the more things change...

Glenn Greenwald on the mainstream media's (in this case, the New York Times) penchant for repeating hearsay as fact and thereby making it so. The article below, and also the article Greenwald is referencing are both worth reading.

So here we have an Afghan citizen, not captured on any battlefield, who naively thought that he would be given a "trial" before being locked in a cage indefinitely by the U.S. He obviously hadn't heard that the U.S. is a country-- because of people like this -- that knows "trials" are obsolete and insists that we can abduct anyone we want from around the world and lock them away forever without such bothersome procedures. Wakil surely knows that by now, which is why he fears -- quite reasonably -- that he'll be locked away again with no trial based on the Pentagon's anonymous accusations against him (and based on the current President's demand for the power to keep people imprisoned "preventively" -- i.e., with no charges or trials).

Also, from July 8th The Obama Justice System.