The 'Super Terrorist" and Why We Had to Kill Him...

A lot of people are spouting a lot of nationalist BS and rejoicing at the murder of yet another figurehead in the war on terror.

The killing of Osama Bin Laden was state sanctioned murder. Nothing more, nothing less. We need to realize this, before we murder anyone else.

There was no way that Bin Laden could have ever gotten due process if he had been captured. He would have been locked up in Gitmo for the rest of his life and tortured, ad hoc, for years to come because we think he has information about things he couldn't possibly be privy to.

If the president thinks he has the right to order the assassination of an American citizen without benefit of due process, what could Bin Laden expect? We can't 'risk' bringing any one in Gitmo to justice. We don't even try to protect the prisoners' civil rights. Do you think we would have given Bin Laden any more due process than we give the other men in Gitmo? We won't give Bradly Manning due process and he is an American who has not been convicted of  anything.

Trying Bin Laden, if we could manage to find someplace that didn't mind having a terrorist tried in their jurisdiction, would have raised a lot of questions. Questions that no one wants answered. It would have challenged the government's version of  the 9/11 attacks. They would have had to face an entirely new threat - the truth. No one, particularly the government, wants the story to change. And what the people think is completely irrelevant, except as it relates to how many back scatter x-ray machines we can buy; shoes that had to taken off in airports; civil liberties that can and are being infringed upon; billions of dollars of deficit financing that goes to the military-industrial complex; the creation of  a surveillance state; the expansion of the powers of civil law enforcement;  the expansion of American hegemony etc etc. etc.

And let us not forget the imbeciles that work for the TSA who otherwise would have had a hard time finding and keeping a job in fast food.

Bin Laden was the person who made all of these things possible. He is the source of all this. He spooked the herd and caused a stampeded. He was the focus of our hatred. We have a concrete view of who and what he was and we are not particularly interested in changing that. He was the incarnation of pure evil. So, what would have happened if he called our beliefs into question? Challenged our views on what happened on 9/11? And what would have happened if he were to be brought to trial and shown to be a guy who hangs out in a cave, smoking opium? We couldn't have that, so we murdered him. Then we went about waving flags in some kind of bizarre nationalistic pride.

We have so much invested in the myth of Bin Laden, that we couldn't see him as anything but evil incarnate,the monster lying under bed of democracy and our republic, that we couldn't have let him live.

As a people we love the myth that we, as country, are invincible and seek to perpetuate that belief at any cost.

We think Bin Lade was so invincible that we sent an army to kill one man and it still took us ten years to find him. Ten years. Either Bin Laden is really, really, really clever or our military isn't very good at what they do.

We, the American people, elected Bush and Obama and choose to give them the power of life and death without any accountability. And we made two really bad decisions. And in the last ten years, thousands of people have been murdered all over the world as result of those bad decisions. People disagreed with us and choose to assert their right to live as they wanted to. So, like Bin Laden, we killed them. And we think we are the 'good guys'? We are as barbaric as Bin Laden, supposedly, was. If Bin  Laden was responsible for 9/11, he killed about  3,000 people. We have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the middle east in an attempt to force them to live as we do.

Killing people is not a good thing. Unless you work for the government.

Wait a minute, isn't that what Bin Laden did? Yep.

The most significant part of all this is that we didn't need to kill Bin Laden just so we could hang his head on the wall in the White House. The man hadn't done anything in the last ten years. He was completely redundant to Al Qaeda. Now, Al Qaeda carries out small, limited attacks against insignificant targets that have a major political impact. Bin Laden took the long view. Jihadists now are lucky if they can see past their suicide bombs.

There has not, nor will their ever be, another attack like 9/11. Osama Bin Laden may have been the mastermind of criminal act of horrendous proportions. Thing is, the jihadists have realized they can influence the west without any big, grandiose plans. All they have to do is drive a car full of 'explosives' into Times Square and not have it blow up. They don't need to blow up anything. The threat of blowing up something is enough to provoke a frenzy. They can achieve the same, or more, impact by not blowing stuff up as they did when they were blowing stuff up.

