What's Arabic for "Alleged"?
An OpinionJournal piece by two former Bush I staffers and current Bush II apologists is teeming with lies and distortions about Guantanamo and the implications of closing it. But I’ll focus on just one:
Closing Guantanamo would also be a victory for al Qaeda because the other alternatives for detaining captured jihadis either give terrorists a legal advantage.
Ignore for the moment the grammatical error in the stray “either.” This passage contains a not new, not clever and not intellectual honest innuendo: That everyone in Guantanamo is in fact guilty.
The most brazen examples of this deception have been from Guantanamo’s (deeply disturbed) former commander, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, who has repeatedly insisted that all Gitmo detainees are in fact guilty (and also that they all “the worst of the worst” and that their occasional suicides are not acts of desperation but “acts of war“).
As I’ve explained previously, the reason that the White House and the Pentagon are so desperate to avoid anything remotely resembling a bona fide trial for most detainees is precisely because they can’t prove guilt. Only the “slam dunks” get what few crumbs of due process that the Supreme Court has tossed them. The ones for whom the government does not have a solid case are either quietly released or simply rot behind bars and barbed wire — quite possibly for the rest of their lives.
More:
The second alternative, bringing the detainees into the U.S., also would … open vast new litigation vistas for the detainees and their American lawyers — including challenges not merely to their classification as enemy combatants[.]
Compare and contrast:
- Giving American-style rights to terrorists.
- Giving American-style rights to alleged terrorists.
The faux indignation of Gitmo apologists loses quite a bit of its punch when that pesky, but obligatory, word is included. Which is precisely why the Terror Warriors so insolently omit it.
The most precious American soil has always been the Moral High Ground. The swamp that is Gitmo does not qualify. And, increasingly, neither does the rest of the “homeland” that we are supposedly trying to secure.
Similar Posts:
- “Due Process of Law” Quote of the Day
- Guantanamo Suicides “An Act of War”?
- More on the David Hicks Plea Bargain
- “Get Out of Gitmo Not Quite Free” Card?
- Articles, Amendments and Rights
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…open vast new litigation vistas for the detainees and their American lawyers…
The extraneous "American" in there is also informative, isn't it? Why not just say "traitor", which is what they clearly mean?