Al Qaeda's Caribbean Vacation

The Afghans are a people that play kids games with rocks. After two decades of war, there aren’t too many kids left, there, but they still have plenty of bomb-scorched, bullet-scarred rocks.

With no economy to speak of, rocks were the prime durable export items during the rule of the Taliban. Rocks and terrorists, of course.

Now that the war on terrorism in Afghanistan is winding down, it appears that Islamic guerillas remain a principal export commodity. More of them are arriving daily at the American military base in Cuba at Camp X-Ray.

Human rights advocates around the world have their shorts in the wringer over alleged abuses being committed against dedicated Muslim murderers who would rather shoot you than look at you. John Walker Lindh got a one-way ticket home to America and a date in a mainland U.S. federal courtroom because, after all, he is an American.

But something had to be done about the remaining dangers to Afghan society and their American protectors. We’re talking about the baddest of the bad.

The logic that went into providing 158 of Osama bin Laden’s best friends with an all expenses paid Caribbean vacation is irrefutable. After all, on an island, they’re quarantined. If they managed to escape (a highly unlikely outcome), they become Fidel Castro’s problem. And being spirited away to a military base on an island that’s off-limits to most Americans was probably intended to keep most U.S. journalists from pleading the terrorist’s case in the courtroom of public opinion.

That hasn’t kept the kneejerk liberals from trying, though. Still the detainees have been given genuine, government-issue, prayer skullcaps and Korans. Tea and pita bread have become staples of their daily diet. They’re even given their own water bottles, just so long as they don’t abuse the privilege and sprinkle-baptise their western captors.

A delegation of 20 American congressmen have toured the facility to verify the existence of humane living conditions at the camp. We’ve been told the detainees live in open-air cells topped with corrugated tin roofs, surrounded by chain link fence, constructed on concrete slabs. Primitive to be sure but not that far removed from the Kabul Howard Johnson’s.

Oh, several of the detainees have gotten into trouble for sneaking rocks into their cells. Military police are unsure whether they intend to use them to play more Afghan kids’ games or bash in some unsuspecting American’s head.

Did that last statement seem a bit redundant?

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