Imperial Falconry
Today arrived the latest juicy episode in the NYT’s ongoing carnival of self-parody:
WASHINGTON — Last year, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia proposed an unorthodox way to return Guantánamo Bay prisoners to a chaotic country like Yemen without fear that they would disappear and join a terrorist group.
The king told a top White House aide, John O. Brennan, that the United States should implant an electronic chip in each detainee to track his movements, as is sometimes done with horses and falcons.
“Horses don’t have good lawyers,” Mr. Brennan replied.
What fun! Such perfect documentary evidence of the dehumanized imperial mind never landed on the screen of a bored New York ‘reporter’ in such a delightful little package. No self-respecting journalist could pass on the juicy animal simile, I suppose, but having once included it, our man Charlie Savage, long dead to any comedic inspiration, breathed a sigh of dusty air and coughed up the following:
That unusual discussion in March 2009 was one of hundreds recounted in a cache of secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of news organizations that reveal the painstaking efforts by the United States to safely reduce the population of the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba so that it could eventually be closed.
I thought the NYT had truly outdone itself with last week’s totally farcical story of the now wealthy Afghani con man who milked, quote, “lots of money” from enthusiastic US officials by pretending to be a senior Taliban leader. But it seems the funny valve must’ve burst long ago up at NYT hq, and yes, everyone realizes, and no, no one gives a damn anymore, now that they’ve gotten used to wading through the office every morning knee-deep in bullshit.
