Taken that we know that is how that works, if only 11% of Gitmo people released are ‘coming after us’ then we are doing pretty good. Repeat offenders from our general prison system are much higher than that. Here is what Wiki says about our general prison system:

A 2002 study survey showed that among nearly 275,000 prisoners released in 1994, 67.5% were rearrested within 3 years, and 51.8% were back in prison

So 11% vs 67.5%

We should be happy about that 11% shouldn’t we, since we also know that a stay in Gitmo is ,in a different way perhaps than ‘normal’ prisons, a very difficult place to be. Especially if they think you have some info. It’s a wonder to me that it’s not more like 80%+ immediately wanting to strike back at the country that locked them up, rendered them here secretly and tortured them.

There are only 2 conclusions I can come to about these numbers. Either only about 11% (or less even given the ‘conversion syndrome’) of Gitmo prisoners are/were actually terrorists (this is probably true…the real ones were escorted away and we rounded up sheep herders for the most part) or the Pentagon is lying about their numbers (which, again is also most likely true.)

If they want to scare us, they could have given us a higher number than 11%, compared to our normal prison turnover. It seems like they are going for numbers that show that we still need it and by golly it works much better than normal prison. Would we have a better prison system, with less turnover if everywhere was like Gitmo? That’s not an impossible sounding suggestion, given that they go on morning talk shows and say things like ‘The U.S. can never default, we can just print more money to cover the debt.’ Can’t you hear GOP candidates and their PR people on Fox news saying exactly this? They come on and say things like ‘it’s good that China uses lead in toys, it keeps costs down and that’s good for us.’ *Don’t believe me, look it up.* What I said is no less stupefyingly crazy but plausible.

But the real nugget of info in that entire article describes how they caught the repeat offender in the first place. Here is the  nugget, straight from the article:

He was captured in August 2002 while attending a meeting with U.S. military officials in Asadabad and transferred to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in October that same year. He was suspected of helping carry out rocket attacks against U.S. troops.

In bold is the key part. If this guy was al-Qaida why and for what purpose would he be ‘meeting’ with US military officials? That very much sounds like during a normal thing that happens, officials meeting with al-Qaida members they decided to double cross and nab him. Taken by itself, there are plenty of innocuous reasons why this happened this way, but the totality of this with other stories we already know, like bin-Laden meeting with CIA officials numerous times, even being treated in U.S. controlled hospitals months before 9/11 (and well after the Cole bombings…i.e. we were already ‘after him.’ NATO using al-Qaida right now against Khadafi. Iraq officials meeting with and getting a green light to invade Kuwait. 9/11 terrorists being trained at Pensacola Naval Air Station. The underpants gnome bomber being escorted onto the plane by officials. The FBI providing the bomb for the 93 WTC attack. It’s cumulative. And pretty definitive. These aren’t wacky theories, they were all reported by the news when they happened. And never retracted, just swept under the rug and never followed up on.

This is what we military folks call SIGINT. Signal Intelligence. You must have everything cleared lest you let enough tiny pieces of info out in various ways or sources that allows the enemy to put together the pieces and figure out more than they should know. They don’t even care anymore and I truly think they do this sort of thing to frighten those that are able to see things for how they are, i.e. those of us that haven’t had critical thinking skill beaten out of us by the education system, the absolute crap that is our food supply, the never ending march of talking media heads and mind numbingly stupid television programs that people, especially younger ones watch, huge personal investments of emotion of sporting events, increasingly mandatory vaccinations laced with toxins… the list goes on and on. They run the game and it’s SO pervasive that there is no escaping it. Even those of us that can see it, most can not drop off the grid and take care of ourselves, almost pioneer style because we are shackled by the system. We can see it, but that doesn’t mean we can escape it.

Stories like this (this one in particular looks like it was drafted by the intelligence community and released to AP…as so many do and are) operate on so many levels. Terrorism bad, Gitmo good. Gitmo works better than regular prisons, maybe we should expand it’s policies. Tiny tidbits that should leap out at people like ‘Why would a terrorist be meeting with our military? Wouldn’t that be dangerous as hell for either side?’ They know a tiny part of the populace that read this will ever pick up on it, and for the most part it’s people that already know what’s ‘really going on.’ So it’s a noserub job. Ha ha, we can outright say this and no one will even care! That’s the scariest part, is that nope…hardly anyone does.

The idea behind not releasing the photos is that it would appear insensitive and incite more animosity towards the US. All the photos and videos of people literally dancing in the streets, those can stay.

I ask  you, which do you think would piss them off  more? A picture to prove that we did what we said or more regular Americans dancing in the streets and holding signs showing the Statue of Liberty holding OBL’s decapitated head? Pictures of regular citizens rejoicing in the death of a person, any person, really plays as ‘look at those blood thirsty Americans’ across the world.  It just does.

Also, the bigger point here is that we are supposed to be a nation of laws, of fairness and having a judicial system second to none. Now, I know many of you are already laughing, but hang on a moment and indulge me. That is supposed to be the idea of our country, even the most evil gets a fair shake in court, the most unpopular speech is what should be protected by the First Amendment and so on. We are supposed to be the good guys, the shining beacon, blazing the trail on the high road.  So why are we committing, what many newspapers even point right out, an international crime and assassination? Yeah, yeah he was at war with us and he was a commander and we had every right to shoot him as much as we had a right to shoot a Nazi commander etc… I hear those arguments and they really smack of laziness.