We are pissed and affronted by the reality that we don't have the means to protect ourselves from a couple of guys sitting round a campfire in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan who will sacrifice everything to accomplish what they believe is right and moral. Somebody has to be responsible for two wars, countless thousands of people dead and that somebody was Osama Bin Laden. We invested him with superpowers. Able to reach out and plant a bomb in some idiot's shoes and in another idiot's underwear. Was he really that evil before we vested the idea of him being a 'super-terrorist'?

Bin Laden was portrayed as everything that went wrong since 9/11. He was a scapegoat invented by the US government. According to the government, the man was a menace to society. He killed people. He made videos of himself firing scary looking rifles. If he did mastermind the attacks on 9/11, our terrorist mastermind did it while he was living in a cave. And when his political influence ended about a foot outside of his cave.

The question is: What do we do now?

The reason we went into Afghanistan was to get Bin Laden. Well, we got him. So, what do we do now? Get out of Afghanistan? Tell me when to stop laughing. We will be killing people, or facilitating the killing of people, long after the myth of Osama Bin Laden fades into history. We may stop killing people in Afghanistan - the Soviets did - but I can guarantee you that we will find another country where we think it is in their best interests to bomb them back to the stone age.

War, killing, maiming and deficit financing of the military will go on forever. This is the 'Long war'. Today we're getting our asses handed to us in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tomorrow, we will, probably, get our asses handed to us in Libya.

The names will change, but the war will remain the same. And it will go on long after my generation is gone. It will, probably, out live our children - those that don't get killed signing up to kill people for money to go to university.

And, for a lot of people who are so shallow that they think celebrating a man's death is a good idea; that is entirely acceptable.

This is not the America I know and love. Not at all.

Buried at Sea...

Within 24 hours? Now we will never know who they killed.

The conspiracy theory nuts will be going ballistic over this.

The 'War on Terror won't end. The people wrongly incarcerated Gitmo won't be freed. We won't get our civil rights back.

And the minimum wage slaves that transferred to the TSA from Burger King will not go away. Even if this actually is Bin Laden's body.

Then there is the whole thing about invading a sovereign nation to pursue somebody that no one has seen in ten years, except on video tape.

No wonder the Pakistanis are pissed. We killed a guy who was hanging out in the Batcave. A totally redundant man who hasn't done anything in ten years?

What is next, we turn the UAVs we have on the Mexican border loose to strike targets and kill people in Mexico. Another sovereign nation who we don't like...

Predator UAV didn't get Osama Bin Laden

Update: 01MAY11 @ 2320 hrs. 


Obama must have made his speech, because more details are coming out about Bin Laden's death. Allegedly, Osama was croaked by a team of Special Forces in Pakistan, (you know, the Laos of Central Asia that we aren't invading). Obama said that Bin Laden was shot in the head.


Swampland reports: Osama Bin Laden Killed; Obama Hails Moment of "Justice". Swampland? I never heard of it, but, apparently, it's part of Time magazine.


Time magazine led with: Death Comes For the Master Terrorist  (1957 – 2011). Time said that Bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Time has what it calls "new" photographs of Bin Laden. They look a lot like the "old" photographs of Bin Laden.


ABC News leads with Osama Bin Laden Operation Months in Making. ABC reported that Obama said Bin Laden's death was a "...major milestone in the war against Al Qaeda" and "...justice for the families of the... ..victims of the September 11 attacks."


Fox News leads with Usama Bin Laden Killed in Firefight with U.S. Special Ops Team in Pakistan. "Special Ops" sounds really tough doesn't it?


The BBC led with Al-Qaeda Leader Osama Bin Laden Dead - Barack Obama.


If you can read only one of these articles, read the BBC report.


These reports don't say much about Bin Laden's death, other than he was killed by Special Forces. And that Bin Laden's body was being handled so as to not violate any Muslim burial customs. Why are we doing this? We killed him. If they aren't upset that we killed him, how come they would get upset if we didn't follow Muslin burial customs?


