September 24 , 2003- The Lack Of Success

If you recall, one of the first things that happened in the War On Terror was for the American troops to go over Afghanistan way and engage the Taliban in fighting. America took a hell of a lot of prisoners of war in these exchanges,and they decided that what they had to do with them was to send them to a special POW internment camp so that they could properly deal with them. The Pentagon picked Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as the place to have this POW camp/prison because they have a military base there. So, loads of these POWs were transferred to this camp by military helicopter, arriving blindfolded and with their hair and beards shaved and in chains and with huge mittens on and so forth. The White House explained this all off by saying that these people that they were taking to this prison were extremely dangerous, extremely well-connected Taliban dudes that had to be interrogated and held under special circumstances because of the valuable information that they had and the threat that they posed to civilized society. A panicked nation did not question the veracity of this, as they did not question the veracity of anything that their government told them at that time. They accepted the fact that America was at war and that these were enemy combatants of the highest order, and that they had to be dealt with differently then any other detainees due to the danger that they posed. As time went on, and the Terror Threat level was raised from this color to that one, and as Iraq took center stage in George W Bush's obsessions, the American people forgot all about the POWs. They languished in the prison in Cuba, and the American kept trying every one of their best tactics to glean information out of them. Despite these efforts, no real information was gotten from any of these dudes. Oh, there would be a report every so often that one dude there said that there was some kind of new plot against America or that he knew something valuable ,but that never amounted to shit. You would get a few breathless stories on the news warning one and all about whatever, but nothing ever happened. Still, America kept at it, keeping the detainees incarcerated, many times without ever filing any formal charges against them. Every so often, there would some more helicopters flying in with more prisoners, keeping the prison a hopping place. However, there were always stories about new prisoners being flown in there, but never any stories of any being released. Still, the American people paid no attention to it all until some American journalists did some investigating. They found out that most of hte POWs at Guantanamo Bay were not at all Taliban members, but rather ordinary Muslims that got roped into it all. In fact, they found out that some of these prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were just kids, some as young as twelve years old. They asked the question of how much relevant information that one could get from a twelve year old boy, no matter what he has gotten himself into. It started to look like all that America was doing was vengefully punishing Muslims just to satisfy their cravings for revenge. However, the Pentagon strongly denied that and insisted that there were valuable prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay. They kept bringing in load after load of them there to prove that point. Still, there was no real useful information gotten from any of them. The longer that it went on, the more it looked like America was just exacting a measure of revenge against the Muslims. The Pentagon responded to that by pointing out that they were not being totally culturally insensitive to the POWs, that they had Muslim Holy Men and Muslim food and all that good shit. Except that the Holy Men that were provided were American military Muslim Holy Men, and that the detainees were never really allowed to forget that they were in prison even for one second. Then, there was a major capture of a Taliban dude, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a dude that was way up in the Taliban hierarchy and was a pal of Osama bin Laden himself. He was rousted from bed and paraded in front of the world and promptly taken to Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon assured everyone that the capture of this dude would get America lots of really useful information. Thus far it has not, as far as anyone knows. Yes, there was the big story the other day about how there was an even bigger plan to terrorize America on September 11th, about how it involved hijacking planes all over the USA, and how long the whole thing had been planned out, and everyone freaked out. However, if you looked at the information closely, you saw that there was nothing really new about it, the facts have been known for some time that the terrorist attacks of 2001 were originally planned to be done on even a larger scale, with numerous countries being targeted. So, nothing new was gleaned from that, although to hear the Pentagon tell it, the fact that this story was released to the public was an outrage that threatened national security. They said that some evil Taliban or Al-Queda operatives could have heard that and know what the Sheikh is telling the Americans and so on. Judging from all that, the Sheikh is telling the Americans nothing new or useful or true, just like all the other detainees have thus far. That would be about the only thing that America would not want the Taliban to know, that the whole interrogation thing has been an abysmal failure from the very beginning. So America had to act in order to put such perceptions to rest. In the last few days, they have announced the arrests of not one, but two of their own men. They have alleged that the Muslim chaplain that administered to the prisoners, a man that America brought there themselves for that purpose, was actually committing espionage and was actually a spy for the Taliban or the Muslims or whoever, they have not really specified just who he was working for or with, just that he was working for or with "the enemy". And that they have charged him with espionage and spying and treason and all that good stuff. Then, like two days later, America announced that they were charging another America with the same things, this time, it was a dude that they brought to Guantanamo Bay to be an interpreter for the inmates. America alleged that he too was spying for "the enemy" and was a traitor of the highest degree as much as the Holy Man was. So there has been a new twist on the story over at Guantanamo Bay.

