I’m not a big fan of beheading videos, either, but if Jones really believes that watching one on the Internet “amounts to complicity in a terrorist act” [“The Media and Modern Warfare” by J.R. Jones, June 22], I think he would be an excellent advocate for the Patriot Act’s mission and would be well-qualified as a mouthpiece for the Bush administration’s exploitation of terrorism. Indignation is fine, and watching grisly snuff films is an odd pastime, to say the least, but equating the activity with terrorism is a cavalier, irresponsible, and potentially dangerous statement. I know: he’s just a film reviewer, not the press secretary. But if logic holds in a nightmare world where Jones’s statement is the law of the land, it would mean that Mariane Pearl is a terrorist, an enemy of the United States, and should be held in Guantanamo Bay without a trial.
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Oakland, California
