Goldsmith Fingered

British attorney general Lord Goldsmith's call for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center was sure to bring out the howling ranks of Bush supporters. When I first heard his speech, I could practically hear the steam venting from over-heated heads. One particularly rank chap, a Brit himself, had this to say about his country's ranking lawyer and, perhaps not too amazingly, sounds much like most Bush supporters on this side of the pond:

So Lord Goldsmith has been bleating on tv about how Guantanamo has to be closed, claiming that it breaches the international laws on human rights. Now I have to wonder if flying planes into buildings full of civilians would be a breach of their human rights or do the deaths of nearly 3000 Americans not count? Oh and add to that Beslan, London, Madrid and many other places where the terrorists violate all our human rights.

And there we have the crux of the argument for indefinite detention, violations of habeas corpus, abuse, etc.. Why, Guantanamo is just a tit-for-tat shop. Why didn't they just say so from the start, instead of yakking on endlessly about "justice." And we really ought not worry about the apparently not well-known fact that most of the detainees are known to be innocent of any terrorist activities. Such facts are rarely of concern to people seeking bloodyminded revenge. And they certainly don't matter to "fido," nor have they mattered to the similiarly minded yowlers in the US.

Accusations continue to fly on the subject of torture as "fido" (I not making that up) chooses to lambaste Goldsmith for his censure of US treatment of prisoners. Now, as Brits, you would think that both Goldsmith and fido would choose to comport themselves with a little more circumspection in this regard, considering the British government's tacit approval of the horrendous torture that was being done in the name of the War of Terror by GWoT ally Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan.

Forget, for the moment, the unfathomable hypocrisy that a place like Guantanamo conjures as various Bush administration officials prance about the globe prattling on about freedom and the "rule of law." Hypocrisy rarely, if ever, figures into most politicians' calculus. The political liability that Guantanamo now represents all but guarantees its inevitable closure. Goldsmith is hardly stepping out on a limb in demanding such action and fido needs to have a sit and gnaw on a bone.