Yankee Doodle Martyr's Brigade

Haven’t been too absorbed in the headlines lately. It’s a question of sanity and self-preservation more than free time or motivation. But I’ve been keeping abreast to be sure. To wit, last week’s Guantánamo suicides were tragic but not surprising—all humans are wired the same, after all. The emotional fruits of endless despair and periodic torture are the same for the terrorist (would-be or never-was) than they are for the pencil pusher. Our fearless leaders would like us to believe that the actions of the three “detainees” was calculated sabotage. That their final, desperate act was in fact another act of war against our great nation. “Asymmetrical warfare,” they call it. And apparently in all seriousness, Rear Admiral Harry B. Harris described the dead men as being “smart, creative, committed.” To which DissentVoice.org’s Anthony Alessandrini replies, “[That] is a perverse compliment being paid by the torturer to the tortured”. And to which I reply, "Rear Admiral, eh?"

So, it was warfare, it was terrorism, but in no conceivable way was it the act of desperate men who in succumbing to their hopelessness, took the only way out they’d been able to find. Sure. And as expected the administration and its enablers hide behind a variation on their running themes, Patriotism and Fear, to give us the bologna about the suicides being a creative assault on America. It’d be frickin’ funny if it wasn’t so pathetic, so sad. But at least fewer and fewer of the ol’ constituency is buying that kind of line. Hell, some higher-profile folks have even begun to wake up and see this mess for what it really is, fundamentally un-American. Just ask James Norton. The Christian Science Monitor published his op-ed piece, Roots of US War Prisoners' Rights Run Deep, this morning.

Should you find all that dry as toast wiffout butta, perhaps check in with the take over on fafblog. 6/10 Changed Everything, should sweeten the deal. And the comments page is a force of its own as user, Famousringo points out, "The obvious counterattack to this kind of assault is to pre-emptively respond in kind: To commit suicide.Only elite suicide squads, killing themselves with ruthless efficiency, can provoke the guilt and shame necessary to win this conflict."