Boo!!!! the Sham Debate Over Guantanamo Detainees

Ooooooooo! So Obama wants to release terrorists on the streets of Cedar Rapids where they'll all get jobs in munitions factories, grade schools or as BABYSITTERS!!! Quick, hide under your desk. Wait a minute that was the last war. Oh yeah, duct tape the windows and report unattended packages.

This brouhaha over Guantanamo detainees is simply ludicrous. To assume we are incapable of imprisoning dangerous felons, maniacs and terrorists belies the fact that we have been doing it for years. In fact, we are very good at it. This really has very little to do with danger and a whole lot to do with the GOP reinvigorating its knucklehead base on an issue that worked well for them for six years -- terrorism. What else have they got? In polls, they lose on education, healthcare, Social Security, the economy and the "direction the country is taking." They're even running behind on national defense, the traditional Republicon safety school.

Americans had been spoiled by geography. When the earth "re-flattened" in the 1990s, it didn't just change the economic and cultural landscape, it also opened the door to Old World-style mayhem. Nine-Eleven did more than kill people and destroy property. It blew holes in our illusions of Fortress America; drove a stake through our national psyche. To think...a bunch of "illiterate, third-world, ragheads living in caves" could attack the greatest nation that ever existed.

Terrorism was the best thing that happened to George Bush and the Republicons. In short, 2001 was one big yawn until September Eleventh. Prior to that tragedy, the White House was fumbling for footing, and the country remained badly divided as a result of the 2000 election. By relentlessly harping on Iran, Syria, radical Islamists, Hamas, al-Qaida and terrorist threats to the homeland, the GOP was able to divert attention from their real agenda of crushing the working class, devastating the environment and recasting democratic America into a corporate oligarchy.

Get a grip, folks. We can't have a rational discussion about Guantanamo, wiretapping, torture, et al. until we understand that terrorism now is a fact of life that we need to put into perspective. Let's ease back on the "Sturm und Drang" and keep the realistic threat, appropriate responses and other 99.9% of daily living in context. If an attack did come, how bad could it be? There are no nuclear submarines sitting off our coasts ready to vaporize New York and Los Angeles. We're not talking here about multiple-tipped ICBMs peeking at us over the North Pole promising Mutually Assured Destruction, nuclear winter and the demise of the human race.

Would Osama like to nuke us? No doubt. But given our and his respective capabilities and technologies, what's the worst that could actually happen? The "24" favorites of terrorists schlepping multiple nukes around in panel trucks or releasing highly contagious biotoxins into hotel air handlers make for great television but hardly the basis for homeland security.

Experts say one, possibly two, radiological dispersal devices, or dirty bombs, set off in a couple of major cities is the most we can expect. Their blast effect is negligible, but the radiation would make the affected areas uninhabitable for years and kill hundreds within a 20-block radius. We've actually already witnessed the havoc a dirty bomb could wreak. It was called Katrina. More likely, we're told, the attack will come in the form of conventional explosives, possibly employing lethal chemical gas.

No one wants to see anyone die. But just as we do with every other peril in life, we make a risk assessment, taking into consideration the cost-benefit ratio. You'll never die in an auto accident if you never get into a car, but you've determined the return on driving far outweighs the possibility of dying.

So it is with terrorist threats. The chance of being injured or dying in a attack on the U.S. or on a U.S. airliner is much less than being struck by lightening. Or conversely, dying as a result of smoking, an unhealthy diet, pollution generated emphysema, accidental gunshot, medical malpractice or even an array of home-based accidents like slipping in the bathtub. Would that we expended as much angst over things we can affect as those we can't.

There are real threats that warrant our vigilance, and one of them is right-wing scaremongers whipping up terrorism frenzy and keeping Americans in a near constant neurotic state. Cheney blurts out that Obama is making America less safe although he no longer has access to any secret information, and a new government terrorist threat assessment finds "no specific, credible threat of a new attack on U.S. soil." Let's remember every time we hear Cheney bloviate that 9/11 happened on his watch when he did have access to secret intelligence and after a specific, credible threat that al-Qaida intended to fly airplanes into American buildings.

There's an old newspaper truism that "if it bleeds, it ledes." Gore, violence, tragedy and, above all, fear. And terrorism has it all; suicide bombers, beheadings, explosive-laden cars, hostage takings (always better if they're cute, female and white of course) and evil caricatures. It's made to order to sell papers and grab viewers. As it was for the Bush administration, playing the terrorist card to rationalize everything from invading Iraq to tax cuts for the rich, the Mexican wall, Arctic drilling to the Republicon's age-old dream of dismantling civil liberties and social progress.

What they didn't use terrorism to rationalize was protecting manufacturing and high tech jobs (that could come in handy in a global war), increasing fuel efficiency (to wean America off Middle East oil) or controlling the deficit (to reduce reliance on foreign lenders). Coincidentally, none of which are on the GOP "honey-do" list. Imagine that.

Sure, we need to do everything possible to diminish the chances of attack -- including revisiting America's policies like torture, rendition and detention that create the caldron for the terrorist stew. But until we crush every potential terrorist -- unlikely, or change our imperialistic ways -- double unlikely, terrorism is going to be with us, just as it has been in Europe and Asia for a century.

So get over it!