Space Permitting

There are many forms of "objective" editorializing. One example can be seen in America Online's choice of a picture of Dick Cheney for a story about his health. (Ask yourself: would they have chosen such a picture of a Liberal politician? Though for the record, the devil eyes are on us.) This reminded me of working in 1988 as a flunky at the UPI Photo Library and getting a call from the "Today" show requesting a flattering picture of Dukakis and a bad one of Bush.

Another, perhaps more subtle, style of editorializing relies on omission. Take Jonathan Mahler's piece in this Sunday's Times on a Taliban member being held at Guantanamo. The 8,000-word take-out implies that we might well be better off just letting Camp X-Rays inmates go free, but somehow neglects to mention that more than a few of those we have released have been re-arrested in their home countries after again getting involved with anti-Western terrorism. Mahler, who refused to answer questions regarding his article, also critiqued the government's decision to create new administrative procedures for judging the inmates rather than using existing previously adopted U.S. prisoner of war guidelines. But, here too, Mahler, while acknowledging that appellate courts rejected this idea, omitted a key point. The Geneva Convention doesn't recognize men fighting out of uniform who seek to kill civilians (read: terrorists) as prisoners of war.