"Obama, won't pursue this for a very good reason: there are much bigger things at stake. We are in the midst of an economic crisis."

Principles? Money?
Klein votes money.
Meet him for lunch to get your story favourably presented. In TIME MAGAZINE, yet!

"our glorious legal system" indeed.

Anyone who reads you and who reads Greenwald knows who the dishonest one is, Klein.
And it ain't Glenn Greenwald.

Read your own columns and compare them with what really happened.
Then think. You can still become an honest journalist who speaks truth to power. Or (because the foregoing takes great courage) who, at the very least, reports honestly.

To do so, you will have to get out of your circle of mal-influence. Those lunch and dinner dates.

The noted Anglican hostage mediation expert Terry Waite wrote recently in the Guardian that: "I can recognize the conditions prisoners are being kept in at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay because I have been there. Not to Cuba's Camp X-Ray, but to the darkened cell in Beirut that I occupied for five years. I was chained to a wall by my hands and feet, beaten on the soles of my feet with cable, denied all human rights and contact with my family for five years . . . Because I was kept in very similar conditions, I am appalled by the way we -- countries that call ourselves civilised -- are treating these captives."
.
Total rubbish, of course. The Camp X-Ray Yankophobe fiesta has died down in the past week as it has become clear that the prisoners -- I see no need to use euphemisms here -- are not being treated badly at all. The Red Cross has been in. Doctors are caring for them. They receive three square meals a day. They pray (and we provide arrows to point them the way). There's no air conditioning, but the winter heat in Cuba isn't exactly devastating. The cells are eight feet square; not the Ritz, but not quite inhumane, either. They were shackled and goggled when they were being transported, but no longer. They wear orange jump suits, which are probably an improvement over their Afghan cave-wear (I would actually prefer they be dressed in pink tutus, to give them an appreciation of the freedoms accorded western ballerinas). They are not being tortured, Terry. They are being interrogated.

Joe Klein, doing his part to cover up torture in February 2002.

at about the time the Khaled Sheikh Mohammed ('KSM') was captured -- I believe a short time before his capture -- his two small sons, then aged 6 and 9, were detained (in Pakistan, I believe). So far as I know nothing has been heard of them since. I wish someone could find out what became of them, how they were treated and where they are now.

If anyone has information on these two lads (the world's youngest political prisoners, at least at the time of their capture) I ask them to drop me an email at yangshuo2006@yahoo.com -- or better yet to publish it and merely point me to the location.

"The noted Anglican hostage mediation expert Terry Waite wrote recently in the Guardian that: "I can recognize the conditions prisoners are being kept in at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay because I have been there. Not to Cuba's Camp X-Ray, but to the darkened cell in Beirut that I occupied for five years. I was chained to a wall by my hands and feet, beaten on the soles of my feet with cable, denied all human rights and contact with my family for five years . . . Because I was kept in very similar conditions, I am appalled by the way we -- countries that call ourselves civilised -- are treating these captives."

Total rubbish, of course. The Camp X-Ray Yankophobe fiesta has died down in the past week as it has become clear that the prisoners -- I see no need to use euphemisms here -- are not being treated badly at all. The Red Cross has been in. Doctors are caring for them. They receive three square meals a day. They pray (and we provide arrows to point them the way). There's no air conditioning, but the winter heat in Cuba isn't exactly devastating. The cells are eight feet square; not the Ritz, but not quite inhumane, either. They were shackled and goggled when they were being transported, but no longer. They wear orange jump suits, which are probably an improvement over their Afghan cave-wear (I would actually prefer they be dressed in pink tutus, to give them an appreciation of the freedoms accorded western ballerinas). They are not being tortured, Terry. They are being interrogated."

The plain fact of the matter is that you never even considered the idea that the US might be torturing prisoners, even as you wrote articles stating point blank that you did not believe the Bush Administration- the same Administration which was even then creating euphemisms about their legal status (and did you ever bother to wonder WHY they were doing that?)- ever would or even conceivably could mistreat them.

You all but admitted in that article that you didn't care what happened to those prisoners; now, six years later, you are calling upon our next Administration to not prosecute the men who tortured at the orders of George Bush for those very crimes you failed to spot, did nothing to investigate, swore up and down they would never commit.

This is cowardice, Mr. Klein. You failed in your most basic responsibility as a reporter to actually find out- or even TRY to find out- what was happening, and now you want us to forget about it as if it did not happen. And what is your excuse? That the Obama Administration has "more important things to do"?

As opposed to what? You may welcome the idea of living in a nation like Singapore or China or Russia or Cuba, where everyone is healthy except those who are dragged off the street and made to disappear. But I was taught by the men and women serving on RAF Upper Heyford Air Force Base that, as Americans, we were supposed to be the good guys. And the men and women who raised me were absolutely clear on what that meant. You do not torture. You do not lie. You do not commit crimes at another man's order. Those who refuse to do so are called heroes, and those who say they were "just follow orders" are called Nazis.

Of course, we both know why you really want us to forget about what men like George Bush and Dick Cheney did. Because the sooner America forgets about them and their crimes is the sooner America forgets about your utter failure as a reporter. But I would like to see the men who transformed my beloved Air Force into a taxi service for CIA torture dungeons pay for their crimes. And I don't see any reason to forgive and forget until they actually pay for what they did. That means prosecution, conviction, and jail time, Mr. Klein. No slinking off like Augusto Pinochet to spend his life in quiet retirement while his victims spend decades trying to find out where their husbands' and wives' corpses are buried. And no more pardons.