However, that does not mean that anything has changed with that, the whole American effort there is still a failure. Except that now, the Americans are saying that they know why it has been a failure, because there have been spies afoot aiding and abetting the prisoners and who knows who all else. The Pentagon has ominously said that they are still looking into "security breaches" at Guantanamo Bay, and may uncover further wrongdoings. If anyone truly believes that this is even remotely true, then they are fooling themselves. There are no major security breaches at Guantanamo Bay, and there never have been. The reason that America chose Guantanamo Bay to be the site for this prison was because the place is as secure as any American military facility that there is. It has to be, seeing that it is situated in Fidel Castro's Cuba, a country that has not had good relations with the USA ever since El Jefe took over in 1959. That base is not there because Castro's government allows it to be, it is there because America has fortified it to the max and Castro can't do anything about it. That base is totally self-sufficient and self-contained, it has no contact whatsoever with the rest of the island, and as such is as secure as itr can be, because Castro and his crew would do anything to get rid of the place, so they have to take extreme precautions against anything that he might do, and over the years, that has meant that Guantanamo Bay has become quite the impenetrable fortress. So it would be real hard for security breaches to occur there, the only people that inhabit that place are those that revere America, any even potential enemies of the USA Are nowhere to be found, they are just flat-out not allowed to be there.That is why it was chosen to be the site of this POW camp in the first place. So now America says that there are spies and traitors afoot there, but it is very interesting to see just who they say that these folks are. They say that this Holy Man and this interpreter are the alleged culprits. To no surprise, these are both Arab Muslim men. The same dudes that America is at war against. It look an awful lot like America is making excuses for why the interrogation process is not happening so well at the prison. But to blame these two men is incredulous. These are both men that were in the United States military, and even though they were Arab by heritage, they are both American by birth, that is how they rose so high up in the military ranks. The Pentagon brought both of these men around and taught them everything that they know. One would think that if they were assigned to the jobs that they got at Guantanamo Bay, that they had been extensively screened for any kind of shit in their backgrounds that would predispose them to this sort of thing. No, all this is about is America looking for scapegoats to blame their lack of success on, just like they fabricated stories of battlefield bravery during the war to cover up bad shit. The most obvious scapegoats for them to use are these Muslim dudes. All across America today, Muslim men are being scrutinized like no one else, and being harassed and arrested and incarcerated for all sorts of alleged ties to the terrorist scene. No too many people besides the ACLU are making much about this, because most American really associated Islam and Islamic people with violent acts of terrorism. They don't consider some political faction or another as the enemy that they are fighting here, they consider Islam itself and all its adherents as the ones that they are fighting against. The accusations against these two men are just another manifestation of that. If these Muslim clerics are all so hostile towards America, then why does the military have any representatives of that religion in its ranks in the first place? The simple answer to that is because the American courts have forced them to through the passage of various laws over the years, laws designed to prevent discrimination. The Pentagon does not want any kind of Muslim shit in its ranks, especially during this war. But they cannot just flout the courts and just kick them out, so they have to start a smear campaign, and what better way to do that then to say that the Muslims in your ranks are traitors? America is going to make the case that once these guys got to Guantanamo Bay, they decided that being American was no longer the pre eminent thing in their lives, and that they felt that they had to help their Muslim brothers, in keeping with the teachings of the Koran, which tells them to do just that. America will say that these dudes obeyed the laws of Islam, and thus disobeyed the laws of the USA, and are traitors and spies. This gives the Pentagon the perfect excuse to say why things have failed thus far at the prison, because they will say that the Holy Man was not really attending to the prisoner's spiritual needs, but rather to their political needs,and that the interpreter was really telling the prisoners something other than what he was supposed to be telling them. Because of that, America could not have hoped to have any success with the prisoners because these traitors were aiding and abetting them. Since any trial that these guys may have will not be the usual open court proceedings that American jurisprudence has, they will be that secret military tribunal shit instead, these dudes will be totally unable to get any sort of adequate representation at all, and never have any chance to put up a real defense. That will lead to them being railroaded and being made examples of, just like Johnny Walker Lindh was made an example of. So, if the entire Guantanamo Bay interrogation things ends up in failure, America will have scapegoats that they can blame it all on, scapegoats that will be the ones punished purely for example's sake. It is all just another example of how America is totally disregarding the rights of Muslims nowadays, and treating them all like they are "the enemy." This attitude is very convenient for America in that it gives them ways to mask their failures and brutal tactics that they have used in this war. Everyone with sense knew that this War On Terror was an unwinnable war from the beginning. But the America government does not use sense in its doings, and they need scapegoats to blame and parade before the public so that their lack of success in it all will be covered up. As long as there are those that can be blamed for "sabotaging" things, America will use them to obscure the fact that they are doing nothing in this war except spinning their wheels and making loads of money for Mr. Businessman, which of course, was the real reason for going to war in the first place.