1115.org

Is this a sign that we’re losing the war on terror even in the controlled environment of Guantanamo?

Guards at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp found two prisoners sporting unauthorized underwear, and the U.S. military is investigating to determine how they got the contraband.

Both prisoners were caught wearing Under Armour briefs and one also had on a Speedo bathing suit, items the military said were not issued by Guantanamo personnel or sent through the regular mail, according to a Defense Department letter obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

I sincerely hope someone somewhere is also using my taxpayer dollars to investigate why that second dude was wearing both briefs and Speedos. That can only have been some kind of al Qaeda signal, and now our gullible media has gone and broadcast it around the world.

The letter … noted both detainees are represented by the British human rights group Reprieve and suggested attorneys might have “surreptitiously” provided the garments.

I know it’s a grave security breach and everything, and I’m duly ashamed of myself for finding it funny, but I would actually love to be a lawyer disbarred for smuggling unauthorized underwear to a terrorist. I’d proudly put it on my resumé.

Clive Stafford Smith, the lawyer for one of the prisoners, doesn’t seem to be a soulmate, though:

Stafford Smith called the suggestion that he or the other lawyer, Zachary Katznelson, smuggled underwear to prisoners “patently absurd.’”

Always possible, of course, that Mr. Smith was chortling with glee and lying through his teeth. That’s what I would do when dealing with the Guantanamo authorities. Maybe that’s why he phrased it as follows:

“Neither I, nor Mr. Katznelson, nor anyone else associated with us has had anything to do with smuggling ‘unmentionables’ into these men, nor would we ever do so,” he wrote in response (to) the letter.

Into these men? Even I’m not going to go there.

Actually, it does sound like the lawyers may be innocent:

Stafford Smith noted lawyers are searched when they enter the detention center and a camera monitors them while they visit clients.

“The idea that we could smuggle in underwear is farfetched,’” he wrote in his reply.

At the time the letter was received, Aamer had not seen his lawyer for a year and al-Qareni had not been visited by Katznelson for four months, Stafford Smith added.

Rumors that Gitmo authorities have been observed muttering the word “portkey” under their breath are just that, rumors.