(1)
Depends On The Definition Of Protest

BBC:

A top US official has described the suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a “good PR move to draw attention”.

Speaking to the BBC’s Newshour programme, Ms Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, said the three men did not value their lives nor the lives of those around them.

Detainees had access to lawyers, received mail and had the ability to write to families, so had other means of making protests, she said, and it was hard to see why the men had not protested about their situation.

On the one hand, official spokeswomaning seems to be a growth industry. On the other hand, it’s really hard to figure out why, with some of the stuff you hear out of the mouths of babes. But wait, Colleen Graffy is not an official spokeswoman, just a top official. Maybe she should have had the sense to leave it to a professional?

When she calls the suicides a “good PR move to draw attention”, and berates the three men for not adopting a less extreme form of protest, presumably she is conceding that the suicides were an act of protest? And not “an act of asymmetrical warfare”, which was Guantanamo commander Rear Adm. Harry Harris’s official pronouncement yesterday. Unless Graffy’s statement is our retaliatory act of asymmetrical propaganda warfare. To confuse the heck out of the enemy. After all, if they’re suffering from severe headaches, or if their heads start to explode, that’s bad for them and good for us.

But back to “why the heck didn’t they ever protest before”. There were the previous hunger strikes, but let me guess, that’s not a protest, that’s another act of asymmetrical warfare. And then there were all the protests on their behalf by every human rights organization on the planet – from the Red Cross to Amnesty International – and the U.N. too, and there was the net effect of all these protests, namely a big fat zilch.

In some sense, all these organizations tried to stand in front of our Tienanmen tank, and we just went “Oops, sorry, can’t stop now! War on terror, you know!”

And then there were all the protests by their lawyers, through the legal system, whenever a crack opened up in the legal system to permit a protest, and through the media. To which our response was always: “You’ve got to be kidding! War on bloody terror, dummy!”

So maybe that’s why the detainees at Camp Guantanamo didn’t submit formal petitions to their lawyers saying “I protest my detention.” Or write to their families and say “I don’t like this camp, can I please come home?”

(2)
Where’s The Interference Call?

Still the beeb:

“If it’s perfectly legal and there’s nothing going wrong there – well, why don’t they have it in America and then the American court system can supervise it?” UK Constitutional Affairs Minister Harriet Harman told the BBC on Sunday.

But Ms Graffy said closing down Guantanamo was a “complicated process” which needed to consider what would happen to detainees if the centre was shut down.

Does interference in internal affairs get any more blatant than that? And from our staunchest ally yet?

As for Ms. Graffy’s question, the President has already thought that through. What’s the President’s solution? After the break.

(3)
What’s Stopping Him Then?

On Friday, Mr Bush said he would “like to end Guantanamo”, adding he believed the inmates “ought to be tried in courts here in the United States”.

Last time I checked, he was the Decider, and he can do anything he wants. So what’s stopping him from “ending” Guantanamo, and shipping all the detainees to the U.S. and trying them in courts here?

He wouldn’t be afraid of the big bad angry man, who shoots grown men in the face for sport, now would he?

Or is he just being obstructed by Colleen Graffy?

(4)
Advice to Department of State

Colleen Graffy must be prevented by any means possible from ever talking to the media again. Her BBC performance has severely undermined our war on terror. And made us even more of a laughing stock internationally than we already are on this front (which takes some doing, at this stage).

The solution is perfectly obvious. If you undermine the war on terror, then you’re not with us. If you’re not with us, then you’re against us. Hey, that means you’re with them!

Declare her an enemy combatant. Bung her into Camp Guantanamo. And forget about her till the war on terror is over. Or till she turns 65, whichever comes first.

** Update 6:15 am **

The administration actually put someone else on BBC to disavow Graffy’s comments:

“I wouldn’t characterise this as a good PR move,” Cully Stimson, US deputy assistant secretary of defence, told the BBC’s Today programme, on Monday.

“What I would say is that we are always concerned when someone takes his own life, because as Americans we value life even if it is the life of a violent terrorist captured waging war against our country.”

What next? Will we now see a battle of the Deputy Assistant Secretaries?