There is an article that should make you say WTF?!?! several times in your head in today’s Washington Post. It is an article that would make anyone say WTF?!! variosu times. Did I say that this article made me say WTF? If you don’t know what the fuck WTF? is then oh well. I ain’t gonna explain it.
However, let’s start with this grand article about the United States transfering the detainees from US custody to Afghanistan. this is obviously an attempt at some Copperfieldian (as in David) attempt at washing our hands of the whole torture ordeal without actually washing our hands of teh whole torture ordeal. I never thought that the benefit of the Great War on Terror and all that is extreme, brown, and can scrape up enough money to get a kalishnikov, webcam, and a blog (GWOTAATIEBACSUEMTGAKWAAB) would be that we could have surrogate prisons in which we can torture our uncharged prisoners of the aforementioned war with ever changing accronyms.
The georgiousity of the situtation would make any neocon’s lips wetter than a Burger King’s mop at closing time. Let us jail folks without any kind of notice, charges, or legal basis, then once the press catches on (three years later) we can simply transfer them to our newly acquired country in the Middle East. So this was the point! The whole thing was not to democratize the middle east, not to eliminate a tyrant, not to find WMD’s and not even to destroy terrorists wherever they may live. The point is now clear. In case Afghanistan didn’t work out, we needed a plan B to put all our enemy combatants that though human the only right they deserve as a prisoner within our control is to not have their head chopped off. That would be barbaric.
So the article describes the wheelings and dealings going on to turn over as many unconstituitional torturees we can to the US’s very own Australia. And as The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs (what a title eh?) clearly states:
“This is not an effort to shut down Guantanamo. Rather, the arrangement we have reached with the government of Afghanistan is the latest step in what has long been our policy — that we need to keep dangerous enemy combatants off the battlefield,” Matthew Waxman, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, said shortly after leaving Kabul with Prosper. “We, the U.S., don’t want to be the world’s jailer. We think a more prudent course is to shift that burden onto our coalition partners.”
In other words, fear not people of the world. We shan’t be soft on people whom we have tortured, secluded and even outright beat the living piss out of. We will just transfer them to another state that will do our bidding for us, thus making it liegally impossible to connect our actions to those of our surrogates!
However, besdies the bullshit spewing from this dudes mouth let’s take a look at the numbers:
The agreement with Afghanistan is the largest of its kind so far. Prosper said yesterday that the U.S. government is working to send 129 Saudis and 107 Yemenis from Guantanamo to the custody of their home countries. If the U.S. government is able to arrange the transfer of detainees who came from all three countries, the population at the U.S. facility will drop by 68 percent, from 510 to 164.
Saudi’s? Returning to Saudi Arabia? WTF?! This has got to be sitting with conservatives about as well as a double bacon cheddar burger with a side of bacon cheddar fries and a double choclate milkshake would. At first sounds great, however, eventually, your appendix might burst requiring surgery. All thanks to that Texas Weiner joint you visited. I digress (but that actually has happened to your humble narrator).
The article does however end with great news:
I don’t expect it will be too long before the actual transfer of detainees will start. It should be a matter of months to build the facilities,” said Karim Rahimi, a spokesman for Karzai.
It is rather comforting that we can build a prison in Afghanistan in a matter of months but we can’t seem to build a frekin’ newsstand in Iraq in 2 years. I guess torturing people has got to be a higher priorty than getting “Freedom on the March!”
