At what point does liberal journalism become aiding and abetting the enemy? I think it would be considered as such if a newspaper makes an active decision to give the benefit of the doubt to our enemies and publishes fantastical stories that are meant to be critical of our government and the war effort.

Case in point - The NY Times printed Detainees in Despair, a first person account by Mourad Benchellali, a former Gitmo prisoner who was supposedly falsely imprisoned and totured - all in our name.

In the early summer of 2001, when I was 19, I made the mistake of listening to my older brother and going to Afghanistan on what I thought was a dream vacation....

And this didn't set off bells and whistles to begin with at the editor's desk?!?

His friends, he said, were going to look after me. They did — channeling me to what turned out to be a Qaeda training camp. For two months, I was there, trapped in the middle of the desert by fear and my own stupidity.

Americans love self-deprecation!

After two weeks in the American military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, I was sent to Guantánamo, where I spent two and a half years. I cannot describe in just a few lines the suffering and the torture....

For that, you will have to buy my book - see the plug at the bottom of the page.

I was eventually released and I will go on trial next month in Paris to face charges that I've never denied, that I spent two months in the Qaeda camp....

It was an accident, I assure you! (I wonder if he was free to go at any time or did al-Qaeda use Guantanamo like measures to keep him there - he doesn't say.

I wasn't anti-American before and, miraculously, I haven't become anti-American since....

But what the Times doesn't tell you is that he would be the first in his family to feel that way. You see his father and brothers were convicted TODAY, in France of preparing to commit terrorist attacks in France.

In handing down sentences, the court followed the prosecutor's office by giving the maximum 10-year term to the group's alleged chemicals expert, Menad Benchellali. However, Menad's father, Chellali Benchellali, an imam, or prayer leader, in the Lyon suburb of Venissieux, received only an 18-month suspended prison term -- far lower than the prosecution's demand for six years behind bars.

The court convicted 24 defendants of criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise, a broad charge used by France to sweep wide in bringing terror suspects to justice. One other was convicted of using false papers.

The Benchellali family was at the center of the case, with Menad's mother, Hafsa, and brother, Hafed, also on trial for roles in the plot to carry out an attack in France.

Coincidence? Or is there a smidgen of possibility that this guy was as dangerous as the governement says Guantanamo detainees are?

Read the Times op-ed piece again, knowing what you know now. Do you think they could have done a little research on this guy and his connections to terrorism (he admits to being at an al-Qaeda camp too!) before printing his sob story.

Disgusting.

What none of these stories say is how the French managed to catch all those family members. Could have something to do with that box of candy Benchellali earned at Guantanamo. Maybe this is really a concealed effort to try to convince his family not to kill him for giving them up.

Just imagine if it was his testimony that resulted in these dozens of arrests in Europe. Seems less fantastical to me that the story the Times is helping him peddle.