WaPo's Jihadist Contributor Posts Photoshopped Dead Obama Pic
Last week the Washington Post published essays from four people whose “lives [were] shattered and transformed by” Osama bin Laden. One of the contributors was an odd choice: former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg. In his piece, he claims he was an innocent and abused victim of the war on terror. He's identified simply as a Brit who was held at Gitmo and released without being charged in 2005. But that's not the whole story.
Apparently the Post's editors were unaware that he's also a jihadist. Thomas Joscelyn gives five reasons, over at The Weekly Standard, why this may have been a poor editorial choice, including:
- Begg and his organization have proselytized on behalf of al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki
- His own book Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar confirms his jihadist activites.
- The Justice Department was unable to substantiate Begg's claims of torture and found that his damning confession at Gitmo was voluntarily given.
- Recently leaked documents reveal that military authorities recommended Begg remain in American custody and was an “Al-Qaida facilitator” and a “confirmed member of Al-Qaida.”
Begg's piece doesn't mention these things, of course. Instead it ends with this admiring note: “The vast majority of Muslims did not agree with bin Laden’s targeting of civilians. Yet many will remember him as the man who made the United States tremble — prompting it to unleash a war on terror in Muslim lands and thus strengthen al-Qaeda as a global idea, instead of an organization whose numbers could once be counted.”
Awesome work, there, Washington Post! And yes, as the headline indicates, this is the same guy whose website finds humor in posting stories claiming that Obama was shot Osama-bin-Laden-style by Pakistani forces.
Perhaps the Post's editors might want to do an elementary fact check prior to their next publication of jihadist propaganda. Or maybe not.
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Comments :
May '10
Re: WaPo's Jihadist Contributor Posts Photoshopped Dead Obama Pic
Has he ever been seen in the same room with Martin Bashir? Prosecution rests.
May '10
Re: WaPo's Jihadist Contributor Posts Photoshopped Dead Obama Pic
The levels of perfidy our journalist class now regularly reaches is numbingly banal and predictable. They seem so anxious to demonstrate that they are above the simple conventions of the majority of their readers. Why garbage like this is not shamed out of the marketplace is beyond me.
I wonder: if this were the World War Two era, would the Washington Post have published a self-serving puff piece from Rudolf Hess and if they had, how would it have been received by the public of that time?
Aug '10
Re: WaPo's Jihadist Contributor Posts Photoshopped Dead Obama Pic
But it's all okay, because he's a part of Amnesty International.
Aug '10
Re: WaPo's Jihadist Contributor Posts Photoshopped Dead Obama Pic
As I recall it this guy has been touted around by the useful idiots as tungsten-like proof of the wickedness of the Bush administration.Seeing his mask ripped off him shows how pathetic their position really is. If that's the best they've got......?