Permanently Ludicrous

This is a wickedly bad idea but one that fits perfectly with the Bush Administration's over-the-top approach to the war on terrorism. Now the Bushies want $25 million to transform the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a "permanent" prison for detainees "whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts." [Reuters.com].

Although the Supreme Court decided emphatically last Spring that detainees must be afforded some process to challenge their confinement (writing that "a state of war is not a blank check for the President"), the Pentagon plans to build a 200-bed prison at Gitmo "to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence," defense officials told the Washington Post. Even Lee at Right Thinking From the Left Coast calls this plan "lunacy" and "absolutely, unequivocally, fucking outrageous."

See, Lee, conservatism and libertarianism are not the same thing. As this sad episode shows clearly, the former often have far more in common with authoritarians -- a/k/a facists -- than democrats with a small "d." So no wonder that George W. Bush likes Russian President Putin so much. Putin rules with the iron fist that conservatives want to use here in America but are afraid to say so out loud.

 Posted by glenn