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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: American Hostages
Message-ID: <7800390@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Aug-85 20:51:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.7800390
Posted: Mon Aug 26 20:51:00 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Aug-85 00:10:47 EDT
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Nf-From: inmet!janw    Aug 26 20:51:00 1985


> The group (Witnesses for Peace) is not asking for anyone to
> pity their plight at the hands of the contras that held them,
> they are demonstrating that perhaps our "founding father"   
> equivilents [sic] are less than noble. 
> 
> -todd jones

BUT they've proved the exact opposite, haven't they ?  Were a
group of, say, Prussian meddlers to sail for the American
shores to shield king George's loyalists with their live bodies;
and were general Washington to treat them as the Contras did -
namely, detain for one day, then set free - why, people would
have said that the general had lived up to his noble reputa-
tion ...

And, by the way, they *are* asking for pity. In today's  (Aug  26)
Boston Globe two of them are whining at length. Can you imagine,
they were induced to actually *walk!* for *more than an hour!* 
with their captors, who had not even had the courtesy to pave the
jungle road! As far as compromising the Contras goes (the too-obvious
goal of the witless  "Witnesses"), the trip was a flop. They
had to go back to their Sandinista friends for a fresh earful
of atrocity tales.

Another small point: from all accounts, these people's safety or
their release were never made conditional on any demands.  So,
who was it, on or off the net, who first labelled them "hostages" ?

        -Jan Wasilewsky