Peenie Wallie

However, I have a problem with Gitmo. I have a problem with the way the "illegal combatants" are denied the rights afforded by the Geneva Convention, and the way citizens like Jose Padilla are incarcated indefinitely, without counsel, without a trial, without even being charged. I'm not saying Jose Padilla is a hero. I'm saying the cure may be worse than the disease.

While I disagree with P.W. about the treatment of foreign nationals, and how the Geneva Convention does (or does not) apply to them, everyone should be worried if U.S. citizens charged with terrorism are sent to these camps.

Republicans should be wary about giving powers to President Bush that they wouldn't trust to President Hillary Clinton. If you're not worried, read the the first few paragraphs of Matt Bracken's forthcoming novel, Domestic Enemies (the sequel to Enemies Foreign and Domestic). "Arab terrorist" is replaced with "suburban American housewife whose husband may - or may not - have owned illegal firearms":

DOMESTIC ENEMIES

CHAPTER ONE

“Yo, Penny! What the hell you doing, girl? Get your scrawny ass back here!”

The woman was new; it was only her second day among the camp’s female detainees. She still had the boot camp buzz-cut which marked her as fresh from the “Tombs” in Illinois.

The D-Camp admin staff usually did this with pale-skinned white girls: they put them straight out into the fields under the blast-furnace Oklahoma sun. The new prisoner had gamely attempted to keep up with the line of twenty women, weeding her row of knee-high corn with a hoe, but her hands were already cratered with broken blisters.

She walked back down the narrow file to where Big Kendra was waiting. Ranya anticipated what was going to happen next.

“Penny, are all the skinny white girls back in Maine as useless as you?”

Ranya kept moving her hoe, while glancing over her shoulder at the drama playing out behind the field crew. The new woman was half the size of Big Kendra, with her broad butt and ample chest straining against her khaki uniform.

“What is this here, woman? What do you see here?” Big Kendra carried a long rake handle when she was on guard duty in the fields; now she was using it to point at the ground between the rows of immature corn.

The new detainee was shaking visibly, but Ranya couldn’t hear her reply. The woman turned and looked back up the line for the missed weed, leaning over to see where the guard had pointed. The guard moved up close behind, looming over her.

“Are you blind too? That’s a big ole’ ragweed—ain’t that what you’re here for?”

Ranya cringed as the guard booted the new woman down onto her face.

“Now get back on the line, and don’t let me catch you slacking off again!”

Big Kendra was one of the most offhandedly brutal guards in D-Camp. The six foot tall Philadelphian took special delight in humiliating the new detainees, especially soft suburban housewives from the opposite end of the pigmentation spectrum. After a few months of interrogation, they arrived at D-Camp in unmarked “moving vans” as pale as Pillsbury dough-boys, and were immediately sent out to do field work beneath the unrelenting sun. No hats were provided, and their faces and shorn heads burned an agonizing lobster red. No gloves were supplied, and without calluses, their hands became painfully blistered working the short-handled hoes.

Ranya had seen the black Amazon called Big Kendra put the boot to many new detainees, as part of her own personal “breaking in” procedure.

The new prisoner stumbled back, and took her place among the women working their way up the lines of dusty plants. She was on the next row from Ranya, sobbing quietly.

“It’s not my fault, it’s a mistake, I shouldn’t even be here! It’s all a mistake! But nobody will listen. Nobody will listen!”

This was the usual lament of the new Article 14 detainees. It was always a mistake. An old tune by an Australian band ran through Ranya’s mind. “It’s a mistake!” It was always the same heartrending song. “It’s a mistake!”

“My husband disappeared last year, just disappeared! Went to work, and never came home. No word, not one word! Then last March the police came, and found guns in our attic. Assault weapons and sniper rifles, they said! I didn’t even know they were there! I swear to God, I had nothing to do with them! But nobody would listen! Now who’s taking care of my children? It’s all a mistake, but nobody will listen! And now I don’t even know where my children are…” Tears slid dirty tracks down her face.

Children. The word stung Ranya. Who’s taking care of your children, lady? Well, who’s been taking care of my own baby for five long years? Her thoughts swept her back to the federal prison clinic in Maryland, her wrists and ankles shackled to the cold stainless steel table, and those precious minutes spent with her newborn baby boy. Even then her wrists were not unchained: a sympathetic nurse held the baby boy to her chest, allowed her to kiss him, to inhale his newborn breath… And that was all of her time with him. Her baby was taken by a grim prison matron, never to be seen again. At least this new prisoner had been able to share a life with her children. Not just a few minutes!

Ranya wanted to say, “Do you think you’re the only mother here?” Instead she answered, “Look, it’s not a mistake, your being here. Let me guess: you’re here for an Article 14: ‘conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism’, right?”

The new prisoner nodded, broken.

Ranya continued talking, while looking down at her work. “Lady, there are no mistakes here. And nobody will listen to you anyway, so just forget it. That life you had is over, that life doesn’t exist, not while you’re in D-Camp. Hell, Delta Camp, detention camp, whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t even exist, haven’t you figured that out? Did you get your telephone call yet?” Ranya laughed bitterly. “Listen lady, if you ever want to see your children again, you have to at least make it in here. You have to survive. If you give up on yourself, you give up on any chance of seeing your kids again, ever.”...

By the way, Durbin didn't violate Godwin's Law. More likely he demonstrated it... that as discussion on a particular topic continues, the probability of an invocation of Hitler and/or the Nazis approaches one.

It's also considered to be poor form to actually invoke Godwin's Law.