1115.org

What the U.S. military will never tell you (“because we don’t want to be seen as the wussies of the military world”). They know for a fact that the Guantanamo suicides were not acts of despair. Because the detainees have always been treated humanely and with great cultural sensitivity. (You have to be not only a cynic but treasonably unpatriotic to boot to assume that such treatment starts only with death.)

The Bush-Rumsfeld-Pace military has in fact compiled a top-secret list. One of our flies on the wall has been genetically modified so that one of its eyes functions as a digital camera. So 1115 proudly presents (obligatory drum roll, followed by high-production-values bonus bugle call) the Top Nine Reasons Why The Gitmo Suicides Were Not Acts of Despair (the military believes in lateral thinking, outside the box, if one may use the phrase in the context of Gitmo without offending any detainees who may happen to read this post; if you always make it a Top Ten list, then the terrorists win.)

9) Every morning every guard greets every detainee by saying: “And what may I do today, friend, to demonstrate cultural sensitivity and humaneness and great respect for your fine religion?” (The only acceptable variant of that is “And what may I do today, brother, etc.)

8) All the Korans that were accidentally pissed on by guards were sanitized with great cultural sensitivity and respectfully returned to use. All guards were ordered to undergo a mandatory refresher course entitled “Pissing: When and Where”. Recidivists were ordered to undergo the 10 minute sessions twice, or even thrice.

7) The cuisine we spoil them with every single day.

6) Every guard begins every morning by intoning: “Detainees may or may not be terrorists. Some are here only because someone ratted them out for money, since it was no-questions-asked. They all have moms who love them very much. In different circumstances, that could be me in there.”

5) No guard has ever said to any detainee: “Get used to it, camel-pumper. You are never getting out of here. Alive.” (Or if he did, he was thoroughly slapped with a feather, and the whole camp knew of his shame. And no one was allowed to give him a high five for “camel-pumper”.)

4) It wasn’t acts of despair. It was a conspiracy hatched and orchestrated by Ken Roth, head of Human Rights Watch in New York, so that he could grab the limelight and go before the national media and say: “Sadly, suicides like these are entirely predictable when people are held outside the law with no end in sight”.

3) The outdated, outmoded Geneva Convention does not ban prisoners from hanging themselves in their cells in an act of despair. If the G.C. applied to Gitmo detainees, they might therefore hang themselves in an act of despair. But it doesn’t, so they can’t.

2) Blue balls trump despair any day. You figure it out. On the one hand, 72 virgins forever – even if some are slightly used as per last week’s scoop by The Daily Show’s Samantha Bee – on the other hand, your same-old same-old own two hands (we are talking Camp One, the maximum security wing, where opportunities for social interaction are limited).

(No drum roll here. We’re too classy for that.)

1) The large number of requests received every month from Muslim prisoners in American prisons to transfer to Gitmo please.