Find Me A Skeptic

I was taught and in recent years I taught, that it is prudent to question everything but most importantly to question those things that you know already to be true. What did I say? Read the opinion pages, the syndicated editorials, the seldom-really-news, news pieces of the daily paper. What you find increasingly is a blind, willful acceptance of a litany supportive of what the author believes. That’s what caused the fall of Dan Rather. That’s what triggered the recent stumble of Newsweek. That’s what drives the political debate of the great unwashed masses of America. Give me a quote that supports what I already know to be “true” and I’ll suck it up. Give the quotee a title from some ultra-high-falutin’ think tank and I’ll repeat it forever as support for my position.

Today we’ve got Marie Cocco from the Washington Post. (Note that I refrain from the puerile referencing of the paper as the “compost”!) Quantanamo a Moral Cesspool

Get this. She absolves Newsweek of guilt for the false story about Quran flushing. The condemnation she spews is aimed at the White House and the Pentagon. That’s right, telling lies that we’d like to be true resulting in death, destruction and damage to the US internationally isn’t so bad, the really bad thing is having the temerity to point it out to Newsweek and the nation. Messenger-cide?

Then, we get a whole series of quotes and attributions to support the fact that what Newsweek falsely reported really, truly, could have happened, maybe, possibly. Marie starts with a thesis, as should all good writers. Her thesis, which she will attempt to prove is that the incarceration facility at Quantanamo (I assume she means the prison and not the whole Naval installation, but who can be sure,) is a “moral cesspool, created and perpetuated by an administration that is drowning this nation’s reputation in a swamp of malfeasance.” Wow, and I thought sex in the oval office with interns was a moral outrage. Who would have thought detention and interrogation of anti-American terrorists was so bad?

Then, we get the supporting documentation. I’ve cut these down to simply the attributions to make my point regarding the need for skepticism. Tell me if you think the statements from these sources could possible be biased or self-serving. You’ll need to follow the link above to read what they said, I’m simply demonstrating the sources.

“several detainees have said so…”
“journalists around the world…”
“lawyers and former military personnel…”
“three released Britons…”
“an interrogator referred to as ‘Brooke’…”
“Saar then describes in his book…”
“lawyer Tom Wilner says a guard told his Kuwait clients…”
“a different lawyer…”
“the International Committee of the Red Cross…”

Am I the only remaining person who thinks that detainees have a motive in discrediting their captors? Do I err in being suspicious of journalists? Does anyone really trust lawyers? Does someone who just wrote a book want to be controversial? Did the International Committee of the Red Cross do very well with regard to spotting torture in Hanoi or Baghdad when US military were held?

And, then Ms Cocco finishes her diatribe with the required reference to Abu Ghraib, a note that no senior officers or civilian policy-makers have been rebuked, and a coup de grace, that the President alone “dug this hellhole and plunged us all into it.” She overlooks that those involved have been court-martialed, that those above have been exonerated and that most skeptics have been satisfied with the thoroughness of the investigation.

So, the guilty (Newsweek) aren't to blame and the innocent (the military leadership and the administration) haven’t been properly punished. Only in America could such logic earn a paycheck in the nation’s capital’s newspaper.