Yee Gads

James Taranto asks:

What kind of man supports Barack Obama? The Associated Press reports that James Yee, a former Muslim Army chaplain at Guantanamo Bay who was accused of spying, has been chosen as an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

Yee was not prosecuted on those charges. The AP states that he was "cleared," but a 2004 New York Times editorial said otherwise:

In dropping the prosecution last week, the military refused to clear Captain Yee, contending that it had acted only because of ''national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence.''

Last year, the Middle East Media Research Institute aired a clip of an interview Yee gave to Syrian television. Blogger Charles Johnson has a transcript. Yee claimed that the Koran "was being desecrated in Guantanamo in many different ways." Yee acknowledged that he did not actually witness any of the purported desecration; he merely took the detainees' word for it.

What kind of man supports Barack Obama? The kind of man who goes on TV in an Arab country ruled by a hostile authoritarian regime and participates in propaganda that seems designed to inflame anti-American sentiment.