www.post-gazette.com/pg/05158/516835.stm
Our policy of containment is leaking Tuesday, June 07, 2005 By Tony Norman Don't ask me about the morality of what W Mark Felt did in the 1970s whe n he dropped a very large dime on President Nixon. I'm too busy trying t o figure out how the air vents at Guantanamo Bay work. How does a guard taking a whiz in another part of the complex -- presumab ly aiming at a urinal if he has any home training -- manage to accidenta lly "splash" a detainee along with his Quran in another room? At the risk of sounding indelicate, I want to know how a stream of pee ma de its way into the air vent in the first place. Do es the temperature of a vent and the material it is made of affect the e vaporation rate, or does urine remain a continuous stream if it has a fa n behind it only to spatter as it passes through the grate? The weekend revelations confirming stories of "accidental" holy book dese crations at Gitmo make me wonder whether the US military is secretly e quipping all of its detention centers with golden shower capabilities in anticipation of a war with Islamic fetishists. Whatever the logic of the planning that went into Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, t his is turning out to be the first war staffed by soldiers weened on too many screenings of "Animal House." If I didn't know for a fact that John "Bluto" Belushi was dead, I'd swear he was running this war. Can't military intelligence do better than a two word profanity scribbled in a Quran and water balloon assaults on suspected terrorists? The Pentagon even confirmed that a soldier deliberately kicked a Quran like a footba ll. What's next: itching powder on prayer rugs during Ramadan? Still, it's the depraved moments in the war against terror that occupy my mind the most these days. Don't tell me about the systematic erosion of civil liberties at home or the diminution of respect for the United Sta tes abroad. Inquiring minds want to know what happened when an alleged m ember of al Qaeda discovered that he and his Quran had been sprinkled by Yankee tinkle.
Somebody turned the fan on here in the head and the urine stream got away from me. I repeat: This is not part of a well orchestrated plan to demor alize you or debase your holy book. Make sure you tell Amnesty Internati onal the truth when they come snooping around. We're tired of all of the anti-American propaganda that comes out of this place. All this talk about Deep Throat has made me nostalgic for investigative j ournalism that gives a damn. But I'm also torn by a desire to know what shouldn't be discussed in polite company. Granted, the Downing Street Memo, a British government document that sugg ests President Bush had made up his mind about the war in Iraq months be fore it was launched, is more important than what Michael Jackson will w ear to prison if he's convicted, but you wouldn't know it from the media coverage. And let's face it, most readers don't care a whit about gover nment intrigue if it doesn't involve a White House intern and thongs. Ru naway brides, Scientology obsessed movie stars and missing girls in Arub a trump a possible nuclear conflict with North Korea any day. Russell Crowe was arrested for clocking a New York hotel worker in the face with a phone because he couldn't get a line to Australia? That' s more interesting than learning how Homeland Security became another Wa shington porkfest. Sure, Iraq was foisted on us by a cabal of war profit eers and oil men, but we'll be alright as long as we keep the recruiters from snatching our kids in broad daylight.
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