Friday, June 29, 2007

Gitmo: The Dems Write a Letter

Lobbing yet another softball from their bottomless satchel of cushy weapons, the Democrats sent a letter to Bush on Friday asking him to close Gitmo - because we all know that when Bush gets a letter, he cringes in his faux cowboy boots.

Right.

I'm sure he'll be extremely bothered by that bit of prose as he BBQs ribs on July the 4th while wishing the noise of the fireworks would end so he could hear himself think his ever-so-deep thoughts about humanity. Because that's just the kind of "compassionate conservative" guy he is - except when he's busy being this heartless bastard.

Anyway, someone else has written a letter about Gitmo too - a child whose father is a detainee there who her family fears is close to dying and who, unlike the Democrats, has absolutely no power or visibility to actually do something serious about closing that gulag so she can hug her father again. All she could do was to write a letter, but: "The children decided not to post it in case it prejudiced their father's case".

...it was Shaker's idea to leave their London home in the summer of 2001 because he felt frustrated at not having a proper home to bring up his family.

"The council couldn't find us a flat or house in London so we decided to leave. Shaker was always helping people in England and he wanted to help the children of Afghanistan, but wasn't sure whether he should be teaching or help build a hospital."

For a few weeks, the family shared a house with Moazzam Begg, a Briton who was freed from Guantanamo in 2005, who had also gone to Kabul to help children in Afghanistan. But when the American invasion started, the country became a very dangerous place to be.

"The bombs were falling every night and we had to leave the city to stay in a village. The children were terrified and kept telling us to be quiet in case our noise made the bombs come.

"Shaker was frightened too and I can remember his face now, it was almost as pale as the colour of the cream suit he was wearing. Shaker left the village to find a safer place for us. But in the middle of the night the villagers told us we had to go with a group travelling to the safety of Pakistan."

Zin recalled: "I was pregnant with our fourth child and we were all scared. In the end, I just went. I didn't see Shaker again. Sometimes I regret that decision. What if I stayed - would we all be together now?" Shaker was captured in December 2001 by the Americans, who claim he was fighting with the Taliban. Reprieve, the human rights group with is representing him, maintains that he was sold by villagers to the Northern Alliance who in turn sold him on to the Americans.

From there he was taken to Bagram airbase and later flown on to Guantanamo Bay. He has never seen his youngest son.

Nancy Pelosi, who likes sports analogies too, assured Americans on Friday that when it comes to dealing with the Iraq war: "We have many arrows in our quiver, and we are sharpening them". The only quivers I see from the Dems are the shakes they get when they think about strongly opposing Bush on anything.

Why are they sharpening arrows while pitching out softballs? And just how long does it take to sharpen arrows anyway?
 

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