Terrorism

If you are looking for terrorists, people who advance their causes by instilling fear in people, look for members of the Shrubbery’s party.

Over at the Pensacola Beach Blog John has been running a series of reports beginning last Friday that were carried in the Pensacola News Journal about Democrats planning to shut down Guantanamo and move the “captives”¹ to military bases around the country, including Pensacola Naval Air Station.

I ignored the story for two reasons. Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, is leading the drive to close Guantanamo, not the Democrats; and Eglin Air Force Base wasn’t on the list.

There was a Federal Prison on Eglin AFB until hurricane Ivan. The decision was made not to repair the damage after the hurricane, and the prison was shut down. Eglin is the largest Air Force Base the US has. There is a half-million acre national forest on the base. It would be the logical place to move the population of Guantanamo.

I mentioned in comments that if they dubbed Deliverance into Arabic and showed it to the incoming people after the local Ranger Camp ran through their “show and tell” on the local poisonous reptiles, followed by the bear and alligator warnings, I don’t think escape would be a problem. You could probably included some the sensationalized news coverage of the rare shark attacks in the Gulf.

But logic didn’t intrude on the editors of the PNJ and they continued to raise the fear of “terrorists” being moved into Pensacola because of the Democrats.

Today people found out the story is bogus. It would seem that the story was hatched by Duncan Hunter [Reptile of California] and willing co-conspirators like our local Congress weasel, Jefferson Miller [Reptile of Florida]. I would guess that Duncan has got time on his hands since his good friend, and former neighbor, Randy “Duke” Cunningham was busted and sent to prison. Normally, Duncan would be busy deciding what pork he could stuff into Defense bills, but since the Democrats took over, he’s on a diet.

The clear intent of the story was to invoke fear, that makes the people involved terrorists, by definition.

Thanks for the work, John.

1. I was in law enforcement, and the nearest I can come to a label for the people being held at Guantanamo is kidnap victim. “Enemy Combatant” is a meaningless term without some proof that they were enemies and engaged in combat, something which is turning out not to be the case. They weren’t arrested; they were swept up without probable cause. Some of them could be called slaves, as the US paid money for them and refuses to free them. They have been held for years without hearings, so they can’t be called suspects. There’s just no good term in law enforcement for people in this situation, so I’ll go with captive.