Those Guantanameros, Again

I guess the hunger strike makes it a lot harder for Obama to ignore what's going on in George W.'s jail.  Well, dealing with it will not be that hard.  If every last one of the 166 inmates (most of whom probably wound up in Cuba because somebody in Afghanistan thought it would be nice to collect a bounty) becomes a violent terrorist, it will not make a big difference.

Another 166 terrorists (and those who have not been radicalized surely ought to have been by now) will not especially shift the world balance of terrorists to non-terrorists.  It will be statistically insignificant.  Pretty clearly, they won't get into the United States, nor Europe.  Iraq and Afghanistan already are totally fucked up, so, really, who cares?

Lindsay Graham and John McCain will jump up and down, and the Heritage Foundation and similar groups will spurt diarrhea all over the talk radio stations, but really, who cares?  That's what they do, so we ought to be used to it by now.

Let's just put an end to it.  Maybe some of us will regain a little respect for Our President.

Why only the SECOND amendment?

Second Amendment absolutists are out in force these days, insisting that the Constitution gives citizens the right to unrestricted ownership of any goddamned gun that makes the most money for the gun industry.  What the hell.  As I've noted before, I don't think any private citizen has to have a hand gun, and if all the super-popular Glocks disappeared tomorrow, it would be a great day for the USofA.

What I'm wondering about today, though, is why only the second amendment gets such special treatment.  Why not the first, or the fourth, or the sixth, or the eighth?  (Probably, you don have a clue what the sixth or the eighth  are about.  We former social studies teachers probably were less effective than we might have liked.)

In case you have forgotten what the fourth was about, it's the one on search and seizure — that is, the right to privacy.  Our President, in case you had not noticed, not only has supported the infringements on our rights in the Patriot Act, but expanded them.  If you really want online anonymity, for example, your best bet now is the Tor Project.  Is the whole thing run by the CIA or the FBI?  I don't think so, but who the hell knows?

The sixth amendment is trial by jury — speedy and public.  Ask the leftover Yemenis at Guantanamo how that right is holding up for them.  Ask the American citizens executed by drone strikes overseas.  The eighth amendment, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment, figures in here too.  Obama says torture is a thing of the past, but he won't prosecute any former torturers because it's all top secret, so who knows?

Oh, and by the way, FREE BRADLEY MANNING!

"Prolonged" Detention

Triangulation is a political strategy,
not a national security strategy.
-Dick Cheney, 21May2009

It's not often that I find myself in agreement with the former VP, but he's right on that one -- and, I might add, triangulation doesn't serve very well as a model for ethical behavior either. Cheney argues that if we are only partly safe from the terrorist boogie men, we're not safe. I argue that if our actions are only partly ethical, they are unethical.

(That bastion of ethics, the Roman Catholic Church, might disagree with me, having recently pointed out that "most" of the boys molested by the Christian Brothers in Irish institutions over the years were victims of "inappropriate touching" rather than, say, anal penetration -- but does that mean the boys who were diddled a bit rather than forcibly raped should be happy about it? And, anyway, is being locked up for the rest of your life with no trial more analogous to a diddling or an ass fucking? You decide.)

Yes, I know. Our President now has read all the secret documents, and somehow has concluded that there are a number of Guantanamo detainees who could not be convicted, by a federal court or even by a newly revamped military commission, due to absent, insufficient, or tainted evidence. How could such a situation come about? Let's see.

If the evidence is insufficient or nonexistent, we can assume that some "trusted asset" of the CIA or the military said something like, "Oh, that fellow, he's a really bad guy!" In the unlikely event the "trusted asset" was asked to back up his assertion, he told a few unverifiable stories that were swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, by the eager agent or officer. (Somebody with the proper security clearance should count up how many times the "trusted asset" took over the "bad" guy's farm, or celebrated victory in a longstanding family feud.)

If the evidence is tainted, we can assume the poor bastard was tortured until he confessed to whatever his interrogators thought he might have done. As for egomaniacs like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- who would happily have confessed to every high-profile attack for the past fifty years even without waterboarding -- we can count on them to confess once again, in open court. Hell, they totally want to be martyred, and will be unhappy with anything less than the death penalty.

How many detainees will fall into the "prolonged detention" category? Twenty? Thirty? Fifty? Last week, we were told that one out of seven Guantanamo detainees released so far has "returned" to terrorism, but let's look at a worst case scenario. Let's say there are fifty of these genuine "bad guys," and we put them back more or less where we found them. Let's say we release them near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where all fifty immediately join up with the 10,000 Taliban already fighting there. That would, effectively, increase the ranks of the Taliban by one-half of one percent.

To me, that is a small price to pay for maintaining our standards of justice. Consider, too, that the chance of a released detainee gaining access to the United States is virtually zero. We have their fingerprints, retinal scans, physiognomic profiles, DNA, and more. The Cheney-Obama argument for keeping them in detention disappears.

Fear eats the soul.
(R. W. Fassbinder; 1974)

Guantanameros

I am amused by all the howling and moaning by Republican Congressmen about just where in the United States the Obama administration will relocate the Guantanamo prisoners. I am especially amused by the howling and moaning of Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas.

The federal prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, is the most obvious candidate for detainee relocation -- to Senator Brownback's dismay. Brownback has introduced legislation to forbid the use of federal funds to transfer the Guantanamo detainees to Leavenworth. (I am not sure how to transcribe the sound of flatulence, but that's what should be inserted here.)

It seems that the residents of Kansas are concerned that the Guantanamo detainees will attract terrorist activity to their extremely large, flat, and rectangular state. Figuring that the average car bomb impacts about 1000 square feet, and that the population density of the city of Ft. Leavenworth is 935 per square mile, the average car bomb would kill or injure about one-third of a person. Nine tenths of that third of a person is a devoted Christian, and hence would proceed immediately to heaven. So, what's the problem?

Well, the Republicans seem to think Alcatraz would be a better choice. Granted, with a population density of about 16000 per square mile, the human toll of a car bomb in San Francisco would be considerably more extensive than that of a bomb in Ft. Leavenworth -- but since the victims would probably be Democrats (or, better yet, gay Democrats), God's justice certainly would be better served.

I'm starting to feel a little better about Obama's approach to the Republicans, especially since the Republicans are behaving like such total assholes. Go ahead, Barack... reach out to them. Then, when they refuse to budge... well, fuck 'em.