Reply #1: Great summary of the week's events [View All]

[TexasLawyer]

I especially appreciate his analysis of the brilliant U.S. strategy of buying, from local warlords, alleged Al Qaeda or Taliban members. Of course, the only "verification" that these guys actually were AQ or Taliban was from the warlord seller himself, who was making a bundle off of each live body he sold to the U.S.



The problem with this strategy, obviously, is that in a land composed of rival tribes and warring factions, there is no way to verify whether someone who is handed over to you for $25,000 in cash is a genuine Al Qaeda or Taliban member, or just some unlucky goatherd or loser at cards. America's heroes--the camouflage-clad goons at Bagram Airbase and other grisly detention centers--apparently found that the solution to this dilemma was to beat the crap out of the suspects until they either died or admitted they were evildoers, at which point they were shipped to Guantanamo. (Back in the days of the Salem witch trials, they had a similarly reliable approach: tie a suspected witch to a board and put her underwater. If she lived, she was a witch. If she died, she was innocent.)