What happens in Anatolia, Las Vegas and Gitmo stays in Anatolia, Las Vegas and Gitmo

Bush issues a presidential message commemorating the Armenian genocide, while blurring it as much as possible. Guess what word he doesn’t use? Genocide. He twice calls it a “tragedy,” which is a word that does not entail responsibility, especially not Turkish responsibility. He calls it “the mass killings and forced exile of as many as 1.5 million Armenians,” which could mean that 3 people were killed and 1,497,993 were exiled or it could mean that 1,497,993 were killed and 3 people exiled.

But here’s my real beef with Bush: he went to Las freaking Vegas Monday and there’s not a single funny picture for me to use.

The Pentagon wants to put on trial a few of the Guantanamo prisoners, execute a few of them, release some of them (at some point in the future, so why is this news?), transfer others to prisons in their own countries, and declare some of them no longer combatants but continue to imprison them, like those Uighurs, because they can’t safely be sent back to their own countries. The LA Times headline for this, which is obviously inaccurate in so many ways, is “U.S. to Free 141 Terror Suspects.” And it entirely misses the other big Gitmo news: McDonald’s is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its Guantanamo store! Hurrah!