News organizations did say we had Bin Laden's body and they are trying to confirm it is really Bin Laden by DNA analysis. See how convincing my last post was? They are doing exactly what I said to do.. 


Where would they get DNA to compare it to? Has Bin Laden's hairbrush been hiding somewhere in the Library of Congress or the National Archives, perhaps right next to Kennedy's brain?


Even George Bush was happy. Although, I will bet he choked on the words.


But, all is not lost. The War on Terror will still go on. The State Department warned all embassies to prepare for possible retaliation from people who are upset by the killing.


So, Raytheon gets to sell the US a bunch more cruise missiles at $1 million dollars apiece. And KBR will still get to build Subway Sandwich and Burger Kings restaurants in Afghanistan.


If Bin Laden was the mastermind of Al Qaeda, how can they attack after he gets killed? Is it possible that Bin Laden is no longer important? That we just killed a guy who has been hiding in a cave for the last ten years? At best, Bin Laden had more use as an icon for the War on Terror.


I am sorry, but I really don't think this will do anything but improve Obama's approval ratings. I would imagine he hopes that voters will remember this when they go to vote for a president in 2012.


It is the only significant event in Obama's presidency since the Affordable Care Act. Kind of ironic that he won the Nobel Peace Prize and he's done nothing but escalate the war in Afghanistan, keep 50,000 troops in Iraq and is trying to start another war in Libya.


Excuse me, but I am not that impressed. I will be impressed when the MIC, the National Security State and Police State all go away. And everyone is released from Gitmo. And we get all the civil rights back that this war has erased.


In other words, this is symbolic, with no real importance

Osama Bin Laden dead?

I am interrupting my stunning piece on people flushing their pills down the toilet in Nashville to bring you this breaking news:


Osama Bin Laden is dead. Or, at least, it seems so.


I checked the websites of the NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, CNN and Fox News. Each has a really old picture of Osama Bin Laden and about three paragraphs. Fox News did say that it was the CIA that killed him.


I guess Obama is going to make a speech about it, soon. Since I don't have TV, I will have to read about it tomorrow.


This has been a great week in American History. First, Obama released his long form birth certificate. Then a Predator UAV kills Bin Laden. Actually, the repubs wouldn't think it's a great week...


I will believe Bin Laden is dead when they confirm he is dead with DNA. Or, his long form birth certificate. Whichever happens first... LOLOLOLOLOL ROFLMAO.


Excuse my cynicism.


The long term implications, if Osama is dead, for the republicans are serious. Bush couldn't catch or kill Bin Laden in 8 years. Obama gets him in three. The repubs say Obama is soft on terrorism.


If he is soft on terrorism, how did he kill Osama? This should do wonders for Obama's approval rating. But, the question remains - what do the repubs do now?


I am sure Donald Trump with take credit for this, just like he took credit for forcing Obama to release his long form birth certificate.


Wasn't there like a $1 million dollar reward out for Osama? Does the guy in California flying the Predator UAV get to collect the money?


Update, 01MAY11 @ 22:23 hours: CNN has added a long story to their website that does nothing but report on the events of Bin Laden's life. So, I guess it's a slow news day....

Keep your drugs out of the water supply... Don't Flush Your Biosolids down the Toilet in Nashville

Those who read my post on the DEA demonizing doctors and people who use narcotic analgesics, will be happy to know that there is another bogus reason to give your pills to the cops. You will contaminate the city water system if you flush them down the toilet or throw them in the sink. Or, at least, that's what the cops and, sort of, the director of Metro Water says in Nashville, TN.


[Excuse me until I stop laughing.]


According to Scott Porter, head of the Metro water supply in Nashville Tennessee, he doesn't know whether prescription drugs are in the water supply, but you better stop flushing pills down the sink because it might contaminate Nashville's water supply and he is determined to "protect the watershed."


Of course, you have to turn your drugs over to the police, including birth control pills, so they can protect us from more non-existant problems by scare mongering. Those birth control addicts are dangerous.


This is patently ridiculous. Do people in Nashville drink waste water? Is the Metro water supply incapable of processing waste water, (AKA 'grey water'), so that it can be recycled to do things like water golf courses? Their website has a graphic showing how they process waste water, so they must do it. And the graphic doesn't show gray water going back into the drinking water. They can process 'biosolids', too. I have no idea what a 'biosolid' is, but something tells me it probably is... ...well, you get the idea. 


I definitely don't want biosolids in my drinking water.


Oh, and by the way, Nashville gets it's drinking water from reservoirs. It doesn't recycle non-potable water back into drinking water. So, technically, you could flush a couple of tons of "biosolids" and OxyContin into waste water and not endanger Nashville's water supply.


You will happy to know that the Tennessee Valley Authority is shocking fish in the reservoirs so that they float to the surface so they can  count them. Does the TVA run tox screens on these fish to find out if they are on birth control? Or, maybe, they watch for Bass stoned on OxyContin. You can tell a bass is high, if it just sort of lays there with his tongue lolling out.


Okay, so Nashville process gray water and biosolids. And neither go back into the city's water supply. Which comes from reservoirs. Not from your toilet or sink. I wonder how much OxyContin you would have to dump in Nashville's reservoir to get users high?


I can't see OxyContin users saying, "We're going to go fishing. While we at it, we're going to dump 3,000 pounds of OxyContin in the reservoir."


Perhaps they are afraid that people are going to start eating the grass to get high or as birth control while they are playing golf. If you see a bunch of stoners on the golf course next time you play, ask them if they looking for another form of "grass" or "weed" with birth control pills in it.


So, what we have here is, essentially, a non-existant problem. Not only is non-existant, it is patently ridiculous. I can just see the cops going into Mr. Porter's office:


"We would like you to say that prescription medicines flushed down the toilet will contaminate Nashville's drinking water," says the cop.


"But we don't recycle waste water into drinking water," says Mr. Porter.


"We don't care," says the cop, "We need to find another non-existent problem with which to victimize people who use prescription drugs and get them to give them to us. If we can't say we are saving them from contaminating the water supply, they will just keep their prescription drugs in their medicine cabinets and we will be marginalized and unimportant. The DHS won't give us any more money and we need the money to buy more toys to play with."


So, the director of the water supply makes a comment that he knows, or should know if he is in charge of Nashville's water supply, is patently false. And the Nashville Tennessean buys into it, hook, line and sinker. 


What's next, people grinding up their OxyContin and throwing it up in the air, getting birds and entire airliners full of people high...


I have to ask, does the paper shill for the cops like this in other areas? 

Reactionary Authors and Conspiracy Theories

From time to time, I receive links to articles posted on a site titled" News With Views. This particular site has decided conservative bent. Or, maybe it doesn't. A conservative, conspiracy theorist bent? Any way, sometimes the stuff they publish is amazingly 'non-mainstream.' Some of the authors are anything but mainstream.

Today, I received a link to an article entitled "Tragedy in Japan Affects World Population." The subject of the article leads one to believe that it offers some insight into the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. It does, sort of. If you consider conclusions based on nothing "insight".

Before I get to the article, I would like to discuss the man who wrote it, James Howinstine, M.D.[1] Dr. Howenstine claims to be a board certified internist. However an Internet search reveals nothing about where he went to medical school, where he interned or did his residency. I am not saying he isn't what he claims to be. I just couldn't find any evidence to support his assertions.

Dr. Howenstine, is a fairly proliferate writer. Although not in peer reviewed articles. I would say his writing runs more to reactionary than science. 

