I am reading the news this morning and I felt compelled to write about the situation with Omar Khadr at Guantanamo. With the imminent closure of the U.S. torture facility, there’s a chance he could come back to Canada. Now, I’m not a fan of his family’s ties to Al Quaeda, nor am I fond of the fact that Omar Khadr was in Afghanistan fighting with them and the Taliban, but I don’t agree with how he was treated since his capture.

What prompted this? I read this morning that they may try to ‘deradicalize’ Khadr. Good luck with that. And that’s the gist of the comment I put on this story:

Good luck ever trying to rehabilitate Khadr after what he’s been through. Who could blame him for being more radical after his treatment and torture for how many years?

If he manages to make it out alive and back to normal society, he’ll have a chance to prove his detractors wrong. I hope he does, for his sake.

What I find most offensive is that our government has, in effect and in practice, been supporting the torture of its own citizens and others. I can’t believe Canadians re-elect governments who seem to think this is okay.

I have no problem fighting terrorism, but if we’re using the same tactics they are, we’re no better than them. If we’re going to be preaching from our moral high ground, we should at least live those principles too.

I’m ready for the usual thoughtless, knee-jerk comments about how I support terrorists and the usual crap. I don’t subscribe to the Bush model of ‘you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists’ line of BS. You think you can’t fight terrorists without hypocritically resorting to the same tactics they do?

Insulting Obama

The first story I read this morning was along the same lines as the one I commented on. Oh, I commented on this one too, but forgot to copy and paste for posterity. I thought it was going to be a really good story but I realized I misread it when I thought it said ‘Al Qaeda lieutenant insults Osama.‘

This ought to be good, but then I realized my mistake. So now Al Qaeda has proved themselves to be racists in addition to being terrorists. Nothing revealing this morning.

Or, what should I be scared of today?

Condition red: the U.S. Army is warning us that our beloved Twitter could be used by terrorists to thwart and attack our bourgeois capitalist system by passing 140 character messages in cyber-space. Want to read the official report?

Thank you U.S. Army for keeping ahead of the curve for potential things I should worry about. Trying to ramp up a little worry before that pesky election? Wouldn’t it just be easier if the military ran everything? But, I digress

I like the line in the story that refers to the types of people using Twitter, including VEGETARIANS! Good God! Where is my rifle? Kids, get to the bunker. Where is my one year supply of crackers? MARTHA, HIDE THE MEAT! THE VEGETARIANS ARE USING TWITTER. Oh yeah, and so are the terrorists, apparently.

Those clever bastards. Nothing gets by them. The terrorists too.

I would be willing to bet that the terrorists probably gave up on Twitter a while back when it was pretty unreliable. Can you imagine trying to plan a terrorist attack and you get the fail whale? Can you imagine what a loser terrorist you’d feel like? All your terrorist friends would be saying “why did you tell us to use Twitter? We went with it but Plurk was way better, but no, you had to use Twitter.” And so, there’d be a few dozen less virgins in heaven for that guy.

Twitter is better now, but I think I’m fearful. I think I am. Am I? I’ll have to sit in a corner and try shuddering for a while. Maybe screaming uncontrollably? Would that help?

Is it really a surprise that terrorists might use current or emerging communications tools and that we ought to monitor them? Duh. It’s a good thing there’s somebody out there thinking about this stuff, and next time an Al-Qaeda operative adds me on Twitter, I’ll be sure to report him.

What I wonder is what the U.S. Army and “intelligence community” plan to do to stop them from using these modern communications tools? Shut down the Internet? Wait. They’re already planning on stomping on our freedoms that way. Silly me.

Maybe it’s a good thing that the terrorists are using Twitter to communicate, unless they’re protecting their tweets, in which case maybe the U.S. Army should strong-arm Twitter to unprotect all tweets, but just for them. That would be interesting.

The further we get from 9/11, the less this kind of fear mongering tends to work on the easily fear mongered. We should be vigilant, but we shouldn’t be screaming in the streets, unless you feel like doing that. But please, don’t do it too early in the morning. I’m trying to sleep.

The real story: Cold War II

If my daughter were to date someone like this, I'd disown her.

I guess with the prospect of Barack Obama possibly winning the U.S. election and eventually pulling out of Iraq, the U.S. military industrial complex is looking for new targets. Enter, China.

In checking out that story on Twitter and the U.S. Army, I was alerted to this possibility on the Federation of American Scientists website. They’re talking about starting a cold war with China. The Federation of American Scientists runs a story on a cold war with China? Shouldn’t these guys be checking on some beakers or animals in cages instead of this? Anyway.

Anybody who knows me will know what I have to say about China, Russia and those topics. Yes, we do have to watch what they’re up to. But, if you want to stop the Chinese in their tracks, maybe the U.S. government should shut down Wal-Mart. I think the Chinese economy would grind to a halt.

I got a chuckle out of the guy who’s kind of in charge of this whole thing: Paul Wolfowitz. Yes, that Paul Wolfowitz. The guy who “planned” the war in Iraq is now advocating for the next cold war. Guess he has lots of military stock that’s plummeted in value lately. Time to pump up the military stock when everything else is in the shitter. Something tells me this guy doesn’t exactly have a gold-plated pedigree when it comes to planning out wars. If he’s planning anything cold, maybe it should be cracking open a beer and just relaxing.

It makes you shake your head sometimes because these people just don’t get it. They never will.