Cursor's Media Patrol - 11/24/05

Charges of violating the Official Secrets Act have been brought against a British civil servant accused of leaking a memo purportedly describing a threat made by President Bush against Al-Jazeera headquarters.

Linda Heard poses a hypothetical question: had Al-Jazeera headquarters been bombed, "Would the U.S. have confessed to its role in the aftermath or would the mythical Abu Musab Al Zarqawi have been set up to take the fall?"

A Washington Post editorial asks, "If an American pilot is captured in the Middle East, then beaten, held naked in a cold cell and subjected to simulated drowning, will Mr. Goss say that he has not been tortured?"

A federal jury in Virginia rejected a U.S. citizen's claim that he confessed under torture in Saudi Arabia and convicted him of "joining al-Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President Bush."

Charges brought against Jose Padilla, after President Bush ordered him "released from detention by the secretary of defense and transferred to the control of the attorney general," make no mention of the "dirty bomb" plot of which he was originally accused.