You Are Charged With... Stuff

In the latest offering of Good News From Gitmo, we now hear more and more details of how the current group of indefinite detainees ("Enemy Combatants" - don't get me started) were actually given the distinction.

The folks charged with, well, charging them, were not allowed to see the classified information that was used against the detainees in order for them to be picked up and brought to our lovely hunk of Cuba. The years of experience required to fulfill this particular task is apparently one year of work outside of law school (or possibly a Batchelor's in carpentry, it didn't seem clear). So they can't ask the CIA, the NSA or the DIA. Even within their own systems, if they're not part of a particular "community of interest," they would be blocked from retrieving data that normally wouldn't be considered classified. So they rely on interrogations of other detainees to find out whether you need to be a detainee yourself. Like, the guy cuffed to the seat next to you on the plane.

Sounds reliable to me...

Oh, and there's one more little bit of data they use to convict you of being permanently detained: your association with "Groups with Terrorist Associations." Like the various Muslim charitable groups that may or may not have been used to funnel money to terrorists, by feeding the poor. Feeding people - that's the same thing as promoting terrorism, right? You're feeding them, therefore you're promoting their ideals. And if you've given money to a "Group with Terrorist Associations," you're a terrorist.

Which reminds me, never give money to the Catholic church. They are, after all, associated with pedophile associations. Or they kind of are a pedophile association. Because if you give money to the Catholics, that would make you a pedophile, right? Right???

In other news, Dennis Kucinich was at Fort Benning, GA to protest the School of the Americas, now known as WHINSEC (can't remember what that stands for - click the link for the Wiki). He was joined (as he is every year) by a large group of protesters, who think that, as a country that espouses democracy and other quaint ideas, maybe we shouldn't have a school for torture, guerrilla warfare (usually used against the democratically elected leaders) and general mayhem. Many Latin American countries have been the beneficiary of SOA graduates, who usually end up with names like Death Squads, rapists, war criminals, etc.

Remember, you're either with the terrorists or against them.