GUANTONIMO AND FRANZ KAFKA

Franz Kafka is known for his dark novels.  Of particular note here is Der Process or the Trial in which a man is arrested by some remote authority, but he is never told what he did.  It sounds a lot like what has happened to the  prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, some held for more the 12 years without ever being indicted for anything.  Some time in the future, I believe this period will be considered a dark period in American history rivaling the internment of Japanese Americans (and, lesser known, some German Americans) during WW-II.

Within the last few days, five "major" prisoners were released from Guantanamo Bay Prison for "house" arrest for a year in Qatar before being released.  John McCain who seems never to have seen a war he didn't like calls these men "the hardest of the hard core."  We Americans get kind of hysterical about our enemies and attribute to them some super human qualities, able to destroy America by themselves.  We were even afraid to put them into high security U.S. jails for certain they would escape and do much harm.  We didn't even trust them to American civilian courts for fear they wouldn't be convicted.

As has been pointed out, these five have been "out of commission" for a dozen years so are "way out of the loop."  Also they are members of the Taliban and not al Qaeda (though they are rumored to have al Qaeda connections) so it is not clear that their mission is to destroy America so much as rule Afghanistan.*  However, it wouldn't surprise me if they had worked up a great hate for being incarcerated for so long.

If we know so much about them, why haven't they been tried, much less indicted?  One is said to be wanted for war crimes (Mullah Muhammad Fazi) for the murder of thousands of Afghan Shiites in the 1990s, but why wasn't he released for trial?  They have just been held under the lame excuse that since they are not being held within the U.S., they are not protected by the U.S. Constitution.  But they were being held in a U.S. Naval base which for purposes of running for President of the United States is approved (McCain himself was born in the Panama Canal Zone in a U.S. military base and ran for President).

I have little to say about Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was promoted to Sergeant while a prisoner of the Taliban.**  It seems he was a deserter and may well ultimately have exchanged one type of prison for another.  I wonder why he volunteered for the Army?  His father looks like he has become a Muslim with the free form beard and comments.  But I do feel sorry for Susan Rice who has fallen on her sword a second time for the President in describing Bergdahl as captured on the battlefield.  Well, I suppose you can describe the whole of Afghanistan as a battlefield.  Morning Joe Scarborough has said he wonders who in the White House hates her.

* http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/01/us/bergdahl-transferred-guantanamo-detainees
** http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/01/us/bergdahl-deserter-or-hero/index.html

SUSAN RICE & SWEET REVENGE

Susan rice has withdrawn herself from consideration of being Secretary of State.  So John McCain got his revenge for nasty things she is reported to have said about him in the 2008 election process.  Lindsay Graham has gotten revenge for the way John Bolton was treated by Democrats on his appointment as Ambassador to The United Nations.  So now let's hope they are happy and we can go on to more constructive things.

I have no idea whether Susan Rice would have made a good Secretary of State.  From what people say, she would have had to make some personality changes.  Hillary Clinton did it so maybe Susan rice could have done it also.  But for now, looks like she will stay as Ambassador to The Untied Nations.

POTPOURRI: MEDICAL EXPENSES, BENGHAZI, & INSULTING ISLAM

I wonder how many people who want to control medical costs have supported compulsory ultrasound before abortion.  I'm not sure just how many states have compulsory ultrasounds before abortion, but I have seen 8 referred to and 22 have some sort of ultrasound regulation with 11 more states having them on the docket (http://bangordailynews.com/2012/02/27/news/nation/more-states-moving-to-require-ultrasound-before-abortion/).  Usually the woman has to take two trips to the physician, one for the ultrasound and another for the abortion itself.  All this raises the costs of care, of course.

Now it seems to be coming clear that the opposition to Susan Rice becoming Secretary of State by John McCain is that she had some harsh things to say about him in the 2008 presidential battle.  Lindsay Graham's opposition seems to be related to the Democrats opposition to John R. Bolton's nomination as Ambassador to the United Nations by George W. Bush in 1980 (but he was appointed as a recess appointment).  So it seems the opposition to Susan Rice really has little to do with her statements that the Benghazi, Libya, disaster  in which a U.S. Ambassador was killed was a spontaneous demonstration that escalated.  The usual question being asked is why wasn't more protection provided to the Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  Of course protection to Embassys is supposed to be provided by the home country, which proved inadequate in this case.  But since so much effort is placed on Benghazi (Libya's second largest city), there are a couple of questions that seem relevant.  Why wasn't the Consulate closed?  After all there had been a previous attack on the Consulate with a hole blown through the protection wall, and the Brits had closed their operation there because of all the unrest in the area.  The second question of interest is why did our ambassador go there in the first place?  Don't know that we will ever hear the answer to these questions.

