The Right used to have some measure of diversity in its thought, but once you get addicted to screaming "Be afraid!" at every turn, it's apparently hard to stop.
Which is to say that finally dealing with the prisoners at Guantanamo with old-fashioned American justice, stopping the practice of torture, and considering war crimes and wiretapping investigation–signposts that our re-introduction to Western civilization may be nigh–are just the latest fodder for Republicans who go right on crying wolf. Because, you see, untried and unconvicted terrorism suspects (key word there: suspects) are, magically, already "terrorists," and they're being in prison in the U.S. (as many actually convicted Islamic terrorists already are) is exactly the same as bunking them up with our children:
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va.: “Most families neither want nor need hundreds of terrorists seeking to kill Americans in their communities. …"
House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio joined in:
“I think the first thing we have to remember is that we're talking about terrorists here. Do we bring them into our borders? Do we release them back into the battlefield, like some 61 detainees* that have been released we know are back on the battlefield?
“And do we release them to get back and rejoin this fight? The big concern is, how do you come up with a policy to say, ‘We're going to close Guantanamo,’ without having a policy in place for what you're going to do with those that are there?”
It's just a good thing they're on-hand to tell Obama that he needs some kind of plan. Because he was just going to open the gates to Guantanamo, issue prisoners Armani suits and platinum Visas and suggest that we all get our guest rooms ready. It's hard to believe that in our current political climate these guys think anyone remains who will buy this comedy routine.
Meanwhile, it will surprise no one that Bush was listening in on anything he darn well pleased after all.
* "Seton Hall Center for Policy and Research has issued a report which rebuts and debunks the most recent claim by the Department of Defense (DOD) that '61, in all, former Guantánamo detainees are confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight.'
"Professor Denbeaux of the Center for Policy & Research has said that the Center has determined that 'DOD has issued "recidivism" numbers 43 times, and each time they have been wrong—this last time the most egregiously so.'
"Denbeaux stated: 'Once again, they’ve failed to identify names, numbers, dates, times, places, or acts upon which their report relies. Every time they have been required to identify the parties, the DOD has been forced to retract their false IDs and their numbers. They have included people who have never even set foot in Guantánamo—much less were they released from there. They have counted people as 'returning to the fight' for their having written an Op-ed piece in the New York Times and for their having appeared in a documentary exhibited at the Cannes Film Festival. The DOD has revised and retracted their internally conflicting definitions, criteria, and their numbers so often that they have ceased to have any meaning—except as an effort to sway public opinion by painting a false portrait of the supposed dangers of these men.'"
