Tweet
First, she scooped all of us by reporting the government offered a plea deal to Omar Khadr just before his pre-trial hearing — about to get underway — to suppress his statements to interrogators. It’s not clear what specifically Khadr was asked to plea to, but the terms of the deal would be five years on top of the seven he’s served. But Khadr’s lawyers rejected the deal — for reasons we’re not clear on, either. Lots of speculation over breakfast this morning about whether this means the government doesn’t think it can win the suppression hearing — and, subsequently, its case against Khadr — or whether it doesn’t want the first real military commission of the Obama era to feature a child soldier.
Quite a scoop. But that wasn’t even the coolest thing Michelle did before 8:30 this morning. On our bus driving back from the breakfast chow hall, we stopped abruptly when a large-ish snake showed up in the middle of the road. (One of our military handlers thought it was a sidewinder from the wacky way it coiled, but added he hadn’t thought there were any sidewinders on Guantanamo.) Our driver, a kind soul, didn’t want to run it over. So we were stuck.
Until Michelle, taking matters into her own hands, got out of the bus and threw a water bottle at the snake — not to strike it, but to startle it into slithering out of our way. The alarmed snake jolted a bolt of energy through its long body, shaking itself and frightening me into thinking it might attack Michelle. But instead she ran back safely to the bus and the snake opted for pastures less prone to unprovoked bottle-throwing.
And that is how you Win the Morning.
Oh, and Khadr’s pre-trial hearing has been delayed until 1 p.m. So everyone can RTFM. I might take a nap.
2 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About ATTACKERMAN
RSS/XML Feed
thanks Spencer. Michelle sounds like a “badass” truth seeker and snake handler. Most snakes want to move on. Have dealt with quite a few copperheads in this area of the country. They can get rather aggressive when you try to get them to move on.
“Lots of speculation over breakfast this morning about whether this means the government doesn’t think it can win the suppression hearing — and, subsequently, its case against Khadr — or whether it doesn’t want the first real military commission of the Obama era to feature a child soldier.”
that statement says a great deal
Ms. Shephard writes in a manner journalists should copy, rather than in the milquetoast terms the ueber-careful New York Times has adopted for every story not about Manhattan. From her April 26th summary of the impending hearings for Khadr, Mr. Obama’s “war crimes test case” (emphasis added):
In one sentence, she gives the claims of both sides to a hotly contested dispute, but makes a judgment based on the apparent credibility of those claims, something the American media has abandoned doing (except for Fox, which does it in reverse). She continues,
That last quote is anonymous, but it’s a “color quote” that is not a central argument in her story. Compare that to the abundance of anonymous quotes Bumiller and her peers at the Times and Post use to make their central arguments.
Thank you, Ms. Shephard (and Spencer), for continuing to show us that good journalism is not dead; it has fallen victim to a kind of Gresham’s Law and to too much money spent on the wrong talking heads.