His article entitled: Stay Away From Chemotherapy and Radition was posted on a website called India Divine: Welcome to the Sacred World of Hinduism[2] The article credits Dr. Howenstine as saying it has, "...been known to well informed individuals within the medical community that chemotherapy and radiation were [sic] quite toxic and essentially worthless in the management of malignancies". He goes on to say, "It is all about money. Chemotherapy drugs bring in more than a trillion dollars, [The gross national product of the US is $14 trillion dollars and I find it hard to believe the pharmaceutical industry comprises 1/14th of the entire GNP. The profit of Exxon-Mobile this year was only $10.7 billion. Does anyone actually believe cancer treatment is worth more than Exxon-Mobile?] annually to the pharmaceutical industry. Oncologists frequently make $1000 from every injection administered to a patient. There are 40 National Cancer Institute Centers scattered across the USA. Each of these employs thousands of employees. Curing cancer would be devastating for the economy and must not be allowed to occur. Research programs whose alleged purpose is to cure cancer see their funds steered into harmless areas where no cancer cures will ever result."

His article: "Why You Should Avoid Taking Vaccines" published on a website called "Whale.to" which is located in Switzerland. [The top level domain identifier ".to" is for the Country of Tonga.] The home page of "Whale.to" is filled with links to various and sundry conspiracy theories - "Luciferian Symbiology"; "Mass Murder, Inc"; and the "Vaccine Conspiracy".

In his "Avoid Taking Vaccines" article, Dr. Howenstine says that most of the reduction of disease allegedly produced by vaccines is actually due to increases in public health practices. He ties vaccines to sudden infant death syndrome, among other things. He claims that black males were intentionally injected with Hepatitis B 'vaccines' containing HIV in order to decimate their population. [This statement is based on a quote from Robert Strecker, M.D. There are 3 articles allegedly written by Dr. Strecker on the Whale.to site, but the links are dead. At any rate, this would indicate a genocide of huge proportions was ongoing right under our noses which would be easily noticed.]

Dr. Howenstine has also written an article titled: Is Psychiatry Scientific and Dangerous in which he states that psychiatry is a fraud. This article was published on a  blog called psychdata.blogspot.com. The title of the blog is: Pyschdata - Dedicated to Exposing the Fraud of Psychiatry.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

In the article I am discussing this evening, Dr. Howenstine makes several reactionary and totally false statements about the nuclear reactor accident in Japan.

He states that Japanese physicist physicist Michio Kaku has said that "...all three Fukushima reactors are melting down and that the battle has been lost." To begin with Dr. Kaku is a Japanese-American professor who works at the City University of New York. He isn't in Japan. And Dr. Kaku's actual statement was that "Chernobyl represents the high end of the category. Right now Fukushima would be more on the low end - about one-tenth the level of Chernobyl." So much for all is lost.  

Dr. Howenstine then goes on to say that, "...dangerous levels of radiation in the Midwest, California, Washington, Oregon and Western Canada were reported by the Norweign Institute of Air Research. I looked over the NIAR website and can't find any reference to radiation. In Japan or anywhere else. The Institute appears to be frequently cited in articles of the same type as "Tragedy...", but nobody seems to remember to put a link to where the statement is on their website.

My favorite quote from Dr. Howenstine's article is this one: "Everyone in Japan will possibly die from radiation poisoning. The people of Hokkaido, the northern island, may be spared because of different currents and winds." Everyone. All 127,078,679 of them. [This would compare to four times the entire population of the State of California.]  The third largest economy in the world will just disappear into a cloud of radioactive steam. That statement is so ridiculous it doesn’t even merit comment.

Howenstine goes on to say that Lauren Monet, Ph.D. has said that radiataion levels in California are the same as they are at Fukishima Reactors. A web search for Dr. Monet reveals her primary interest seems to be the danger of depleted uranium munitions - which she thinks are hazardous and which I agree. Dr. Monet's Wikipedia article is pretty sparse and makes reference to an article titled, "Globalists Attempting to Depopulate the World" which was published in the Tehran Times, (Tehran, Iran). And is, actually, about depleted uranium munitions. And I don't think Dr. Monet picked the title of the article, which devolves into an anti-American screed.

Dr. Howenstine goes on about plutonium contamination on the west coast and says that he hopes the world will give Japanese citizens "asylum" when they have to flee their country.

By this time, you are probably getting my point - Dr. Howenstine is not credible, nor are his writings. Whether he is a dangerous, depends on your point of view. [I vote for crackpot, but it is hard to believe anyone could actually accept what he writes as face value.] 

His statements suggesting vaccines don't work is completely irresponsible. There is a great deal of scientific evidence that vaccines prevent disease.[3]. Likewise, his assertions that cancer treatment is just a scam to get money from people. And can anyone reasonably believe that AIDS was invented to kill off black males? [The largest group of persons vaccinated against Hep B are health care workers. Although vaccinations for Hep B is becoming more common for newborns.]

With his impressive sounding credentials, including the white lab coat he wears in all his pictures, and his prominent presence in the literature of the reactionary press, maybe there are people who actually believe his tripe. I mean, it sounds good if all you do is read it, without checking his sources. It fits with the belief by some that the government is out to get us and isn't telling us everything. [I agree that the Japanese government has not been as forthcoming as they should be about the Fukushima reactor accident, but that is for another post.] [Is our government working in the best interests of the populace? That's debatable and, also, an issue for another post.]

So, why do people read this stuff? According to Frank P. Mintz, [4] author of The Liberthy Lobby and the American Right, "Conspiracism serves the needs of diverse political and social groups in America and elsewhere. It identifies elites, blames them for economic and social catastrophes, and assumes that things will be better once popular action can remove them from positions of power. As such, conspiracy theories do not typify a particular epoch or ideology". [Conspiracy theories were actually quite common in America around the time of the American revolution.]

I read this quote posted to the Further.com blog and thought it was a pretty good explanation of why conspiracy theories exist.

"Denial as a defense mechanism. Perhaps projection.

I’ve long said that conspiracy theories differ from radical political analysis in that they both recognize that the state of affairs are not good and that the average person is somehow exploited, subjugated, or taken advantage of, but conspiracy theories remove the factors of society and economics from this understanding so that the believer doesn’t need to seriously examine their culture and their role in atrocities, and can ignore things like class, race, and gender privilege. Sometimes the externalization is so extreme that things are based on inter-dimensional aliens or somesuch [sic]"

Both, basically, say that conspiracy theories are used to explain, and assign blame for, things people cannot understand or control. Like the accident at the TEPCO nuclear reactors in Japan. Or the current economic crisis.

Our country is going through a difficult time. Life is tough for a lot of people. The source - the government - we normally turn to in situations like this is no longer responsive to the needs of a large percentage of the population. At the same time, the government is seen, (correctly, I might add), as actively attempting to remove the safety net that social services provides for people in need and, thereby, is making things worse.

In times like these people like Howenstine assume some seeming credibility. Or, at least are more likely to be listened to. Someone who will put everything in a nice neat little bundle. With impressive sounding credentials and citations that appear, on the surface, to be "reasonable" and make sense. [Although, I think conspiracy theories are self-reinforcing, the more you buy into them, the easier it is to accept any information that you believe supports the theory as genuine.]

So, is Howestine harmless, dangerous, annoying, tragic or laughable? I think all four. Whatever he is, he is a product of the current state of the world - scary, difficult to understand and extremely uncertain. There certainly is no place in rational society for people like him. We need to approach out problems with sobriety and a clear head. We need to use our time, effort and intelligence to work towards solutions that actually will help make things better.

Somehow, though, I think Howenstine and people like him will be with us always.

[1] I am giving this man the benefit of the doubt and calling him 'doctor'.

[2] Actually, the article has nothing to do with Hinduism.

[3] At least he isn't blamming vaccines for autism. I do wonder what Jonas Salk  and all the people that would have gotten polio, had it not been for the polio vaccine Salk developed, would think about his claims.

[4] I couldn't find much out about Frank P. Mintz. He is quoted all over. His work, "Libery Lobby..." was described as his dissertation, but I can't find where he studied or what his Ph.D. is in. I find this kind of odd that someone a widely quoted doesn't have a bio anywhere online.

[5] If Howenstine is a medical doctor, I don't know how that qualifies him to offer commentary as to what is really happening with the reactors.

The Guantanamo Files, Pt. II

Note: When I wrote my last piece about the NYTime’s “Guantanamo Files,” I originally referred to the men incarcerated there as “detainees.” That was wrong. These men are human beings and deserve to be referred to as human beings. ‘Detainees’ is a euphemism designed to de-humanize them. I will not participate in removing their humanity.

The 'Wikileak' of data concerning the men detained at Gitmo continues to lead in the New York Times.

There are three articles in the Times: As Acts of War or Despair, Suicides Rattle a Prison; Libyan, Once a Detainee, Is Now a U.S. Ally of Sorts; and Classified Files Offer New Insights Into Detainees.

These follow up pieces reinforce the reality that the jailers at Gitmo are being ‘handled’ by the men incarcerated there and that the guards don’t have a very good read on how to relate to the men detained there. It seems that guesses and conjecture substitute for logic, reason, compassion and competence. The Gitmo portrayed in these articles appear to describe a series of personal struggles between the guards and the men. A game, if you will, with the government on the one side and the incarcerated men on the other. And, according to these articles, the government isn’t necessarily coming out on top.

As Sun Tzu said in the Art of War, numerical superiority does not always convey an advantage.

In the first article, As Acts of War or Despair, Suicides Rattle a Prison, the records show that the government sees suicide attempts as a way for the men to fight back. One unidentified military official described suicide as “an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us.”

This statement is incredibly egocentric. It shows the inability of the government to view these men, and what they did, in terms other than themselves. The government sees everything that happens in Gitmo as happening to them. This is a horrific reflection of how the incarcerated men are viewed by the government. To the government, the act of taking one’s life seen as an attack on the government. And not the death of a fellow human being.

This is the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.

In Libyan, Once a Detainee, Is Now a U.S. Ally of Sorts, the times describes how Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda Bin Qumu  had been incarcerated at Gitmo before he was released to Libya.[1] And how the US government is now supporting Qumu’s fight against Libyan leader, daffy duck.

The ‘information’ that was being use to keep Mr. Qumu at Gitmo came from the Libyan government.

Now, it seems that the adage, “An enemy of my enemy is my friend” applies to Mr. Qumu. It’s amazing how quickly the chairs are moved around the table when it becomes expedient to manipulate a former ‘enemy’ to act against a new 'enemy,' (who, until a very short time ago, was our 'friend').

In Lives in An American Limbo, the Times once again looks at the ways the government decided who was a ‘bad guy’ and who was a ‘badder bad guy.’ It describes how the game to obtain ‘evidence’ that can justify holding the men longer has become a game of gossip. 

This makes sense. The incarcerated men have been isolated from the rest of the world for up to six years. It seems likely most of the men have been investigated to death. There really wouldn’t be any new tactical information to be had from men who haven’t seen the light of day for that many years. So, the government is reduced to listening to prison gossip, accusations, counter-accusations and tales told for personal gain[2]. 

The article also examines the data that was used to determine whether a man was considered enough of a threat to send them to Guantanamo. After reading the article, let’s just say, these decisions were made on ‘evidence’ so flimsy, it was transparent.

[1] In 2005, Qumu was described as  a “medium to high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests and allies.”

[2] In such a situation, it is easy to see where the incarcerated men have a distinct advantage over their captors. Once the men learn the system, they can game it. In one such instance, a man was put in a cell next to another man he did not like. The first man realized he would be moved, if he attempted suicide. So, he did. And gamed his way out of a situation that he didn’t want to be in. It seems, within the tightly enclosed ‘society’ of the prison at Guantanamo, the advent of this type of manipulation was inevitable. Particularly given the government's deep desire to glean any intelligence from the incarcerated men. And their willingness to listen to sad stories, tales of glory and just plain fabrications.