Spit take-inducing headline of the day

Put down that cup of coffee, unless you like a mess. Courtesy of TPM Muckraker:


Gitmo to Stay Open as Human Rights Sanctuary


Turns out it's more than just a catchy headline. The story is that the good ol' Bush administration wants to slim down the prisoner headcount at Gitmo from the current 360 to 150. So good news for 210 wrongfully-imprisoned and even-more-wrongfully tortured detainees? Actually, no. We've still got one more level of wrongful to go: there's nowhere to drop them off. Their home countries and all of the possible foster-home states that have been asked either won't take them, or won't take them without promising not to torture or kill them. So they get to stay in Guantánamo, where their human rights will be, uh, protected.

I wonder if they'd take any consolation in not being among the other 150 prisoners - the ones the Bush DoD doesn't want to get rid of. Of those 150, Bush & Co. have selected 80 finalists whom they want to [beverages down again...] charge with war crimes. I shit you not. The Bush administration, having exempted itself from international accords and the U.S. Constitution in order to avoid being charged with war crimes, is gearing up to charge some of the victims of its war crimes with war crimes. Yes, some of them are surely guilty of war crimes, but we'll never really know with the kangaroo-court military tribunals that will try them.

What about the 50 semi-finalists? The Bush junta says that they're too dangerous to release from Gitmo, but not bad enough to put on trial. Um... I have nothing to add to this point. I guess my digust has reached critical mass, at least for the moment.

The thing that's saddening me the most right now is that after 6+ years of Bush, this level of absurdity doesn't even seem unusual anymore. It's like a ghastly, global-scale version of one of the "Cowboys and Indians" games I participated in during my single-digit years: the ones where the biggest kids make up the rules as they go along, and their manipulations become more and more illogical until chaos and disillusionment set in and the game collapses.

Would that I could just say "I'm not playing anymore," quit the war on terror and walk home.

Cross-posted at Cheek and Bluster