would be swept out, and one of the most glaring examples of rotted tree flesh is Bob Scheer. Spinsanity has a wing of its virtual library dedicated to Scheer's dishonesty and distortions (sadly, the site has gone quiet since the election). His latest offering is no exception.

In the opening paragraph, Scheer writes: "The barbaric treatment of political prisoners on the island is made no more palatable by being conducted in the name of an ideology that claims to be liberating the world from its shackles." What ideology is Scheer talking about? The fact of the matter is that the United States is liberating the world. Go ask the Afghani man on the street. Go ask the Ukrainians. Ask the Iraqis on January 31st.

As for "barbaric treatment", let's be straight up. There are reports by FBI agents of detainees being mistreated by their captors. If it were me running the detainee system at Guantanamo, military tribunals would have been set up long ago and detainees would be treated humanely. But they do not deserve POW status. I support interrogations but get uncomfortable with putting them in "stress" situations. But the rest of the allegations are made by the detainees' lawyers, without corroboration, and Scheer believes the detainees' accounts with a childlike faith:

Beatings that ended in injury and even death. Forced sex acts, often videotaped for use as blackmail. Coerced confessions. Injections of unknown drugs. The prisoners' claims were so outrageous that many of their attorneys did not believe the stories until U.S. government documents corroborated key aspects.

The U.S. government has not corroborated those particular key aspects. But Scheer defaults to the blame-America-first position. In bringing up an executive order on prisoner treatment, Scheer neglected to mention that it was originally drafted by Bill Clinton, later reviewed and upheld by the Bush administration.

In defending the terrorists, Scheer writes that "not a single detainee has been proved in a court of law to be a terrorist", failing to mention that practically all were captured on the field of battle, having taken arms against American troops and members of our coalition.

But the worst aspect of Scheer's blind partisanship is his having more sympathy with 600 or so terrorists at Guantanamo and ignoring the imprisoned 11 million held captive on the island of Cuba by Fidel Castro. Political rights and civil liberties? Cuba is "not free", according to Freedom House, sharing the same "distinction" with Burma, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Turkmenistan (more here). In terms of press freedom, Cuba ranks 165th out of 166 countries, just edging out North Korea. As for economic freedom, Cuba is 144th and classified as "repressed". While the Red Cross has access to Guantanamo, the organization is denied entry to Castro's prisons. If Scheer really cared about human rights, he'd look to the 11 million innocent lives in communist Cuba before casting his skewed liberal eye toward 600 al Qaeda terrorists. Seriously, his material is better suited for the Democratic Underground than in one of the top five newspapers in the country. If Kinsley really wants to do a little housecleaning, I can think of a good place for him to start.