Gitmo: the shocking truth revealed

From a December 10 interview on Al-Jazeera with a Sudanese tormented by Jews at Guantanamo prison:

Walid Muhammad Hajj: The most common method to wear down the brothers was witchcraft.
Interviewer: How did they do this?
Walid Muhammad Hajj: There were, of course, Jews among the [staff of] the Guantanamo Base, and they would set traps for the guys....
Interviewer: They would cast a spell on them?
Walid Muhammad Hajj: Yes, but by the grace of Allah, through frequent reading of the Koran and invocation of the names of Allah, they managed to withstand this.
Interviewer: How did you know that somebody was under a spell?
Walid Muhammad Hajj: Someone like that would change.
Interviewer: In what way?
Walid Muhammad Hajj: For example, somebody would take his clothes off, all of a sudden, or would sit on his bed for three days straight without sleeping....
Interviewer: Tell me more.
Walid Muhammad Hajj: I will tell you how the witchcraft affected the guys. A person would suddenly see his brothers and sisters naked before him.
Interviewer: And they weren't really there?
Walid Muhammad Hajj: Absolutely not. It was as if he was in a different world....
Interviewer: Did they ever use witchcraft on you?
Walid Muhammad Hajj: There was one attempt.
Interviewer: How did they do it?
Walid Muhammad Hajj: Once, when I was sleeping – on the floor, not on a bed – I suddenly felt that a cat was trying to penetrate me. It tried to penetrate me again and again. I recited the kursi verse again and again until the cat left.
Interviewer: But there wasn't really any cat there?
Walid Muhammad Hajj: Absolutely not.

 Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Oh well, never mind!

So here's the headline of the day, fifteen months after Mr. Obama promised to close Gitmo and try enemy combatants in civilian courts: Guantanamo war court resumes hearings amid uncertainty. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

It's the inheritance, stupid

Now in his second year as president of the United States, Mr Obama is facing a bunch of problems, and guess what? They're all Dubya's fault. 'For a president who campaigned on a promise to close Guantánamo, and who just missed a self-imposed one-year deadline to get the job done, the meltdown of a potential Manhattan 9/11 trial is the latest measure of the stubborn complexity of his national security inheritance,' gravely explains the New York Times today. One would think, rather, that they were the latest measure of his national security policies. Mr Bush, after all, did not force Mr Obama to close the Caribbean prison, nor to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to trial in downtown Manhattan.

Federal law requires that a criminal trial take place where the crime was committed. (I didn't know that!) If Ground Zero has been ruled out, rural Pennsylvania would seem to be a prime candidate. But the Justice Department is also looking at Newark and Boston, from whose airports the fatal jetliners took off. That will thrill the folks who just sent Scott Brown to Congress. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford