Comment by baron_harkonnen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by baron_harkonnen | Hacker News Reader

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baron_harkonnen

> One of the detainees at Guantanamo was grilled over the prevalence of the watch amongst suspected terrorists. He claimed that the water-resistant feature of the F91W watch was handy due to the Islamic requirement for followers to wash up to their elbows before prayers. Innocent enough explanation, right? Well not really. Interrogators smelled a rat when another prisoner claimed the prevalence of the watch amongst Jihadi inmates was simply due to the built-in compass that helped them pray towards Mecca. However, there is no compass in the F91W.

It's important to point out here that what you're reading about is people being tortured to confess on the purpose of a watch.

The logic of "Interrogators smelled a rat" is terrifying. Imagine you get captured by a state enemy and they ask you why so many Americans have iPhones. They beat you until you tell them and clearly "uh, they're useful? everyone has one? you can pay for them in installments so the cost is hidden?" aren't going to be acceptable answers. The interrogator smells a "rat" and wants to get the "real" answers from you.

Clearly the answers of "so we can do Muslim things" are to appease the interrogator. The prisoner knows that "I don't know, cause everyone else has one and they're cheap" is not going to fly.

It's also important to remember that most of the current and former inmates in Guantanamo are not terrorists. The majority are regular joes who were captured and tortured and generally destroyed because they looked too Islamic. Most have since been released without trial:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#...

TFA is a bit suspect all the way through. Why isn't it dated? On any date, this paragraph was always a war media fabrication:

Of course, the watch is not only appreciated by the terrorists of the world but likewise by the people who combat them... Such as the Syrian Democratic Forces which is a coalition waging an anti-ISIS campaign across war-torn Syria.

...in the first place because the vast majority of SDF were specifically interested in forming a Kurdish "homeland". Nothing wrong with that, but it's not an "anti-ISIS campaign". Sometimes they fought ISIS, sometimes they fought the Syrian military (with whom they've since suggested a truce), but now they fight the Turks. [0] SDF mostly served as a fig leaf, so that USA could insert vast quantities of munitions into ungoverned parts of Syria and still pretend we weren't ISIL's primary armaments supplier. Now that Syria, Russia, and Iran have defeated ISIL, maybe we should ask the Turks if SDF and YPG are really "people who combat terrorists"...

The fact that "Батя" doesn't mind dropping such transparently WaPo-approved propaganda into the middle of an unrelated article really undercuts the whole "independent journalism" vibe that "Reaper Feed" claims to cultivate.

[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/syrian-democratic-for...

> It's important to point out here that what you're reading about is people being tortured to confess on the purpose of a watch.

It's important to point out that you have absolutely no evidence of anyone being tortured to confess to the purpose of a watch. The interrogators could have just asked.

Given the pattern of behavior of notorious torturers? By that standard the IRA could have just gotten all of the diesel and fertilier for farming and the car bombs were British false flags to harm the Irish cause.

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