We seem to think it is important that the Benghazi incident had nothing to do with the insulting movie trailer that was critical of Muhammad.  The attack on the consulate may have been planned as a 9/11 al Qaeda commemorative event, but the movie trailer probably added something to it as demonstrations were done throughout the Muslim world (Egypt,Iran, Israel, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen, and Palestinian) particularly after the Friday prayers.  If we think, however, that when we do or say things that are insulting to the Islamic religion, it does not incite a hot head group to physical violence, then there is no hope of our reconciliation with Muslims.  In addition it also increases the anti-American attitude among a large group of Muslims who are more peaceful.  Now it is known that an Egyptian court has put a death sentence, in absentia, on seven Egyptians thought to be involved with the movie trailer should they return to Egypt (http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/28/world/meast/egypt-anti-islam-film/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_world+(RSS%3A+World)).  Of course there have been many other incidents in the past such as our burning of Qur'ans in Afghanistan in which four of our soldiers were killed.

I ALREADY MISS THE GOOD OLD DAYS

I already miss those good old days, not that long ago actually, when all we had to worry about was important things, people like Paula Broadwell, Jill Kelley, a couple of middle aged 4-star generals and a topless FBI agent (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/11/laffaire-petraeus-today.html).  Don't you?

Now it is ugly as an "over-the-hill" Senator, who once was a rational force in the Senate but now is after one last hurrah, pursues something known as Benghazi that everyone has lost interest in except for him and a few of his colleagues.  You know, that violent demonstration/terrorist attack in which an ambassador was killed along with three of his "troops" in some backwater consulate in Lybia where violent acts in the vicinity are almost an every day occurrence (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/09/you-can-rationalize-anything.html).  Senator Feinstein has commented, "My biggest concern is, there are literally hundreds of threat warnings in the material that has been accumulated," Feinstein said. "There were five attacks during the year, one prior attack on the consulate itself. The question I have is ... why wasn't something done about it?"  But this doesn't seem to be the serious question which our dear "over-the-hill" Senator says is why did our ambassador to the U./N. - Susan Rice - say, five days after the event, that the violence was a demonstration that got out of hand?

Personally, I never thought this issue could last until the late-elections, but some - including the news media - want to keep it going and are demanding a "Whitewater" type investigation.  And apparently Susan Rice was only parroting the declassified information on the topic.  This misinformation, if it matters, was seemingly done because the FBI or someone thought they were hot on the trail of the organizing perpetrators and didn't want them to know.  Instead what they did was what is known as "hanging Susan Rice out to dry."

So far as I am concerned, if the American Benghazi Consulate attack was the best Al Qaeda could do to "celebrate" 9/11, they are weak indeed, hardly even a shadow of the real 9/11.  It was even far away from the embassy in Tripoli.  Somehow, forgotten in all this is that an estimated 30,000 Libyans demonstrated against the attack and the militias involved in the attack (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/11/laffaire-petraeus-today.html).

The fuss being made over Benghazi is interesting when one considers that the diefied Ronald Reagan had BOTH a couple of embassy attacks, including the big one in Beirut, Lebanon, where 17 Americans died (among 63 total) on April 18, 1983 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_United_States_embassy_bombing) plus another in Kuwait where five people were killed on December 12, 1983 (which by-the-way Reagan refused to call an act of terror) (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/19/1147106/-Breaking-Ronald-Reagan-refuses-to-call-embassy-attack-an-act-of-terror) AND the marine barracks attack where 241 of our troops died on October 23, 1983.  For good measure there was the Korean airliner 007 shot down by the Soviets September 1, 1983 where 269 passengers were killed including a U.S. congressman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007).  Somehow Reagan's admirers forgave him for all of this.  Furthermore, Democrats did not make political hay out of any of this.  But today, everything seems to be on the table for political gain.