[12:22 PM] Say what you want about John Walker Lindh -- and he's brought out the ugly side of American cultural bigotry ("Affluent childhood leads to interest in Islam") aside from his criminal deeds. Some of the inflamed passions thrown about have no logic. Last night the parents of Johnny Spann, were all over the news expressing their dissatisfaction with Lindh's maximun 20-year sentence. On the News with Brian Williams, they blame Lindh for Spann's death
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posted 12:28 PM
They were carried down to Qala-i-Janghi prison, and there's where he met Mike, and he refused to help Mike at all. He refused to help the United States of America. He wouldn't tell them anything. He never once said, 'Hey, I'm an American. If you all help me, if you all get me out of here, I'm in the wrong place.' He never said that. You know, Mike Spann would have died for him that day if just had told him, 'Look, I'm an American. Help me. Get me out of here.'
Dogde Billingsley, a war photographer who was at the prison uprising, pointed out in a presentation that I saw earlier this year that had Lindh shown any cooperation with Spann, he most certainly would have been killed by the other captives. That may seem obvious, but Billingsley asked a relevant question -- why were the two CIA agents conducting the interrogations out in the open in front of other captives? Even if Lindh had wanted to cooperate -- and given the cirucumstances, he probably did -- the way the interrogations were handled would have made it suicidal for him.
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