War Handwavium

Glenn Greenwald talks about Sami al-Hajj:

Sami al-Hajj, … Al Jazeera cameraman … was abducted by the U.S. in late 2001, tortured at Bagram, sent to Guantanamo for seven years — where he was never charged with any crime and was interrogated overwhelmingly about Al Jazeera’s operations, not about Terrorism — and then suddenly released without explanation last year

And then he mentions this little nugget:

a Nexis search of media outlets finds that “Roxana Saberi” — the American journalist detained for three months by Iran and then quickly given a trial and appeal — was mentioned 2,201 times during the first two months of her ordeal alone; by contrast “Sami al-Haj” was mentioned a grand total of 101 times during the first six years of his lawless detention at Guantanamo.

So, an American journalist imprisoned by big, bad Iranian government for three months gets the American news whipped up in a furor over human rights abuses, but a Sudanese cameraman is imprisoned by the United States government for years, and the American news can barely be bothered to report it.

This is nothing but tribalism, the notion that right and wrong is not determined by what you do, but by what tribe you belong to.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/23/objectivity/index.html