Media Strategery Watch Part II

This is a rundown on developments related to yesterday’s post on the whole Rumsfeld-Guantanamo thing. Not a lot of morphing of the story line yet. Perhaps it is because the Angry Generals story isn’t played out yet. We’ll see. If this story dies, I'll drop the subject. But here's a report on what's happening to-date.

Some media reports assert Rumsfeld allowed “Abuse” or “Mistreatment’, pick your synonym

Media inside and out of the U.S. report that the SecDef “closely monitored” the interrogation, “linking” him to the interrogation

The Advocate has a kind of a ‘funny’ blurb emphasizing the you-are-a-homosexual terrorist taunting technique. At least they note that the Pentagon describes the Salon report as ‘fiction’, which is something not all the media acknowledges. They also remain delightfully neutral reporting the 'doing tricks wearing a dog collar' detail.

Human Rights Watch spits out a predictable press release that Reuters laps up then vacates on the rest of the world. Even though the terrorist in question, Jabran Said Bin al Qahtani, is up before a Military Commission on a non-capital case, expect more and louder protestations out of HRW and other similar Non-State Actors (NSAs). No doubt HRW sees this as a potential wedge against the case for Military Commissions in general. Good thing they tend to be wrong about these kind of things.

Jabran Said Bin al Qahtani is a "bad actor", who not only was a bombmaker, but also a propagator who developed training materials in the art. How many of his "students" are still active in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Let us hope Justice will now be swift.