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The Wall Street Journal <http://s.wsj.net/img/wsj_print.gif> BEST OF THE WEB TODAY MAY 10, 2011 Take His Wife. Please. Who was that Laden we shot him with last night? * By JAMES TARANTO After Osama bin Laden was killed, there were reports that he had used his wife--to be exact, one of his wives--as a human shield. The White House eventually said this was false, but one imagined the al Qaeda honcho doing his best Henny Youngman impression and telling the audience of Navy SEALs: "Take my wife. Please." (As an aside, imagine the comic riches that Youngman might have produced had he only practiced polygamy.) [botwt0510] <http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-NV674_botwt0_C_20110510140540.jpg> EPA The little woman As it turns out, the SEALs didn't take Mrs. bin Laden, née Amal Ahmed Abdul Fatah, though they did shoot her in the leg, <http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110510/pl_afp/usattacksbinladen> Agence France-Presse reports. She is now in Pakistani "protective custody," along with two other bin Laden widows. The U.S. would like to interview Mrs. bin Laden, along with the other Mrs. bin Laden and the other other Mrs. bin Laden. (Blame monogamy for that awkward locution--there's no plural for "Mrs.") But the Pakistanis do not seem eager to let this happen, as AFP suggests: "The United States expects to be granted access soon," a US official said, without providing more details. The three wives, along with several children, have been in Pakistani custody since the raid. Pakistan's foreign ministry said it had "not received a formal request from the United States" to question them, while a Pakistani military official told AFP that "so far no decision in this regard has been taken." A <http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2069934,00.html> Time report notes that the terrorist and the youngest Mrs. bin Laden were apart for a time: In 2002, Amal reportedly gave an interview to a Saudi woman's magazine, Al Majalla, in which she explained how, after the 9/11 attacks, she made her way out of Afghanistan back to Yemen with assistance from Pakistani officials. Bin Laden's widow told her Saudi interviewer at the time, "When the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan started, we moved to a mountainous area with some children and lived in one of the caves for two months until one of his sons came with a group of tribesmen and took us with them. I did not know that we were going to Pakistan until they handed us over to the Pakistani government." . . . But bin Laden somehow arranged for Amal to rejoin him and his kids in Pakistan. To quote Henny Youngman again: "I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back." "With the benefit of hindsight," Time notes, "it seems that U.S. counterterrorism experts spent years trying to decipher the name and the whereabouts of bin Laden's elusive courier, when keeping tabs on his comely young wife might have led them to him sooner." But here's the kicker: Then there's the question of whether Pakistani authorities had been aware that bin Laden's wife had returned to their country. Robert Grenier, a former director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and a security expert, says it's not impossible to imagine that the Pakistanis could have let Amal leave the country and failed to detect her return. It may be that Pakistan's "protective custody" is meant to protect the custodian, not the custodee. <http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/05/associated-press-case-releasing-bin-laden-photo/37510/> Freedom of Information for Me, but Not for Thee This column has no strong opinion on the question of whether the government should release photos of Osama bin Laden's dead body. We're with <http://bit.ly/kZUoyg> Peggy Noonan in finding President Obama's "we don't spike the football" comment obnoxious and wrongheaded, but we can well imagine that legitimate reasons of taste or national security militate against the release. The Atlantic reports that Associated Press has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the photos. "This information is important for the historical record," Michael Oreskes, the AP's senior managing editor, tells the magazine: The organization's FOIA request included a reminder of the president's campaign pledge and a plea to be more transparent than his predecessor. "The Obama White House 'pledged to be the most transparent government in U.S. history," wrote the AP, "and to comply much more closely with the Freedom of Information Act than the Bush administration did.' " . . . A journalist's prerogative is to ask questions and find answers, said Oreskes. "It's our job as journalists to seek this material." "We're not deciding in advance to publish this material," he pledged. "We would like our journalists, who are working very hard, to see this material and then we'll decide what's publishable and what's not publishable based on the possibly that it's inflammatory." Oreskes is trying to have it both ways, isn't he? Like the government, he is willing in principle to withhold the photos from the public. He faults the government only for withholding them from journalists. "We'll decide," he says. But what gives the AP that right? Who elected Michael Oreskes? To be sure, part of the job of a journalist is to decide when not to publish information, and this sometimes entails making judgments about what is in the public interest. In this case, however, the AP is demanding specific information on the ground that the public has a right to know it. If the public really has a right to see the photos, the AP has no more business withholding them than the government does. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bin-laden-raid-fits-into-obamas-big-things-message/2011/05/05/AFf5VTKG_print.html> Reliable Sources The other day the Washington Post carried a story titled "Bin Laden Raid Fits Into Obama's 'Big Things' Message." It included the following passage: A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about internal thinking, said the White House is not developing a strategy to leverage the raid in other difficult arenas, such as the budget or debt-ceiling negotiations with Republicans. And the official insisted it would not change the overall message or approach of the 2012 campaign, which has long been described as a campaign focused on the economy. Washington Times columnist <http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/9/campaign-cheers-were-not-supposed-to-hear/?page=all> Tony Blankley has an acute analysis; Of course, the entire point of the article was the opposite of what the unnamed official said: The White House staff is, in fact, itching to take political advantage of the bin Laden killing. Indeed, the constant quotes of clumsy denials of political calculations by senior White House officials are the artful leitmotif of the entire article. Come to think of it, "We don't spike the football" has a boastful quality to it as well. <http://bit.ly/mIzrJ9> Try Not to Think of a Waterboard--II Administration officials and sympathizers have continued to fire back against the argument that the Osama bin Laden raid vindicates the Bush administration's use of enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. As we noted Friday, the counterarguments have been notably weak, and that continues to be the case. Tom Donilon, President Obama's national security adviser, was interviewed by Chris Wallace on " <http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/05/09/wallace_to_donilon_if_shooting_bin_laden_is_ok_why_cant_you_do_waterboarding.html> Fox News Sunday." Wallace asked him: "Why is shooting an unarmed man in the face legal and proper while enhanced interrogation, including waterboarding of a detainee under very strict controls and limits--why is that over the line?" Donlon tried to evade the question by giving a long justification for the shooting of bin Laden, but Wallace pressed the matter: Wallace: Mr. Donilon, let me just make my point. I'm not asking you why it was OK to shoot Osama bin Laden. I fully understand the threat. And I'm not second-guessing the SEALs. What I am second guessing is, if that's OK, why can't you do waterboarding? Why can't you do enhanced interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was just as bad an operator as Osama bin Laden? Donilon: Because, well, our judgment is that it's not consistent with our values, not consistent and not necessary in terms of getting the kind of intelligence that we need. Wallace: But shooting bin Laden in the head is consistent with our values? Donilon: We are at war with Osama bin Laden. Wallace: We're at war with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Donilon: It was a military operation, right? It was absolutely appropriate for the SEALs to take the action--for the forces to take the action that they took in this military operation against a military target. Wallace: But why is it inappropriate to get information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Donilon: I didn't say it was inappropriate to get information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Wallace: You said it was against our values. Donilon: I think that the techniques are something that there's been a policy debate about, and our administration has made our views known on that. Writing in The Daily, the usually sensible <http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/05/08/050811-opinions-column-detention-miller-1-2/> Judith Miller offers this bit of sophistry: Effectiveness should not be the sole standard in determining how America treats terrorist suspects [sic] in detention. Terrorism, after all, was an effective tool for bin Laden, at least for a while. That made it neither moral nor politically justifiable. This analogy is completely empty. Not only are bin Laden's means (murdering civilians en masse) not comparable to America's (frightening mass murderers in ways that pose no actual threat of physical harm), but the ends are not comparable either. The objective of an al Qaeda attack is not to save civilians. The atrociously poor quality of the arguments against enhanced interrogation are all the more reason to think the bin Laden raid vindicates it. <http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2011/05/04/report-nearly-half-of-detroiters-cant-read/> If You Can Read This, Thank a Teacher? "According to a new report, 47 percent of Detroiters are 'functionally illiterate,' " Detroit's WWJ-AM reported last week: WWJ Newsradio 950 spoke with the Fund's Director, Karen Tyler-Ruiz, who explained exactly what this means. "Not able to fill out basic forms, for getting a job — those types of basic everyday (things). Reading a prescription; what's on the bottle, how many you should take… just your basic everyday tasks," she said. We were reminded of this by a report from <http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/half-afghan-forces-expected-master-1st-g> CNSNews.com: The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) training mission in Afghanistan predicts that only about 50 percent of Afghan military forces will be able read and write at the 1st grade level by January 2012, according to a Department of Defense report mandated by lawmakers. Another thing Detroit and Afghanistan have in common is they both have a lot of American-built schools. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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