This entry was posted on
Thursday, March 9th, 2006 at
9:11 am and is filed
under The War on Stupid.

Independent – Back home, but still imprisoned: The shadow of Guantanamo
Sunday Herald – Guantanamo: Three tales of Terror
Guardian Film – The Road to Guantanamo

TONIGHT (March 9): The Road to Guantanamo, Channel 4, 9pm

Plan to see it, plan to tape it, plan to talk about it. Cheers all.

UPDATE – You may wish to register for the Channel 4 forums… even if it’s just to deliver a clue-by-four to lovely people like this.

UPDATE – The clever-clogs who made the witless post I linked to (above) appears to have deleted it… and therefore any reply under it. Good to see that his case for torture is so strong.

UPDATE (10:55pm) – Am I the only one who sat through the middle third gritting my teeth and thinking; “I bet that payback feels reeeeeeeeeeeeal good! Mighty good! Mmmm good!”…?

UPDATE – I must admit to feeling a tad disappointed. I really thought they should have shown a cartoon or two before the movie. Like in the old days.

UPDATE – Hurrah! Clever-clogs (Robert1234) is back and claiming that this movie about Guantanamo will further the cause of terrorism. And, as we all know, nothing that actually happened at Guantanamo (or any of the policies behind it) will further the cause of terrorism. No, it is this movie that is to blame… just as we are to blame for all of the failures in Iraq for not closing our mouths, clapping our hands and believing in the Freedom Fairies. (Oh, and if you’re not up to speed on his blabbering about a copy of the Koran that didn’t actually make it all the way around the S-bend, simply click here and here.)

UPDATE – Eventually, this discussion spread into a number of separate threads; I’ve posted them below for ready-reference:

C4’s Guantanamo lies
Guantanamo
guantanamo doco
Road to Guantanamo
The Road To Guantanamo (I)
The Road To Guantanamo (II)
Questions about The Road To Guantanamo

One of the threads leads us to this charmer:

Free Market Fairy Tales – The Road to Guantanamo & other fictions: The casting director must have searched long & hard to find the actors that played the US Marine Corps characters, all of whom aside from carrying the wrong personal weapons & appearing to be distinctly uncomfortable in their uniforms, looked as though they had never done any exercise in their lives. Even better was the British military intelligence officer whose beret was so badly shaped, it would have landed him on a charge, aside from the fact he was wearing the wrong beret! Nice attention to detail Mr Winterbottom, but we should expect no less, for scumbag apologists for the terrorist fan club.

(Note – I’ve been meaning to look into the role played by British intelligence; especially given the pre-credit message in the film stating that a US officer had since claimed to have been the chap ‘mistaken’ for British intelligence. Mostly, I wonder if *he* wore the right beret, and if it was properly shaped.)

That post leads us to this stitch-ripper; a glorious “Look! Over there!” moment:

Conservative Party Reptile – Self-loathing, wilful blindness: Obviously, American stories receive greater coverage, but it is sickeningly hypocritical for bien pensant opinion to castigate Guantanamo Bay as the ‘gulag of our time’ when abuses that are infinitely worse on every conceivable level pass calmly and smugly beneath the media radar.

It seems that concepts such as personal responsibility and moral authority are alien to some people.

Also, a lot of effort seems to have gone into assurances and/or questions of guilt… which is kind of funny, because this was also the response of the two governments that released these men without charge.

Not that their being guilty would have made their treatment acceptable… but some people do seem to hold the view that sometimes you have to torture bad people. And sometimes you even have to torture good people to find the bad people. And, sometimes, a fella just needs a little payback. I’m reminded of this reaction to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, which I think makes as good a closer as any.

After all, in the days following this shooting, a lot of effort seemed to go into assurances and/or questions of guilt…

Today’s Commentary – Shoot to Kill: It is about time someone handled terrorists with the appropriate response. When I discussed this with Mrs. Tuff, she expressed concern, claiming that the guy was down, cornered and not going anywhere. Why turn him into a pin cushion? My response was threefold. First, if it feels good, just do it. Second, bombers are not like muggers. Even a breath away from death, a nutty Muslim can still press a switch in his pocket and take several innocent bystanders with him. You can’t just wound them, even mortally. You must instantly neutralize the threat – this means turning the central nervous system of the bad guy into a Picasso. Do it “for the children.” Third, Muslims across the globe need to learn an important lesson. Don’t screw with us. When was the last time you heard of terrorist cells attacking mainland China? I wonder why that is? Even if this guy was innocent of terrorist activity, wasting him was the right thing to do. Pretty harsh, huh? Islamic leaders in England have made it that way.

Ah, even better. Sometimes to have to *shoot* good people, just to teach the bad people a lesson. Isn’t this black and white world we live in glorious?