Would not the best thing to do would have been to bring him back, keep him in Gitmo under HEAVY guard and then put him on trial? That would have shown the world that America still stands for what we originally said we did. Justice cannot be served correctly unless it takes place under our own accepted rules of crime and punishment. This could have been a major boost in perception of America across the world, here’s the most wanted guy ever really (Take a poll, I bet OBL ranks more evil than Hitler in America) and we took him and prosecuted  him like we would any other criminal, according to our laws and customs. No doubt he would have received the death penalty and would have been found guilty, but we didn’t do that. We just committed what is ‘technically’ an international war crime, but it’s ok we get a pass because he was ‘so bad.’

The REAL thing here is that a trial could never ever have happened, for a couple of reasons.

a. There is NO WAY in hell they would allow him to ever be heard from on American TV because he simply knows about too many skeletons, including himself. Remember, no one is denying it, WE are the ones that initially recruited  him and his band of fighters to battle the evil red dog of the USSR. We made him, gave him guns and training and yes, even a paycheck (like he needed it!) No one wants him to be able to speak. Even the few real videos (since many…most actually since 9/11 were outright admitted fakes) we have to take the translators words for granted since most of us don’t speak Farsi or whatever language he spoke (probably some English since his family does so much business with Haliburton and the Bush family.)

b. He’s been dead for about 9 years now already. They pulled one last big job to blame on  him and then used the hunt for  him (partially) to launch new wars which are good for business and OBL was ok with that, he was about dead by then anyway. There have been many MANY people saying this over the years, and not schmucks on the internet or talk radio hosts only…big people like Madeline Albright, various intelligence officials, various other heads of state in the area, FBI agents and so on. He was known to need a lot of dialysis treatments. That typically means  your life expectancy is significantly shortened. It’s what’s called ‘circling the drain.’ Hard to provide evidence to something that couldn’t have happened anyway.

This is nothing more than a stunt to pull eyes off the still lingering birther debate (which I am sick and tired of) and to keep everyone talking about it. That’s why they are leaving so many loose ends and changing the story. They are going out of their way to make it seem like a badly executed operation. That makes me worried about what we SHOULD be paying attention to right now, cause it isn’t this story I can assure you of that.

The narrow minded people will slam this down with ‘YOU HATE AMERICA!’ and such. No. I love America. What America is supposed to be, but not what it is now which is the equivalent of the Empire. So I guess watch out for Ewoks.

When the Ron Paul campaign showed that there was actually a healthy population of people with Libertarian ideals and really wanting to change the system, the GOP quickly copted, bought out and controlled the movement. You folks that were in on the Paul ‘Revolution’ know now (or you should) how fake it all was and how it was the beginning of making a controlled opposition. Once the Glen Becks and Sarah Palins started jumping on  board, you didn’t see where that was headed?

Politics is professional wrestling, only we the people, the bottom 98% are the only ones that ever end up injured or dead.

Please wake up people! Please! If HALF of the energy that goes into all this fake outrage and hyper ‘partisan’ bickering were put into actually seeing through the outright lies and deception and smoke and mirrors of it all, the people of this country (the world actually) would realize how and why we are being used by that top 2% and we could take them on!

Osama complains about global warming.

gah!

Now Dr. Rand Paul, Ron’s son, is up for Senate in Kentucky. He handily won the primary, but now Rachel Maddow and others are trotting out the racism rant that they used against his father. On the surface of it, it sounds like they are indeed racist, but if you realize what they are saying, it really isn’t.*If you are unaware, he is in hot water for essentially saying he was for about 90% of the Civil Rights Act (and Disabilities Act) and gets cornered into sounding like he wants to bring back segregation and ‘no blacks allowed’ signs at restaurants etc…*

The problem here is, Rand ,nor his father, can speak well enough to have anyone realize what they ARE trying to say. They try to politicize and over-PC their speech so that they cannot be cornered but fail to make their point… so allow me to explain it for them.

Are you in favor of allowing businesses to post ‘no blacks allowed’ (or gays, or Mexicans or whatever…you get the point)

His answer should be: Yes.

His point is that the Federal Government should keep it’s nose out of private business and allow people to determine what stays in business themselves. He wouldn’t visit a shop that had a ‘no Mexicans’ sign posted and he figures that most folks wouldn’t either. Having a ‘no blacks served’ sign in the window will lead to that place’s eventual closing because no one would want to eat at some bigot’s place. That, and continuing to pay for the windows that would get broken out all the time.

Now, I don’t necessarily agree with him, but I certainly understand his point of view here and what he is trying to say. He’s not personally racist (at least he says he isn’t, but how can one determine what’s in one’s heart?) and his comments are not being made with any racist intent. It’s a difference of perspectives, and not even in the way his detractors want to paint it. The machinery that is now trying to level this kind of talk understand it , but they want to paint the picture to their drooling followers that he is a bigot and a racist. The real problem is that there are plenty of people that will just read the cliffnotes and not really even try to understand, even if they don’t agree.