Authority without democratic checks and balances

I can't add anything original to the condemnation of Guantanimo Bay and every corrupt thing about the Bush/Cheney administration it represents.

There are too many corruptions large and small for an ordinary guy like me to know where to begin.

The summation of Mr. Wizner, the ACLU attorney, seemed most eloquent and clearly illustrates the falsity of every justification behind Gitmo.

But every American, liberal or conservative has always known in their heart the whole thing was phoney, used to demonstrate to the public a concrete enemy and divert attention from the consequences of our own grasping, cynical, chauvanistic policies in the Middle East.

Now Friday's Seattle Post Intelligencer, and other papers, praises Mr. Gates for wanting to shut down Guantanimo Bay. But Mr. Gates doesn't want to end any injustices, he doesn't want to end the national dishonor of torture, he just wants to close down Gitmo and transfer the detainees to one or more of seventeen locations inside the US including sub-base Bangor in Kitsap County where I live, or Ft. Lewis in Pierce/Thurston Counties, in Washington State.

Mr Gates, being a Bush appointee, naturally denies the core of the problem and only wants to deal with the outward superficialities in order to difuse Guantanimo Bay as a political target and symbol. He wants to spread out the detainees so they will fade from sight and so the media and activists will gradually forget and stop talking about them.

He doesn't want the Bush/Cheney administration to suffer, but he doesn't give a damn if the detainees, even that majority of whom the administration has admitted in the past are not guilty of any wrong doing, suffer unjustly, unfairly, and indefintely.

Bush/Cheney and their cohorts, under the mentoring of Mr.Gates are only just beginning to understand the embarassment they have created in Guantanimo Bay.

Meanwhile they are not the least bit embarassed at Osama bin Laden and his cohorts freely, and casually sipping coffee in the cafes of Islamabad.