KSM’s elliptical machine, &c.

In his most recent Impromptus column at NRO, Jay Nordlinger begins with a discussion of Gilad Shalit. Jay contrasts Shalit’s treatment by Hamas with that of Khalid Sheik Mohammed by the United States at Guantanamo. Here is Nordlinger on KSM at Guantanamo:

Michael Mukasey was attorney general from November 2007 to January 2009. He remembers visiting Guantanamo Bay in February 2008. He looked at many of the high-value detainees on video monitors. But he did not see Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; Mohammed wasn’t in his cell. He was off having a Red Cross visit.
Mukasey did see the exercise room, adjacent to Mohammed’s cell. And he noticed something interesting: Mohammed had the same elliptical machine that he, the attorney general, had back home in his Washington apartment building. Only there was this difference: Mukasey had to share his, with other residents; there was a mad scramble in the morning to get to it. Mohammed had his machine all to himself.
Bear in mind that he was the “mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks, which killed almost 3,000 people. That he was the beheader of Daniel Pearl. And so on. I wonder how much more tenderly America’s critics expect us to treat such people. “Abdominal massages,” of the type Al Gore apparently requests?

JOHN adds: KSM is contemptuous of us because he thinks we are a bunch of idiots. I’m beginning to believe he’s right.

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