Incomplete News Undermines US Values    
By Peter Phillips

Dozens were kidnapped by roving gangs off the streets of their hometowns, disappeared from families, hooded, chained, repeatedly interrogated, incarcerated for years in military prisons, and then told it was all a mistake. Did this happen in Stalinist Russia, some South American military dictatorship, Apartheid South Africa? No, the gangs were special forces of the US Government operating with approval from the highest levels of the Pentagon, the victims Afghan civilians recently released from the Guantanamo military prison camp in Cuba.


The New York Times published an article April 20 reporting how 17 innocent Afghans were recently freed from Guantanamo prison after three and half years. "Several of the Afghans said in interviews that they had been told by American officers that they were being freed because they were innocent of any crime," the article reported. "The men would be given new clothes, turbans and travel money and allowed to go home," the paper disclosed.