May 9, 2008 [LINK / comment]
And throw away the key!
Just when the comedy movie Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay comes out, a real-life event transpires to remind us that the Gitmo detention facility still serves a needed purpose, and it still saves lives. A story in yesterday's Washington Post began
A Kuwaiti man who complained about maltreatment during a three-year stay in the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was involved in a deadly suicide bombing in northern Iraq last month...
Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi was only one of 500 or so former Guantanamo detainees released or transferred elsewhere, and many of the 270 who remain are in the process of getting out. If only that piece of scum had been kept behind bars where he belonged, some of those Iraqi bomb blast victims might still be alive today. (It's the opposite lesson to the one George Bailey learned in It's a Wonderful Life.) It's popular to make fun of U.S. counter-terrorism measures, as "Harold and Kumar" do, but this is a deadly serious matter. I'm against torture and I agree that we need better legal safeguards for those who are being kept at Guantanamo, but I see no alternative to the permanent incarceration of the religious fanatics who have sworn to destroy us.