John Leo's article has some excellent examples of unreported stories, one of which is "Rule 18" in the Al Qaeda handbook.
"Mainstream media have been reluctant, in all the coverage of treatment of detainees at Guantanamo, to mention that the al Qaeda training manual specifically instructs all of its agents to make false claims of torture. The New York Times seems to have mentioned the manual's torture reference only once, in a short report from Australia. Several other papers mentioned it as a one-line quote from a military spokesman who pointed it out. But until the Washington Times ran a front-page piece last week, a Nexis search could find no clear and pointed article in the U.S. press like the one by Alasdair Palmer in the London Sunday Telegraph, with the headline "This is al Qaeda Rule 18: 'You must claim you were tortured.' " He wrote that the manual doesn't prove "that the Britons were not tortured in Guantanamo. But it ought to encourage some doubts about uncritically accepting that they were--which seems to be the attitude adopted by most of the media." Amen to both points in that last sentence."
Does it make you wonder, given the general tone of the torture and abuse stories in most of the media, just how much reporting is going on versus hysterical repeating of rumors, innuendo, and lies? And just why are they so eager to believe the worst all the time?
GBW
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