Guantanamo Bay Affects world
Mood:  blue
Topic: Afghanistan is free now
I haven't been following the events in Guantanamo Bay as closely as I ought to be but it's pretty well known that those folks we scooped up in the Afghanistan 3 and half years ago are still there and they still have no rights. These enemy combatants have no due porcess, no right to counsel and no kind of fair trial...they are simply our prisoners and there have been many questions as to what exactly is going on there. Recently there has been some talk that we go ahead an desecrate the Quran down there...Hence this in the Chicago tribune today:

"Anti-U.S. Riot Turns Deadly in Afghanistan

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- Shouting "Death to America!" more than 1,000 demonstrators rioted and threw stones at a U.S. military convoy Wednesday, as protests spread to four Afghan provinces over a report that interrogators desecrated Islam's holy book at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Police fired on the protesters, many of them students, trying to stifle the biggest display of anti-American anger since the ouster of the ruling Taliban militia 3 1/2 years ago. There were no reports of American casualties, but the violence left four dead and 71 injured in Jalalabad, a city 80 miles east of the capital, Kabul.

Mobs smashed car and shop windows and attacked government offices, the Pakistani consulate and the offices of two U.N. agencies in Jalalabad. Smoke billowed from the consulate and a U.N. building. More than 50 foreign aid workers were reportedly evacuated.

The protests may expand into neighboring Pakistan, where a coalition of hard-line Islamic parties said it would hold nationwide demonstrations Friday over the alleged desecration of the Quran.

Many of the 520 inmates in Guantanamo are Pakistanis and Afghans captured after the Sept. 11 attacks. Despite both governments' support of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, suspicion lingers in the conservative Muslim nations about the American military."

Wow...Death to America...But we gave them freedom?!

"Growing urban unrest could pose another security challenge for the U.S.-backed Afghan government, which is already battling a reinvigorated Taliban insurgency. About 18,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, fighting rebels and searching for Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden.

President Hamid Karzai, who travels to Washington this month for talks with President Bush, played down the violence.

"It is not the anti-American sentiment, it is a protest over news of the desecration of the holy Quran," Karzai told reporters after talks with NATO officials in Brussels, Belgium.

"Afghanistan is now a democratic country, people can come out and protest and demonstrate and express themselves," Karzai said. "It also shows that Afghanistan's institutions, the police, the army, are not yet ready to handle protests and demonstrations."

But...but...but...We won that war didn't we?! Freedom is on the march.

In other shitty news, be sure to keep an eye on that John Bolton nomination...it was just sent from committee to a vote in the senate. This guy is about as qualified to be in the U.N. as I am...