August 27, 2009

Where is the journalism?

Over the pond, at the Times (online), there's a story about Mohammed Jawad who was taken prisoner, allegedly at the age of 12, and sent to the prison at Guantanamo.

In December 2002, when he says he was only 12, he was arrested on suspicion of throwing a grenade into a Jeep carrying US special forces soldiers through Kabul, wounding two of them and an interpreter. He was taken first to an airbase north of Kabul, then to the US prison in Guantánamo Bay, where he remained until his release a few days ago after a ruling by a US judge that his confession had been obtained by force.
...
Mr Jawad is not the first Afghan prisoner to be released from the Guantánamo prison. But he is believed to be the youngest — although the Pentagon says that bone scans indicated that he was 18 when sent to Guantánamo in 2003.
 No mention of evidence against him, and whether there was proof of his crimes. No mention of whether his claims of his age were legitimate.
Leave the latter point to a commenter on the website;

Mary Spahr wrote:


Wait just a minute. Hold it! His father died in the 1980's? Unless this guy was conceived sometime in 1989 and born after his father's death in 1990, there is no way he could have been just 12 yr. old when he entered Gitmo. Since it doesn't appear that his mother was stoned to death in the public square for having a baby after being widowed, it seems very likely this man is older than he says.

August 27, 2009 3:24 PM BST
 
Where was the journalistic effort on this? People wonder why conservatives don't trust the media.  If people have to derive the facts themselves by piecing together parts of the story there's no wonder.
 
After all it is just simple math;
 
Father died as late as 1989 (possibly earlier). 
He was 12 in 2002 making his birth year at earliest 1990.
 
And that's the most optimistic case for him being 12.  the Soviets were in Afghanistan for 10 years. Meaning his age could have ranged from 12 to 22 at the time of his capture.  He wasn't 22, but he wasn't 12 either.
 
That doesn't matter - sensationalism does, especially on the left.
 

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