Ted Rall for June 08, 2009

The real problem is that it’s harder to torture them when they’re on US soil. It’s not impossible, it’s just a little trickier not to get prosecuted. But do it on a remote military outpost on a communist island and you get a blank check to torture!

Bill_Clay, good point.

Daylight through the window. Clv or Chigo. Or could be subway outdoors in daytime. Modern art on car wall. Balding man holding straphanger has saber in teeth, wears striped shirt and striped tie. Woman holding pole has sharp protruding lower-jaw teeth. Young man seated reads “Felon Today.” All escapees. White trio rob and murder Gitmo detainee escaping from civilian confinement (“close door after escape”). We are more dangerous than they are! Ex-Guantanomo detainee is gentle and off his guard, so automatic or semiautomatic weapon he carries gets no use. I go with this. Seven years of solitary would have driven me mad(der) and made me passive. It’s a parody of the law of compensation, the law of the free market: what eases up here, tightens up there; supply up, price down; price up, supply up. The robber-murderers have the excuse that the brown man is brown and dangerous, “ji[had]-head” as in towel-head. My prejudices are turned against me. We have met the enemy and … I like this because I am sick with rage over the complicity of people–writers–who should know better in the stupid dehumanization of people we kill and rob, as we have killed and robbed in Iraq and Afghanistan. I understand that that is the attitude of war–Tolstoy shows it in the scene of Pierre’s last day confined by the French as the troops begin to move; NBlake shows it in Churchill’s night bombings supposed to anger the Germans but at bottom to militate the British; Lincoln too had to mobilize the citizens; all, Hitler, Tito, you have to do it. SO ROUSING PEOPLE INTO THE WARLIKE ATTITUDE IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN NUCLEAR ARMS. (TR calls for the president to resign, but I for one would not accept his resignation.)

Credit Card numbers and format are correct.

meh..

1st pane was genuinely funny regardless of the argument.

argument, however, was weak and convoluted.

punchline was mildly humorous.

2/10

So either I’m an escaped felon, or Terrorists are just normal innocent people. Either way, Ted says that we are the same.

Gee, that sounds rational.

“those terrorists have it better in GTMO than they do in their homeland. What a bleeding heart!”

Irrelevant, and you know it.

The way the terrorists were treated in their homeland has NOTHING to do with how we should treat them when we detain them. We signed treaties about how to treat our detainees. That’s what’s relevant.

Treating them “better” while still breaking International Law is still wrong. We need to treat them in accordance with the law.

Or we’re no better than them.

“So either I’m an escaped felon, or Terrorists are just normal innocent people.”

In other words, you didn’t understand the cartoon.

What I don’t understand is, how is being in a maximum security prison in the US supposed to be an improvement over Gitmo?