"If government officials had their way, journalists would be "stenographers with amnesia."

[midnight]

The four reporters were covering military commission hearings at which defense attorneys for Canadian detainee Omar Khadr argued that confessions he made as a gravely wounded 15-year-old shouldn't be admissible in his upcoming trial because they were made under duress.

And indeed, witnesses earlier this week described how Khadr's interrogation began when he was still sedated and lying wounded on a stretcher. A medic testified that he once found Khadr chained by his arms to the door of his cage-like cell, hooded and in tears

But the defense's star witness, on Thursday, was the first U.S. Army interrogator to question Khadr. The interrogator admitted that in an attempt to get Khadr to talk, he told the boy a "fictitious" tale of an Afghan youth who was gang-raped in an American prison and died.

And it wasn't just what he said that was significant, it was also who he was. The interrogator was Army Sgt. Joshua Claus, who pleaded guilty in September 2005 to mistreatment and assault of detainees at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/07/obama-administration-dema_n_568208.html


I suppose the thread that binds these stories together is the journalist written account.... I'm grateful for the many journalist who work to bring us the stories that need to be read...

[FiveGoodMen]

1. They seem to be getting their way most of the time.

[abq e streeter]

2. +1 ...thought this had already happened