One Day My Prince Will Come
Althouse looks at the “homicide suiciders” and sees a sinister conspiracy:
If accurate, doesn’t this support the government’s theory that these were warriors maneuvering and not individuals despairing?
The NYT story she links to states:
Three detainees at the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, tried to conceal themselves in their cells — behind laundry and through other means — to prevent guards from seeing them commit suicide, a senior military official said Sunday.
Right, “warriors maneuvering.” Fortunately, Ann expands in comments to her post:
The mere fact that the three suicides were simultaneous tends to show they did it for the effect and not (merely) to escape their predicament. […]
I don’t find the despair theory too plausible. The conditions in the prison aren’t bad (so I’ve read). If the men see themselves as prisoners of war, why would they despair to the point of wanting to die? Is that how other prisoners of war have reacted when held in indefinite captivity?
Suicide makes more sense for those who know that if tried they will be found guilty and face the death penalty. Read the information in the article about who the suicides [sic] were before responding about the despair of the innocent prisoner. We have released many prisoners, so anyone who is innocent has hope of gaining release. [Emphasis added.]
Hey, you, Mr. Man Possibly Guilty of Something or Other: don’t despair — there’s a chance you’ll be released one day. You’ve only been here for nearly five years for fuck’s sake! [More thoughts, posted earlier of course, from Roy.]
Apparently, Althouse has been taking correspndence courses at the “Pastor Swank School for Grammar English”.
Oh. My. God. This is about ten thousand times worse than the arguments from a few years ago where some idiot congresscritter described how good the detainees in Gitmo have it by reading their fucking MENU!! If you cannot understand, if you lack the essential humanity to grasp the desparation of being held, in a CELL, against your will, denied all contact with family or supporters, denied any legal recourse, indeed, denied the opportunity to even read or watch TV, if you genuinely think that is being “well treated”, there was a place for you in Stalins Kremlin.
First, they destroyed everything America stands for, everything it ever meant to be an American. Now they are working on destroying our basic humanity. These people, not the terrorists, are the greatest existential threat to America in history…
mikey
America is getting its ass kicked all over the concentration camp.
She’s like Lionel Hutz, but horrifying rather than funny. In addition: one of the guys was about to get his release, according to a story in the Guadian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,1795867,00.html)… so maybe he wasn’t the terrorist mastermind that make all the ‘sensible moderates’ want to flush all of America’s ideals down the toilet.
That’s staggering. This woman has a law degree? In any other country in the world, she’d be the ‘lady with the cats’ whom even the homless street urchins despise and pity.
Anyway, even if the three who killed themselves were in kahoots AND guilty of trying to overthrow the American Hegemenon, this might be the dumbest thing ever written: Suicide makes more sense for those who know that if tried they will be found guilty and face the death penalty.
Jhiadi Suicide: Don’t Do It (It Only Makes Sense if You’re Sentenced To Death).
Except that even Counselor Althouse managed to be even more hapless twice in the excerpts:
The conditions in the prison aren’t bad (so I’ve read)
This is the ne plus ultra of the entire conservative argument over Gitmo. A U.S. General said that the (mostly innocent) prison population is treated ‘well’, ergo, in IdiotLand, ‘conditions aren’t so bad’. You might think that skepticism (of both the conditions, the prisoners AND Army Spokesflacks) would be in order, or that simple intellectual pride would prevent you from adding (so I’ve read), in lieu of actually seeing said conditions — but you’d think wrong. They have it better than they ever did with their little terrorist families and terrorist children in TerrorLand!
But it gets even worse! The level of obtuseness and willful ignorance that it takes to make this statement: we have released many prisoners, so anyone who is innocent has hope of gaining release. is simply inhuman. It’s a perfect inverse of reality, and a perfect expression of ‘Kafkaesque’, in a completely uncomprehending way. It’s as if a child said it and was proud of their grasp of the situation.
What mikey said. Double.
It is the dolts such as Althouse, Rush, Victor Hansen, and the rest who do not understand or like America. They SAY they love America, but what they really love is power–pure, unregulated, raw power. At least until they’re on the receiving end of some power (see Limbaugh, Rush re: drug arrest).
