Carrie Johnson and Spencer S. Hsu had a Washington Post story yesterday about Najibullah Zazi‘s guilty plea. A very sloppily written story.

At the very least, this paragraph offends the intelligence of its readers. It could even be said to constitute a dishonest twisting of logic:

Law enforcement sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation continues, said Zazi began to accelerate his cooperation after authorities charged his Afghan-born father with crimes and threatened to charge his mother with immigration offenses — options that are not available in the military justice system.

To put my criticism in context, this is paragraph 5 in the story. The theme of the first 6 paragraphs is the adequacy of the regular U.S. criminal justice system to the task of trying terrorists. In paragraph 5, they appear to be advocating the point of view that it is. But only by practicing a dishonest sleight of hand.

The issue is clearly whether Zazi would have cooperated in the same way if he had been incarcerated at Gitmo or tried via the military commission system. Regular readers know fully well that I yield to no one in my contempt for both these components of the Bush-Obama war-on-terror system. However, Johnson and Hsu’s argument is totally specious.

If Zazi cooperated because we threatened to charge his parents in the regular U.S. criminal justice system, surely it would have no effect on his co-operation whether Zazi was tried in the regular U.S. criminal justice system or by a military commission, or whether he was detained in a federal prison on the mainland or in Gitmo? Because holding him at Gitmo or trying him by a military commission would not in any way hinder or hamper our ability to charge his parents in the regular U.S. criminal justice system. Johnson and Hsu seem to be invoking some absurd notion that if Zazi was tried by a military commission his parents could not be threatened with charges in the regular U.S. criminal justice system. Like I said, totally specious.

As somewhat of a language purist, I am also taken aback a bit by this sentence:

A Justice Department plan to hold the case in a Lower Manhattan courthouse collapsed under political pressure last month.

Time was when we used to try cases. Now we’re holding them? What’s next, throwing a case, like a party? Or maybe you’re partial to hosting?

(To be fair, it’s easy to see where Johnson and Hsu — or their copy-editor — tripped up. You try a case, but hold a trial. However, it’s still sloppy writing. And, as long as the WP can afford to keep copy-editors on their payroll, inexcusable in a paper of its caliber.)