now, but clearly the situation is that peter is showing symptoms of the pressure and anxiety of the very long wait. prosecutors recently said they would seek the maximum sentence in his case which, of i think it s mind-boggling to believe that they are seeking a maximum sentence of 15 years. i mean, peter has actually not done anything wrong. he s just done his job. and he has always been a balanced journalist, a journalist who has looked at stories in a very balanced way and reported on all sides of the issue. and he has not broken any law or anything like this.
mcclatchy owns newspapers in towns where soldiers families were coming from. we owed it to them to explain what was going on, what the dangers of invasion was and what was wrong with the case that was being made for the invasion. is it true? peter you mentioned you feel some voices don t go on the air to call that a big problem. who are some of the voices that you think should be on air more often? one person comes to mind is andrew basovich. remarkable historian of foreign policy. also someone who serves himself as a career military officer and whose son tragically was killed in iraq. there is a bias in terms of people who are put on air in particular i think towards people who are close to power in washington.
senate majority leader harry reid posted this picture on twitter of all the talking heads. the only thing i want to hear from iraq war architect is an apology. harry reid voted in favor of it. he says he needs to redress it. rachel maddow called it maddening. i think her colleague jeff scarborough was implicitly responding to her with this. do we have paul bremer on to have him talk about it? are we afraid to let him talk? no. we allow people to talk. we have a free marketplace of ideas and even people with whom we disagree, we allow them to talk. so there was a backlash to the backlash. i want to ask two people about this who have unique points of view. let me bring in jonathan landa from mcclatche and peter ryan heart. thank you both for being here. good morning.
three other journalists are still behind bars. a verdict is expected tomorrow. you ve heard me talk about them on this program before. peter gres can i, bear muhammad they ve been jailed since december falsely charged with aiding a terrorist organization. fami used to work with us at cnn. earlier i had a chance to speak with peter s family. they talked to us about how peter is doing and how important it is to keep this case in the media spotlight. take a listen. joining me from brisbon. thank you for being here. our pleasure, brian. what is the very latest information that you have about your son, about his condition, and about his legal status? the latest information, and we can t almost refer to it as informatio information,, it is bits of news we get about peter by his brother michael whose over there
that now exists. that s the perfect turn to peter. you wrote a column titled even iraq sinners deserve to be heard. you said you were one of those sinners. tell me what you believed then and what you believe now. i supported the war in iraq, the magazine i edited reported it. it was the greatest mistake i have made as a journalist in my career. one of the greatest mistakes i wrote in my life. i wrote essentially two books trying to grapple with how i could have been so wrong. my view about i think it s definitely true that the media s foreign policy conversation has an instinct towards beltway insiders who share basic assumptions. some of the people who had the intellectual foresight that let us to iraq still don t get on the air which is a big problem. i don t have a problem putting on people who were architects of the iraq war on to talk today as long as they have to reckon with what happened in the past. we shouldn t treat the past as if it s irrelevant. it s not irrelevant.