December 1, 2010, Wiki wakey
Among the massive load of State Department internal communications that were the subject of the most recent document release by Wikileaks (if Barack Obama refuses to honor his promise of "transparency in government, it seems that Julian Assange of Wikileaks is going to do it for him... by the way, if Julian Assange isn't "the man of the year," you got me as to who is)... is a comment by State Department officials that public enemy number one that terrorist former GTMO prisoner Moazzam Begg was doing the United States' work for it in speaking throughout Europe in an effort to get European nations to admit released GTMO prisoners.
Well. Regular readers are more than a little familiar with Moazzam; (my interview with him is here.) In brief, Moazzam is a British national (from Birmingham, actually) of Pakistani descent who was in Afghanistan doing humanitarian work, when he was picked up in the American dragnet after September 11th. After years held in solitary at Guantanamo Bay, he was abruptly released to the British after about four years; since then, he has written about his experience, helped organize the Cage Prisoners web site and organization, written a book entitled "Enemy Combatant," and otherwise spoken out. At various times, his speaking out is considered "returning to the battlefield" by our feckless and criminal American government, that would prefer that the details of its heretofore hidden crimes against humanity... remain hidden.
And thus, we fast forward to these "truly embarrassing" State Department communiques, which observe the obvious point: getting other countries to accept the poor, harmless unfortunates who were wrongly held (and abused) by the United States for years requires getting others to acknowledge that these are, in fact, poor, harmless unfortunates, and not hardened terrorists. Which, in the overwhelming majority of cases (and don't argue with me on this) the United States government itself has so concluded, having released over 3/4 of the men cycled through GTMO, and acknowledging that the majority of those left present no threat, did nothing wrong, and shouldn't even be there.
And we come to the real problem for Obama and the fact that he was elbowed in the face by a freaking lobbyist even as the White House tells us his "pick up" basketball game only involved close family, inner staff, "and friends" public disclosure. You see, the American government believes there is supposed to be a disconnect between the depiction of reality it disseminates to the moron masses the American public and to itself. Which is all well and good to a point, but as the present situation points out, when it has come to the "war on terror"... everything seems to take a back seat to the propaganda points associated with "looking tough"... even if it means undermining other affirmative policies (such as... getting other countries to take GTMO prisoners off our hands). And hence, everyone held at GTMO must be depicted as the worst of hardened terrorists, notwithstanding even the government's own quite public conclusions to the contrary,
The cognitive dissonance of it all would ordinarily cause one's head to explode. Fortunately for the United States, the average American is sufficiently medicated not to think too much be concerned enough to inquire beyond the face of what he or she is told... and that... is just that.