Remembering "Johnny Taliban"

You all remember the sad and lamented fate of one John Walker Lindh, who made the fatal mistake of investigating and adhering to the "wrong" religion.

When he was just a callow youth, Lindh managed to take off to foreign climes where he began to study Islam, became a true believer, and ended up in Afghanistan on the side of the Taliban, who were at the time fighting the so-called Northern Alliance.

Remember, all this happened in early 2001, when Baby Doc was still actively sniffing the butts of the Taliban. After all, they were still in charge in Afghanistan, and the oil baron puppeteers who pull Bush's strings were hungering after a treaty which would allow them to build a pipeline across the country from the oil-rich fields in the "Stans" in the north to a Pakistani port on the Arabian Sea.

But then, unfortunately for Johnny Taliban, 9-11 happened, the US suddenly was an enemy of the Taliban ("Oceana was at war with Eastasia; Oceana had always been at war with Eastasia." -- 1984) and Lindh was captured after US forces invaded Afghanistan.

Even more misfortune was to befall Lindh, when he was first photographed with CIA agent Johnny Mike Spann, and immediately thereafter Spann was killed in a prisoner uprising.

After several days of hiding in a basement, which was hit with such non-violent tactics as bombing, burning fuel and freezing water, the prisoners gave up, and Lindh was among them.

The world remembers the image of the naked and immobilized-by-duct-tape Lindh being carried on a stretcher. But, since the image was cropped, the world does not remember that Lindh had a potentially life-threatening wound in his leg.

But we also remember that Lindh, despite any evidence that he ever even considered taking up arms against the US, accepted a plea bargain that netted him 20 years at the Colorado "Super Max" prison.

Where he has been held incommunicado ever since.

Jeez, you'd think that this was, just maybe, "cruel and unusual" punishment, but not according to the wingnuttery. According to them, Lindh was everything from a traitor to a terrorist, all because of that liberal upbringing of his in "liberal Marin County", California.

And it wasn't just the right wing spin machine. If you'll also recall, there was not one single contemporary news story that did not feature prominently that upbringing in "liberal Marin County".

Contrast that, if you will, with the concurrent news coverage of school-teacher-turned-child-rapist Mary Kay Letourneau, all of which happened pretty much at the same time as the coverage of Lindh. Hardly a single news story revealed the fact that she was a product of conservative Orange County, California.

And, to make matters even worse, hardly any news stories about Letourneau revealed the fact that she was the daughter of Über Conservative (and Republican, naturally) former US Congressman and former presidential candidate John G. Schmitz. I'll repeat that: Hardly any news stories.

And there's your goddam liberal media at work again.

So back to Lindh. There he is, being held at the Super Max and not allowed to talk to the media or pretty much anyone else. He's probably glad that he wasn't disappeared, like some hapless Argentinian, into the American gulag, as an "enemy combatant".

But is he being held incommunicado because he might be able to blow the whistle on war crimes committed against the Taliban in that basement? When you add bombing, burning fuel and icy water to the mix, it sound a little like overkill to me.

I'm just asking...