Ruling through fear

The first sentence, from the Yahoo! article: "The White House said Thusday that dangerous detainees at Guantanamo Bay could end up walking Main Street U.S.A. as a result of last month's Supreme Court ruling about detainees' legal rights.

Then, to further drive in the point, lest we didn't get it clearly enough, White House Spokesperson Dana Perino states: "I'm sure that none of us want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed walking around our neighborhoods."

All of this is in reference to the Supreme Court ruling in Boumediene v. Bush, which did not release any detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Instead, what it did was allowed those detainees the rights of habeas corpus, a Constitutional guarantee, where they could challenge the legality of their detention before a court instead of an ISRT. But that's not what's important, at least, not to the White House. What's important is that we have something we can use to attack the "Activist Court," and prey upon the fears of Joe and Jane American, who may believe (and I'm sure there are already several blogs echoing this charge) that all the detainees there are terrorists who have tried to kill Americans or will absolutely do so the first chance they get.

Here's the thing, though. The detainees are challenging the sufficiency of their detention - they are in fact saying they are innocent. And they might be. And if they are innocent, then would anyone really have a problem with them walking down Main Street U.S.A.? And more to the point - if they are innocent, then at some point they would be freed anyway, presumably, and then would be free to roam across America. Unless, and this could be the case, the White House intended to hold them until they died and just never give them the opportunity to walk across America. But that's OK, because they get three squares a day, medical care, and get to read from the Qu'ran, so they should be happy.

What I find interesting is the timing of the article. The attack on our sense of security, what one might refer to as a "Rovian" tactic, comes right on the heels of the announcement that a former Karl Rove assistant will be taking charge of day-to-day operations of McCain's campaign.

You see, you can't attack a candidate as being soft on terror until you remind people that we're just a moment away from a "Mushroom Cloud." I'm not saying that the two incidents are connected; I'm just noting there's a very interesting timing in the press release and the appointment of a 2004 campaign staffer...