I would definitely agree about having internal threats, only I would be pointing to a different set of people.

The biggest threat comes from those who stop caring how close we could come to be the mirror image of our enemies.

First, this blog post is dishonest from the get-go. It claims that the CIA tortures and abuses children. Well, the only proof we have here is a source (anonymous, like all these other sources used by the media in their war against the war on terror) in a dutch article, and if you actually read it, it says the children were captured by the Pakistanis and mistreated at that time. They were later handed over to the Americans. So even if you believe this weak “evidence” it doesn’t support the title of this article.

Next, Mr. van der Galiën asks why there isn’t a “massive movement” to do something about this. About what? For a massive movement, you need massive proof, or at least some proof, and there isn’t any that the children have even been interrogated, much less tortured.

Yes, certainly they have been held and questioned. It would be gross negligence to do otherwise (do police departments refuse to question children when looking for wanted parents?). But questioning is not the same thing as interrogating, which is not the same thing as torturing. Especially when discussing children, it is irresponsible to casually substitute these terms with one another.

Finally, here is my guess, although its just a guess. You won’t find anything on them because they are in some kind of witness protection program. Certainly Khalid Sheik Mohammed has a few enemies in the world, and for their own safety, the children can’t just openly run the talk show circuit.

Incidentally, I do have experience in the war on terror, and if you want to read more about this report, you can go to my blog here:
http://shieldofachilles.blogspot.com/2007/06/andrew-sullivan-watch.html

First, Google ‘chldren detained in Iraq’.
Among the many sources that are questionalble, there are statements from US military personnel, for example. Put together, I do believe that children have been detained among the regular adult detainees. Some US personnel have even given sworn statements about mistreatment.

I hardly choose to believe the worst, since I can’t tell what the worst is, What I am saying is that detaining children for long time periods is bad in itself. Not everything has to rise to the level or torture before it rises to the level of reprehensible or even just plain stupid. I doubt many of these children will come out of detention enamored with democracy or the US. Then, where will they be pledging their allegience?

You are absolutely right about how many things are spun to discredit the US and Israel. I think, however, that some of our actions hand over material to be spun on a silver platter.

Aside from that, we should not be complacent about what we do to destroy everything we have managed to stand for in the past. We should not be coomplacent about spreading the ‘just caught up in the war’ umbrella too readily. Collateral damage is unavoidable, but we should not become so complacent about it that we stop wondering about necessary and unnecessary collateral damage.

It’s up to us to define who we are, no matter what others say or do about it.

I guess in some ways it brings to mind Israel: the fact that photos of some events which are tragic but not necessarily events for which Israel is culpable are regularly used as propaganda against Israel, to show her as the aggressor. So that’s my concern- even when I accept your premise that the US government’s secretive activities make our government suspect, I’m also convinced there is a tendency for charges against our government to be trumped up or even falsified.

So in the end, I agree with you when you say that we really have no way of knowing the truth in many of these situations. As a result, you choose to believe the worst while my feeling is that the truth is probably in between the two extremes. I’m not sure it matters much though which interpretation we take- there is an objective truth whether or not we know all the details.

I disagree with the notion that there is an important
distincion between children deliberately kidnapped and children kept in detention because they happened to be with their father when the father was arrested. I hate, but can’t help, asking why we should assume the reasons to be different .than in kidnappings? What could the reason be for keeping young boys in detention facilites for months and years on end? There is no way to know their fates or how, exactly, they were treated.

That children have, indeed, been held in detention in Iraq was not only shown in the documentary I mentioned but has been referred to in several news dispatches from Iraq during regular news broadcasts. This part I believe.

I understand why some of you would like proof of purposeful kidnappings and mistreatment. But how do you propose to get the proof? We are dealing with secret kidnappings, secret detention sites, secret passing of detainees from country to country and only god knows what other secret activities. If you come across an account, how do you propose to verify its veracity?

That’s the legacy of our method of waging the WOT. Once you leave the high road and go into the shadows, it’s all reduced to accusations, denials, suspicions and contradictory snippets of information. Like Kim said, it has become impossible to tell the truth from lies.
I doubt the CIA would video tape what they do. If a CIA agent made a public statement about kidnappings, other CiA people would only deny it. Eyewitnesses? How would you know the eyewitnesses aren’t lying? What kind of proof do you expect to find?

While you worry about proof, I despair over what we have lost, the most important being the ability to trust. It’s tragic, but we are reduced to arguing over which account we blindly choose to believe.

I go back, then, to worrying about children in detention, no matter how they got there.

I actually think this is just as embarassing for the Democrats, because otherwise they’d be having more hearings on it. They know many voted for the war because it was right before an election, and they knew the vote was cast that way so that those who voted against it would look unpatriotic and soft on terrorism.

That’s just it, MVDG.
Secrecy is part of the game plan.
Secrecy creates conspiracies theories.
Secrecy creates a situation where the truth becomes as suspect as lies.

Even if I could track down this documentary, you might ask: “Well, how do I know it’s not a hoax?”
The whole atmosphere in America has been poisoned.

I can only testify to what I know.

As in actually taken prisoner by the CIA, taken to a prison, where they are interrogated for months and used as a means to put pressure on their father?

What I refer to specifically is not a vews video but part of a documentary by a woman journalist (I don’t remember the name) shown on PBS

There are frequent references to the children caught up in the war throughout normal news commentary, only no one pays attention.

Christine: point well taken.

In the meantime, did anyone find more information?