Guantanamo Bay

"I'll go along with the charade
Until I can think my way out
I know it was all a big joke
Whatever it was all about"

      - Bob Dylan, "Tight Connection To My Heart"

Whatever one may think about the so-called "War On Terror", there are certain stories that both boggle the mind and dramatically highlight just how ridiculous this War Without End really is. One such recent story concerned the release of yet another innocent man, Mohamed el-Gharani, from America's notorious gulag down there in Guantanamo Bay.

Now, sadly, the release of an innocent man from Guantanamo is hardly a rare or unique occurrence, but this case, as you'll see, was particularly disturbing.

- "There's no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail." - Oct. 4, 2001. George W. Bush, in Washington, D.C., remarking on a back-to-work plan after 9-11, though, of course, he just as easily could have been talking about his entire presidency.
 

Driving, according to the Bush Administration, is the newest war crime. Yes, war crime.

Obviously, things have been quite farcical in the Land of Bush and Dick (Cheney) for years now, but it would seem that, as of the past week, they've actually reached a whole new level of lunacy.

At a monkey trial down there in Guantanamo Bay, at the infamous Land Of Freedom Gulag, some guy named Salim Hamdan was just found guilty of war crimes for driving Osama bin Laden around from 1997 to 2001. I'm not making this up.

This whole situation with Omar Khadr is so repulsive, shameful and depressing. Thinking about how this poor kid from Toronto has been treated makes me, as a Canadian, feel so embarrassed and sad. All his rights have been violated, he's been abused, tortured, held for six years (so far), long periods of which have been in solitary confinement, he faces a sham trial that would make the Soviets proud, and he was just 15 years old when captured, yet Canada has done absolutely nothing to help him. In fact, as we now indisputably know, the Canadian government has been an active participant in this whole tragedy. And so I ask: What sort of nation have we become anyway?

You've all heard of The Axis Of Evil, of course, but what about The Axis of Medieval? Because, man, has it ever been a great week for them! In fact, it's been an amazing week for all admirers of the Dark Ages and all fans of Medieval systems, techniques and mindsets. First there was the report out of Saudi Arabia the other day about the Saudi Arabian "witch" being sentenced to death for, uh, "casting spells" on some guy, then there was this buffoon in the White House threatening to veto a Senate bill outlawing torture, and, finally, there was the start of the show trials for some of the most prominent tortured inmates at the Guantanamo Bay gulag. Truly a great week for Medieval lovers everywhere.

The American gulag in Guantanamo Bay has one - just one - remaining Western captive still being held by the U.S. government. His name is Omar Khadr. And he's Canadian. Every other Western government did all it could and eventually won the release of every single one of its citizens held in that Kafkaesque joke of a camp. But not our government. No, the Canadian government has abandoned this guy. And the worst thing is he was already abandoned back when he was just a 15 year old kid. That's how old he was when the American's locked him up and started their mental and physical torture regiment on him. Torturing kids? Yup, that's how fucked up the American government has become. Abandoning Canadian kids in foreign gulags? You bet, that's exactly how fucked up the Canadian government has become.

Of course we all know those 3 boys (aged 13, 15 and 15) that the Americans just released from the Guantanamo Bay gulag were a serious threat to U.S. and world security. We know because Great (Bush League) Leader told us so. And just like he told us a few years back that he was a moderate who was going to govern from the center, and just like he told us last year that Iraq unquestionably possessed large stockpiles of W.M.D., Great Leader also told us, repeatedly, that those held at Guantanamo Bay were, and are, very serious threats to American and international peace and security. And, of course, we all trust and believe in Great Leader because he is, after all, The Leader Of The Free World - and self-anointed titles simply don't come much better than that, with the possible exception of Idi Amin's claim to be the King Of Scotland.