"They hung themselves with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bed sheets," Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris told reporters in a conference call from the U.S. base in southeastern Cuba.
"They have no regard for human life," he said. "Neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us."
Gen. John Craddock, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said "They're determined, intelligent, committed elements and they continue to do everything they can ... to become martyrs in the jihad."
I’m still mulling over that phrase, “asymmetric warfare,” that came out of the mouth of the commandant of Gitmo, one Rear Admiral Harry Harris, who said of the suicides of three of his inmates, as quoted and highlighted above, “I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us." This absolutely stunning gobbet of cold, Orwellian doublespeak was served up with martial élan like a bit of ahi tuna fresh from the knife of a sushi chef. I suspect it may be the soundbyte heard ‘round the world. I googled the phrase and to my naïve surprise I found that asymmetric warfare is to military theorists what theodicy is to theologians—papers and books are written about it, symposiums and conference dedicated to it held on a regular basis. This does not make the use of this phrase any less odious in the context of the suicide of prisoners held without charge and without prospect of release or open trial for years—rather more so, to my mind. To coin my own newspeak, this is milporn, or babblekill. But when I listened to El Commandante Harris voice the words, the adjective that came to mind was pathetic. Harris gave voice to the pathetic and aggrieved bleat of a lonely and self deluded Imperium, a Goliath bloated with its own lies, served up with a heapin’ helpin’ of the slings and arrows of outrageous davies. Gitmo gives a new meaning to “all you can eat.” Where’s the barf bag on this vomit comet?
