David's Daily Diversions

Guantanamo Guano

The US Government has created a serious problem for itself. It invaded Afghanistan, declared anyone who fought against it an unlawful combatant, captured a load of them and shipped them off to Cuba. It was originally suggested that they could be executed for their crime of fighting against US forces in their own country (or in some case in a country where they were invited by the de facto government of the day long before and US forces arrived).

Now since a few of the prisoners are subjects of Her Britannic Majesty, Tony Blair has played his cards to make sure those don't get the intravenous drip of death. What can be done then with the others? The only interim solution is to keep them chained up like dogs and forget about them.

The Government more recently thought they had themselves a spy. The Muslim army chaplain assigned to the prisoners looked like he might have been colluding with them. He was caught with a map of the prison, after all. Not that a chaplain might need a map of the place to find the cage of a particular prisoner. Anyhow, they whisked him off to a Naval brig while they attempted to build a case against him.

It appears now that the best the Army can do is "disobeying orders for improperly handling classified information" because he had "wrongly transported" it. He can still get two years and a bad conduct discharge. In other words, he didn't do anything intentionally wrong, and didn't actually jeopardize national security (or even the security of the Gitmo dog pound) but the Army (and the Government) really needs to save face over this.

I am sure he is not the last halal meat the US will hang up to dry before this is all over, if it ever is over.