August 8, 2013, Exercises in Credulity-Defying
Well, this piece from WaPo sort of lays out the conventional wisdom (as WaPo is wont to do)... to wit, given that the majority of the poor bastards still held at GTMO hail from Yemen, and given that there is a purported "threat" coming from "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," allegedly based in Yemen, this will "complicate" the return of said Yemeni men to their home country, which of course, had been held up by Barack Obama for years now, in response to "the underpants bomber," but was supposedly "resumed" in response to the GTMO hunger strike. Of course, the Obama Administration, and every government agency asked to do so, has found that some 86 men at GTMO, many of them Yemeni, pose no threat whatsoever because they were NEVER terrorists of any kind... meaning... what freaking difference would it make to return men who were never part of al Qaeda to begin with to a country with a purported al Qaeda presence? (Stop with reality...)
Of course, the "credible threat" arising from "intercepted chatter" [that has led to the closing of around twenty-two diplomatic embassies and missions throughout the Islamic world] is, presumably, completely made up as a political stunt to get Congress to back off its recent efforts to rein in NSA spying on Americans. Of course, the scope of that spying is, surprise, surprise, broader than the government had been telling.
I say this because, and I admit its only IMHO... but I tend to think after all the trouble that OBL went through to make it hard to find him... that al Qaeda leadership is probably just not stupid enough to have a conference call... but, of course, in a nation that used to lead the world in most things and now leads it only in propaganda, the American people probably are stupid enough to believe that "the evildoers" would form a Legion of Doom on an easily intercepted open line.
You know, over a decade ago, on this very blog's "talking dog points," given former President George W. Bush's tendency to refer to "evil doers" and "war on terror" and "axis of evil" and the like, we pondered whether his National Security team (then led by Condi Rice) was briefing him with comic books... We have, of course, often quipped about how seamlessly, it seems, the Obama Administration has wholly adopted Bush Administration policies in everything important... such as the never-ending expansion of totalitarianism "the national security state..." but now even the asinine nomenclature and diction of the Bush Administration has trickled down to its worthy successors... in the Obama Administration.
And so... as my college classmate the President, who turned 52 a few days ago (happy birthday, Mr. President) petulantly tries to out-Bush Bush by reigniting the Cold War (over pique that a political dissident has fled from the United States to Russia!), by stepping up those killer robot drone strikes, by the ongoing war on whistleblowers in general, and by so many other Bush-like policies...
I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought. Kind of, you know, like the President did with that whole "close GTMO" thing. Sigh.