UPDATE (18 March, 2006):
In the NY Times:
The right is all undie-bunched over this. Yes, the NY Times ought to do its research and get its facts straight. We've known this for some time, haven't we? The only thing that keeps me going back to them is that they're not an outright mouthpiece for administration talkings points. That's the state of US journalism.Certainly, he was at Abu Ghraib, and appears with a hood over his head in some photographs that Army investigators seized from the computer belonging to Specialist Charles Graner, the soldier later convicted of being the ringleader of the abuse.
However, he now acknowledges he is not the man in the specific photograph he printed and held up in a portrait that accompanied the Times article. But he and his lawyers maintain that he was photographed in a similar position and shocked with wires and that he is the one on his business card. The Army says it believes only one prisoner was treated in that way.
But the correction also provides yet another occasion for the right to build a big stinking red herring and the talking heads shows to blither on and on. The fact remains - Qaissi was at Abu Ghraib, was tortured, but was not the person in the photo. Big deal. The more important point is what the photo reflects. It's not terribly important that a person claiming to be the person in the photo turns out not to have been. What's important is that events such as those in the photo take place. And what's important is that there's a person in that photo. People who can't see that are, well, indecent mouthpieces for administration talking points.
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