A Republican senator cracked under media pressure this week, possibly presaging a bigger cave-in by the Bush administration.
Sen. Mel Martinez said the Bush administration should consider closing the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorism suspects the first high-profile Republican to make the suggestion.Its become an icon for bad stories and at some point you wonder the cost-benefit ratio, Martinez said Friday.
Reality, please: inimitable Mark Steyn takes on those who cry "Gulag!" about the detention of terrorists and terrorist hangers-on at Guantanamo Bay.
When three times as many detainees "desecrate" the Koran as U.S. guards do, it seems clear that the whole Operation Desecration ballyhoo is yet another media crock and the Organization of the Islamic Conference and all the rest are complaining about nothing.Posted by Alan at June 12, 2005 08:41 AMNobody got killed in Gitmo, so instead America's being flayed as the planet's No. 1 torturer for being insufficiently respectful to the holy book of its prisoners, even though the Americans themselves supplied their prisoners with the holy book, even though Americans who fall into the hands of the other side get their heads hacked off, even though the prisoners' co-religionists themselves blow up more mosques and Qurans than the Pentagon ever does, even though the preferred holy book of most Americans is banned in the home country of many of the prisoners, where respect for other faiths is summed up in the headline, "Seven Christians Released In Saudi Arabia On Condition They Renounce Private Religious Practice."
That was in the British Catholic newspaper, the Universe, last week, by the way. Sadly, no U.S. newspaper found room for the story due to pressures of space caused by all the "Al-Qaida Press Secretary Denounces Insufficient Respect For Koran By Rumsfeld" front page splashes. But sure, go ahead, close Gitmo and wait for the rave reviews from the media -- right after the complaints that it's culturally insensitive to rebuild the World Trade Center when it's the burial site of 10 revered Muslim martyrs.
Guantanamo will be remembered not as a byword for torture but for self-torture, a Western fetish the jihad's spin doctors understand all too well.