CURRENT EVENTS
Newt Gingrich's favorite target of late has been the group of 17 Chinese Muslims, known as Uighurs, being held at Guantanamo. In response to concerns that repatriating them to China would lead to them being tortured, he asked his Fox handler, "Why is that our problem?" And in a recent Washington Examiner op-ed, he charged, falsely, "[b]y their own admission, Uighurs being held at Guantanamo Bay are members of or associated with the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an al Qaeda-affiliated group designated as a terrorist organization under U.S law."The Uighurs, who have say they were never members of the group, had a chance to respond recently, in what some are calling the "first quasi-interview with detainees imprisoned in Guantanamo." From the Huffington Post:
"Why does he hate us so much and say those kinds of things? He doesn't know us. He should talk to our attorneys if he's curious about our background," [their translator Rushan] Abbas relates. "How could he speak in such major media with nothing based in fact?...I often ask the same thing myself.
The Uighurs are apparently under the misconception that American columnists are fact-checked for accuracy. "They just cannot understand," she says. "How come the media doesn't even verify the story? How could they just publish something like that without checking whether what he says is true or not?"
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It's hard to imagine as prominent a member of the Democratic Party writing such a snide and factually inaccurate piece, and it's even harder to imagine them doing so without any political repercussions. And to think people call Newt the "idea man" of the party now.
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