Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Apologies, Anyone?

Let's review how some of the nation's most respected opinion leaders previously characterized Captain James Yee, an American serviceman and chaplain who stands accused of adultery and browsing internet porn.

Michelle Malkin:

There's something terribly wrong when an American soldier overseas can't receive Scriptures in the mail, but a Muslim chaplain can preach freely among al Qaeda and Taliban enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay.

This is a story of two soldiers, one Christian, one Muslim. It's a cautionary tale that suggests how religious double standards and politically driven hypersensitivity threaten not only our troops, but us all.

Mona Charen:

This ought to shut up our European detractors who've been screaming that we are torturing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Not only do we provide the inmates there with medical care, surgery, dentistry, reading matter, familiar and religiously permitted foods, copies of the Koran and religious services -- we've also provided spies. Two, at least -- and counting -- to judge from news reports.

The first is Capt. James Yee, 35, who served as a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo. Yee is a Chinese American who was raised a Lutheran but converted to Islam while in the military.

John Leo:

The military prison at Guantanamo Bay is the most secure facility the United States has ever built. At least it�s supposed to be. But it�s beginning to look as though Muslim terrorists or their sympathizers may have already figured out how to penetrate it.

Frank Gaffney:

One can only hope that the surveillance that resulted in Yee�s arrest is part of a wider effort to ensure that chaplains ministering to Muslims in the U.S. military are promoting the sorts of moderate, pro-American views he purportedly held in 2001, rather than the sort of radical, intolerant and jihadist views of the so-called �Islamists.� Otherwise, the danger is very real that serving members of the armed forces could be subjected to ominous proselytizing intended to give rise to clandestine Fifth Column activities in this country and a whole new front in the War on Terror.

To be sure, these blowhards all inserted "allegedly" or the like somewhere in their columns, no doubt at the insistence of their syndicates' lawyers. But from their prose you know they were all well lubricated by the idea of a Muslim traitor in the U.S. Army.

These cretinous columnists have two things in common: (1) The source of their reports: The Moonie Times; (2) You know they won't revisit Captain Yee's story any time soon.

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