1 part "Anti-Bush," + 1 part "terrible journalism" = Requirement to be published in the Badger Herald

Its amusing every time I flip to the editorial section of the badger herald and scan the titles I am guaranteed to find at least two anti-Bush diatribes, one love session on President Obama, and every now and then one piece on how Republicans lost their way. Scanning through Thursday of Fridays edition I came across this gem of a title "Fixing America's torture debacle" and just had to read more. "Twenty-five is the number of detainees left in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba" AHNNNNN. I don't know which is more inaccurate, my attempted spelling of the buzzer sound, or the opening line and basis of this piece which probably should have been in the comics section. So the basis of the article, "over 95 percent of the supposed worst of the worst were in fact innocent...." lets dig a little bit deeper, and do a bit of actual fact checking which I believe some people in the world call actual journalism. 420 of 775 have been released, being released certainly did not mean these people were innocent, but rather not enough evidence or they were too low value to charge and keep. Some of these people, their home countries refused to allow them back, why is that you ask....oh because they don't want to take back dangerous terrorists. 270 to 200 remain at gitmo, the rest were sent back to their home country to be jailed, they were not sent out of gitmo because they were innocent. Also interesting how you fail to mention once in your piece the number of "innocent" prisoners freed who have returned to terrorism, I guess that number isn't very important... you say in your comment on the piece that the figure was disputed so you held it out, how about the oh-so innocent Abu Sayyaf al-Shihri. He was in gitmo than released, lets send him an apology letter, should I mail it to his house or the al qaeda HQ in Yemen which HE NOW RUNS.

I was curious as to why there was no retraction or at least change of the "only 25 left" figure on the online version, and then it dawned on me: that was the basis of the argument, without it, there could be no argument and surely the piece would fall apart. It is interesting to note that the author in the comment section on the online version states he got this number from an AP article.....A) I don't believe you, the AP has far higher journalistic standards than we do here. And B) If you followed Gitmo in the least bit you would surely know there are more than 25 terrorists being held there. So Badger Herald, time to take this piece off the website, actually know what leave it, it is a great show of the standards you guys hold yourself to.

Never forgotten

It's really too bad that the second G.W. stepped into his helicopter and flew away that he was instantly shoved out of Washington by the media...I don't know about you guys but I feel like that really says a lot about the level of respect our nation is willing to dish out.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2009/01/alone-among-net.html