A day that really helped

Indonesia bans giving money to beggars in Jakarta.

Every time I see an excerpt from one of the detainee hearings at Guantanamo, someone on the panel says something remarkably naive and/or ignorant – no, I’m gonna go with “clueless.” The AP has got hold of some transcripts, and here’s a panel member, simply amazed after being told that some of the prisoners actually tell untruths to their interrogators: “Why do you feel you have the right to lie to the interrogators?” The right? Like he is under some obvious moral obligation to truthfully answer the questions of people who seized him in Pakistan and have illegally kept him prisoner for several years now.

Actually, it turned out there was an answer. The prisoner explained that he had to lie, had to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear, because they would stop his medicine until he did so.

This morning Bush, as he put it, “commemorated the -- a day that really helped -- or it did define our nation, which is 9/11/2001.” No, no freudian slip there.

Earlier, he went outside for a moment of looking down, all squinty and solemn-like, then looking around furtively to see what everyone was doing silence.