{"id":4323,"date":"2014-11-05T13:08:55","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T20:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=4323"},"modified":"2014-11-05T13:10:07","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T20:10:07","slug":"from-the-outpost-nothing-funny-about-war-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/11\/from-the-outpost-nothing-funny-about-war-crimes\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Outpost: Nothing funny about war crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"David<\/a>

David Crisp<\/p><\/div>\n

In his Sunday column in the Billings Gazette, editor Darrell Ehrlick dropped this nugget, just two days before the election: Prior to September\u2019s debate in Billings between U.S. House candidates Ryan Zinke and John Lewis, Zinke said, \u201cJohn plays the guitar. I waterboard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, waterboarding has its defenders, but let\u2019s be clear: It is a war crime. It is a crime under the Convention Against Torture signed by President Reagan in 1988, and America has a history of prosecuting people who waterboard. If we were to learn that a foreign country was waterboarding our soldiers, we would consider that an act of war.<\/p>\n

When people say the rules don\u2019t apply to us because we are on the side of justice and freedom, they miss the point. We are on the side of justice and freedom because we play by the rules.<\/p>\n

So when a major party candidate for a congressional seat suggests that he endorses a war crime, and perhaps is even complicit in it, that sounds like news, right? Not to Ehrlick. He dismissed it as an offhand comment.<\/p>\n

The Lewis campaign, by Ehrlick\u2019s account, apparently then leaked the remark to the Los Angeles Times, which quoted both the remark and the emailed response of Zinke, who called it a joke.<\/p>\n

Some joke. One might have expected the Gazette to follow up with a story about Zinke\u2019s actual views on waterboarding. At the very least, the comment would appear to cast doubt on the political savvy of a candidate who based his entire campaign around his record of honorable military service. You\u2019d think a major political candidate would know better than to joke about torture in front of his opponent and in front of the editor of the state\u2019s largest newspaper.<\/p>\n

But Zinke apparently knew his audience. As Ehrlick acknowledged, \u201cno one has asked or seriously broached the subject of Zinke and waterboarding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, this was not a mea culpa in which the editor acknowledged that he treated the remark too lightly in the heat of debate preparations. We all make mistakes like that. Instead, he criticized the Lewis campaign for leaking the remark.<\/p>\n

Look, the Lewis campaign deserves criticism. It\u2019s understandable that Lewis went after Zinke to fully disclose his military records. Ordinarily, an honorable discharge ought to be sufficient evidence that a candidate served his country well, but Zinke\u2019s intense focus on his military qualifications justified closer scrutiny.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>When Zinke finally released his full records last week, they backed up what he had been saying all along: His record of impeccable service was marred only by some questionable travel expenses that he long ago acknowledged and repaid.<\/p>\n

Did the Lewis campaign then back off? No. Instead, Montana Democrats issued a news release accusing Zinke of lying. It might have fooled me if I hadn\u2019t already known that candidates who accuse other candidates of lying are usually lying.<\/p>\n

How did the Zinke campaign react? By accusing Lewis of lying. Liar, liar, liar, the charges went, all the way to the ballot box.<\/p>\n

But the Lewis campaign did nothing wrong in leaking Zinke\u2019s remark about waterboarding. And it\u2019s understandable that it went to the Los Angeles Times instead of to the state\u2019s largest newspaper, which already knew about the remark and had done nothing.<\/p>\n

No wonder Republican operatives who uncovered Sen. John Walsh\u2019s plagiarism went to the New York Times with the story instead of to a Montana newspaper. As much as conservatives criticize the Times, they know it has a long history of getting stories that other publications never get, no matter which party the story hurts.<\/p>\n

In Montana, we can rest secure in the knowledge that our leading newspapers will spare us the difficult task of sorting out which candidates\u2019 remarks should be disregarded as jokes and which should be taken as serious policy statements.<\/p>\n

If it were anything we needed to know about, someone surely would tell us.<\/p>\n

\u2666 \u00a0\u2666 \u00a0\u2666 \u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

The Yellowstone County News has been sold to Jonathan and Tana McNiven of Huntley, who own McNiven Enterprises, which operates websites for Lockwood, Shepherd and Huntley Project. In a news story, they said they plan no major changes.<\/p>\n

Rebecca Tescher Robison and her husband, Pete, had owned the News for more than 20 years. In a farewell column, Robison said that letting go of the weekly paper was like sending a child off to college.<\/p>\n

\u201cPete and I pass this baby on\u2014to grow and mature in the hands of new caregivers,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

I have often said, and occasionally written, that Becky was the best newspaper editor in Yellowstone County. Now the rest of us finally have a chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his Sunday column in the Billings Gazette, editor Darrell Ehrlick dropped this nugget, just two days before the election: Prior to September\u2019s debate in Billings between U.S. House candidates Ryan Zinke and John Lewis, Zinke said, \u201cJohn plays the guitar. I waterboard.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[60,1587,1430,552,1588,1589,628,1590],"class_list":["post-4323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","tag-billings-gazette","tag-darrell-erhlick","tag-john-lewis","tag-john-walsh","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-rebecca-tescher-robison","tag-ryan-zinke","tag-yellowstone-county-news","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}