"Nothing Will Be There"

DID YOU SEE where they're building new courthouses on Guantanamo Bay in anticipation of the impending trials of high level Al Qaeda operatives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. When the $10 million judicial complex is complete, it will be able to host up to 3 trials at once. Makes total sense. These suspects, which is all they are until ultimately proven guilty by at least some semblance of a court of law, have been sitting in severe restraints confined in a literal cage for up to 6 years in some cases; charged but not convicted of any illegal acts; undoubtedly tortured and abused; with no legal counsel -- and now the government is in some kind of haste to get the trials up and moving along. But remember, it's not fast justice, but good justice done quickly. McJustice, if you will.

Now, brace yourself, because this shocked me, absolutely floored me, never saw it coming, came out of nowhere. Turns out some company name of Halliburton got the original contract to build the prison back in 2005, part of a $500 million deal with the Pentagon. If you factor in other Halliburton subsidiaries, such as KBR's lucrative arrangements with the Department of Homeland Security, that figure balloons to the billions. But if you think this in any way influences policy decisions made by former Halliburton CEO and current Vice President Dick Cheney, well, that's just downright unpatriotic, you liberal terrorist appeaser you.

Won't be long before they start the bidding for corporate naming rights to the new judicial complex. I can see it now...

The Taco Bell Tribunal Tower.

The US Airways Adjudication Center.

In honor of George Bush's future think tank: The Super Fantastic Freedom Institute for Justice and Freedom.

Or maybe you wanna go all Orwellian: The Pat Tillman Institute for the Dispensation of Military Justice. Yeah, that sounds about right.

U.S. builds for future at Guantanamo by Jane Sutton

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Rows of khaki tents have sprung up on the old runway in front of the current court building and are being transformed into the temporary court complex ready to accommodate three simultaneous trials as soon as the appeals are resolved.

"What we don't want to do is have the process waiting on the facility to be constructed, so we're getting the facility in place, having it ready to go," Rear Admiral Mark Buzby said.

He described the complex as "expeditionary."

"It's not there to stay. It's there to come, do its mission and when the commissions are complete, whenever that is, it'll all go away, pack up the tents. Nothing will be there," Buzby said.

Nothing will be there indeed. You might say the same thing about America any longer taking the high road on the world stage, because even the monstrously depraved Nazis, whose victims numbered in the tens of millions, were treated more humanely after WWII ... which was the exact lesson, then as now, that a civilized world needed to learn.