The Media In Brief

So this is a very very stupid article.

So the President ordered Guantanamo closed. In response, some dead enders in the Pentagon and our intelligence agencies decided to release a report that "details" how 60some people who were once in Guantanamo have now returned to the battlefield. This is supposed to scare the American people into demanding Guantanamo stay open so we can torture there more or something. I don't understand the reasoning, personally but I'll point out why it is retarded.

Reason the first: the report is full of shit. As detailed here by Professor Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall. As best he can tell, the Pentagon makes up a number and counts people involved in propaganda against the US as having "returned to the battlefield."

For those that did continue to fight against the US there are two large problems.

Reason the second: Why did we release them? Because we couldn't prosecute presumably. We couldn't prosecute because either we either didn't have any evidence at all or the only evidence we did have was coerced (read: tortured) from these prisoners. So we released them because of the asinine interrogation techniques of the Bush Administration. Brilliant!

Reason the third: let's assume you're an innocent Afghan/Iraqi/visiting Arab of some other variety as claimed by the guy the New York Times decided to feature to scare the hell out of us "deputy director of Al Qaeda in Yemen," Said Ali al-Shihri. Not that I necessarily believe him, but I'm creating a hypothetical so bear with me. Let's say you are. And then you're picked up by the US Army based on a tip from a neighbor who is pissed at you for some unrelated reason and the neighbor turns you in for $10,000. You are shipped thousands of miles from home to a prison and are tortured and held without contact with anyone else for years. When you are eventually released, are you not going to be pissed at America? Pissed enough to violently resist them? Guantanamo was a terrorist factory.

Reason the fourth: What the fuck does any of this have to do with closing Guantanamo or Obama anyway? The supposedly scary released prisoners were released by Bush political appointees and if they've returned to the battlefield while Guantanamo was still open. It's a stupid argument made by the stupid members of the media.

But why are they making this argument? Well, basically what Digby said. Namely, the Republican Party is manipulating the refs in an even more shameless fashion than usual. Basically they're trying to set up a way that Americans are scared so that if we're attacked again in the continental US (fuck you, the word "homeland") it can instantly and conveniently be blamed on Barack Obama and the pansy ass Democrats for closing Guantanamo and endangering everybody.

Because stopping war crimes is for cowards.