Sitting with a Dick by the bay

In the current issue of In These Times Karen J. Greenberg offers up eight reasons to close Guantánamo. The eight reasons are all hard to argue with but I know that there are those who will wish to do so. In the interests of time I will put myself in the position of the Bush administration and rebut them point by point.

1. It is a legal no-man’s-land - "Exactly!"
2. It violates the Geneva Conventions - "Isn't that quaint"
3. Prisoners are degraded and abused - "And your point is?"
4. Prisoners have no way to prove their innocence - "They are all evil doers"
5. It undermines intelligence efforts - "So do we!"
6. It creates new enemies - "Thereby creating new and profitable opportunities for our friends in the death trade - I mean defence industry."
7. … and alienates our allies - "Only the Brits and Aussies are left anyway. Tony will be gone soon and Howard isn't looking too clever either"
8. It will signal a fundamental change of strategy in the war on terror - "Hey. She spelled it t-e-r-r-o-r. Dick I told you it was spelled t-e-r-r-o-r not t-e-r-r-a!"