This article from the UK's Guardian is a mixed bag, which doesn't surprise me; it's a left-wing publication and is on the prowl for ways to criticize the US and the war on terror. They take the obvious -- we're not only not torturing Gitmo prisoners, we're giving them an extended Caribbean vacation and an education -- and turning it into a way to mock us, to point out that we kept three boys from their grieving families and threw their fathers into irredeemable debt, yadda yadda.
Debt? Yep. You see, one of the boys' dads had to pay all his neighbors to search for his son after he went missing, and now he can't pay back his creditors. How much would it have taken to get that family out of debt? Fifty dollars US? Why didn't the reporter just take care of it right then?
Can you imagine Elizabeth Smart's dad having to pay all his friends to come search for little Elizabeth when she went missing? No, see, in a nation which was begun by Christians, based on Christian principles, we do those kinds of things for our neighbors because it's the right thing to do.
Here's what the boys, the former Gitmo detainees, had to say:
The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. "Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don't have anything against them," [Naqibullah] said. "If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America."
Asadullah is even more sure of this. "Americans are great people, better than anyone else," he said, when found at his elder brother's tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul. "Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer -- or an American soldier."
Mmmm-hmmmmm.
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