questionable terrorist "confession"

The press seem far too credulous about Khalid Mohammed's alleged confession. The BBC at least mentions Amnesty International's pointing out that the statement may have been coerced, but I feel as though I'm the only person looking at these stories and thinking "show trial." Maybe he did everything he said, maybe he did none of it, maybe he's been dead for a year and they'll announce three weeks from now that he's had a fatal heart attack.

To believe the claims that Khalid Mohammed confessed to these crimes means taking the words of the U.S. government for what he said. In the general case, it's not prudent to accept the prosecution's unsupported claims about a defendant. It's not just that the statement may have been coerced: it may never have been made at all. A blacked-out transcript isn't strong evidence.

In the second, I can't think of any motivation anyone involved in this has to be telling the truth: even if Mohammed said everything they claim he did, he may well be lying. He has reason to believe that, best case, he's stuck for life in Guantanamo, away from everyone he knows and cares about. A death sentence might seem like a relief in comparison.

Also, assuming he is an Al-Qaeda supporter, not a random person arrested by mistake, he might think it's tactically useful to draw attention to himself and away from Al-Qaeda members who are still free in the world and could plot further actions. And "we also were going to do X, Y, and Z" might just be a way of making the organization look bigger and more dangerous. Meanwhile, the people running those tribunals want us all to believe that Al-Qaeda is big and dangerous, but that they have captured one of the most important leaders of that group.

[crossposting from my weblog]

questionable terrorist "confession"

The press seem far too credulous about Khalid Mohammed's alleged confession. The BBC at least mentions Amnesty International's pointing out that the statement may have been coerced, but I feel as though I'm the only person looking at these stories and thinking "show trial." Maybe he did everything he said, maybe he did none of it, maybe he's been dead for a year and they'll announce three weeks from now that he's had a fatal heart attack.

To believe the claims that Khalid Mohammed confessed to these crimes means taking the words of the U.S. government for what he said. In the general case, it's not prudent to accept the prosecution's unsupported claims about a defendant. It's not just that the statement may have been coerced: it may never have been made at all. A blacked-out transcript isn't strong evidence.

In the second, I can't think of any motivation anyone involved in this has to be telling the truth: even if Mohammed said everything they claim he did, he may well be lying. He has reason to believe that, best case, he's stuck for life in Guantanamo, away from everyone he knows and cares about. A death sentence might seem like a relief in comparison.

Also, assuming he is an Al-Qaeda supporter, not a random person arrested by mistake, he might think it's tactically useful to draw attention to himself and away from Al-Qaeda members who are still free in the world and could plot further actions. And "we also were going to do X, Y, and Z" might just be a way of making the organization look bigger and more dangerous. Meanwhile, the people running those tribunals want us all to believe that Al-Qaeda is big and dangerous, but that they have captured one of the most important leaders of that group.

[crossposting from my weblog]

Eagle eye

Proofreading means check everything, preferably before the PDF stage. Yes, even the boilerplate that was picked up from a previous book.

The person who did the previous pass on this book seems to have been focusing on layout stuff. Mercifully, they had marked a layout fix on the table of formulas, so I was looking at it (in theory, at PDFs, I'm looking only to see whether already-marked corrections have been made, and that no random splotches have turned up nor material vanished, I'm not reading the copy), and saw that a 3 had turned into a 2. That's nontrivial when it happens in the formula for the volume of a cube.

I found the editor in question, who was understandably unhappy at the problem, especially since it was in boilerplate. She checked, and the copy was right last year, and in the other book they've currently got it in--but wrong in the exact same way in all four places it's used in this book (which all had the same layout problem, and fix). She thanked me for finding it, and my supervisor said "Good catch."

This set of PDFs is getting a closer eye than usual. I've found nothing else remotely as bad, fortunately (I was almost done with them when I left for the day).

Eagle eye

Proofreading means check everything, preferably before the PDF stage. Yes, even the boilerplate that was picked up from a previous book.

The person who did the previous pass on this book seems to have been focusing on layout stuff. Mercifully, they had marked a layout fix on the table of formulas, so I was looking at it (in theory, at PDFs, I'm looking only to see whether already-marked corrections have been made, and that no random splotches have turned up nor material vanished, I'm not reading the copy), and saw that a 3 had turned into a 2. That's nontrivial when it happens in the formula for the volume of a cube.

I found the editor in question, who was understandably unhappy at the problem, especially since it was in boilerplate. She checked, and the copy was right last year, and in the other book they've currently got it in--but wrong in the exact same way in all four places it's used in this book (which all had the same layout problem, and fix). She thanked me for finding it, and my supervisor said "Good catch."

This set of PDFs is getting a closer eye than usual. I've found nothing else remotely as bad, fortunately (I was almost done with them when I left for the day).