What about the conspiracy of Ann Althouse making every sensible person want to commit hara-kiri every time he or she reads one of her dull, witless posts?
Ann Althouse…suicide-homicide blogger practicing asymetrical warfare against the non-dull every time she writes.
Sheesh. That’s Teh Powerful Stupid. Ack, ack, ackety-ackness.
Yesterday, the local paper ran an op-ed by some wacko whose argument boiled down to: “In Italy after WWII, we shot anyone we wanted, we beat surrenderers to death as standard practice, and otherwise brutalized the population. Today, they are a modern democracy. Ergo, what’s the problem with Gitmo/Haditha/Abu Ghraib?”
What’s important – and I think Michelle Malkin will agree with me – is that, when it is discoverred that the people we’ve been illegally holding without accusing them or giving them their day in court is in no way a terrorist of any kind and we begrudgingly release them, we cannot pay them reperations. After all, ripping people from their lives with no explanation or due process of law is one thing, but giving them money is unquestionably unamerican and morally unacceptable.
Thank goodness I read “In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Internment’ in World War II and the War on Terror”.
I’m actually rather surprised no one’s said, “Hey! Gitmo prisoners have it good. You know the Nazis used to GAS their prisoners? AND make them wear shoes that didn’t fit? Stop complaining!” If they get to compare Gitmo to Auschwitz, I should get to compare gwb to the fuhrer.
god I loathe that woman. banality of evil indeed.
what is up with women law professor bloggers anyway?
Has no one else read that one of the suiciders had been found eligible for release last fall but had not yet been told that fact? I don’t know about anyone else but, if I thought I was to be locked away for the rest of my life, in Gitmo-type conditions, I really don’t think I would last 4 years.
My favourite bit was when it was revealed that one of them was about to be released (he just didn’t know it yet). Yep, an innocent guy was driven to suicide, even though we fed him all the chicken pilaf he could it. The ingrate.
Sure, just as Walter Benjamin’s suicide proved that Spanish authorities were justified in denying him passage.
Well, it clearly proves the wingnut point that we can’t let these potential terrorists out ever! After all, if a person deemed eligible for release, an innocent person, would be willing to engage in a preemptive strike against himself to destroy the morale of Gitmo troops, then the judicial system is flawed and cannot be trusted!
Fuck, I feel dirty already, how does Gary sleep at night doing this?
(on a big pile of money, I bet.)
Fuck, I feel dirty already
I hear you. But you know, judging from Jumah Abdel Latif Al Dossari’s suicide letter, I’m kind of glad as well, because at least we found out. Jumah said that when he killed himself, he wanted everyone to find out and have a moment of truth with themselves. He was very poetic:
What’s done is done, but it’s not done with. I feel we have an obligation to spread the message so that some good comes out of it.
PS: Join Bloggers Against Torture.
“If these men see themselves as prisoners of war…”
That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? They AREN’T prisoners of war! They are “enemy combatants” whom our government feels they can do as they wish with, including detaining FOREVER. Despair? Hell YES.
Does anyone know if any of the suicides were among the hunger strikers who were restrained and force fed food through a tube?
Glancing through the article the first time I thought that spiel was written by that crazy spandex girl (Atlas or whatever). Then it would have made perfect sense. But Ann Althouse? Sheesh, i thought this sort of savagery was beyond her.
This bespeaks a frightening lack of basic human understanding and empathy.
At first I thought it was Ann Coulter who said it, which should tell you something about how worthless and evil it is.
The most laughable thing I’ve ever seen my government do is take 3 prisoners killing themselves and turn it into an act of war.
WHAT
THE
FUCK
kobie: they immediately assumed it was a PR stunt. Obviously they are under the mistaken impression that everyone else thinks like they do.
“If the men see themselves as prisoners of war, why would they despair to the point of wanting to die? Is that how other prisoners of war have reacted when held in indefinite captivity?”
Well, Ann, are other POWs detained as part of a war without end? Does that answer your fucking moronic question?