La Habra, California - Just Another Stop In Gitmo America:
So, like, on August 7, when terrorism expert and former Justice Department prosecutor John Loftus, speaking on Fox "News," gave out the exact address of a Southern California home that allegedly was the residence of the leader of the group that committed the London bombings, it should have perhaps occurred to him that he might be wrong. Because otherwise, he'd be a stupid fuck whose credibility would be worthless, even as he spouts happy bullshit like that he "believes that we may be witnessing the death throes of the fundamentalist terror states, and the birth of a renaissance of modernity in the Middle East."

And, of course, potentially evil Middle Easterner Iyad K. Hilal hadn't lived at the La Habra residence for three years. And, of course, it was a middle class white couple with three kids who now lived there. And, in a sign that perhaps Americans are a bit more color-blind than we might think, the family's been harassed, and their home's been vandalized, with the strange word "Terrist" spray-painted on it, which could also mean they're fond of terriers or just like to rip shit up.

Fox hasn't done anything more than offer a one-sentence "d'oh" to the L.A. Times (and Loftus wrote an apology to the family). But nothin' on the air, something that might remove the taint of the violent Other from the Vorick home. While Fox deserves even more scorn and pointing and laughing, let's not let the vigilantes who are attacking the Voricks off the hook. They are pathetic, worthless dungheaps, unable to articulate anything more than "Terrist bad" and rage at the full moon for daring to take away the shadows they cower in, piss bucket opportunists who only need to be told where to bring the mob so, hunched over and grunting, they can lynch and burn, lynch and burn, without the niceties of trial, the delays of due process, and cavort and cackle like crazed jackals over the carrion corpses of the dead. In this way, they are just like the Bush administration.

This is Gitmo America, where guilt need only be implied for us to be willing to allow torture, psychological and otherwise, to be heaped upon the accused. If the military and the government in general can tolerate and advocate the good of "pressure" tactics to squeeze information out of people who may be innocent, then it's a fine way to drive a potential terrorist out of the neighborhood.

And Loftus, so plump with speaking fees, said that he gave out the information based on "the best information we had at the time." Is that the unimpeachable excuse for every massive fuck-up now? You know, "the best information we had at the time" said that blacks were mentally inferior to whites who could be best served by being slaves. "The best information we had at the time" said that Native Americans were subhuman savages who needed to be slaughtered. "The best information we had at the time" told Colin Powell that Iraq had WMDs. If you tell your one-night stand that she can't catch your herpes from sucking you off, and then she does and does get your herpes, you can say you were working on the best information you had at the time. In other words, "the best information we had at the time" is the catch-all bullshit for every time you operate out of willful ignorance, outright lies, and stupidity. It's a cop-out. It's a way of saying that you're wrong now, but, shit, you weren't wrong then, when, really, and, c'mon, if you're wrong, you're fuckin' wrong, no matter when.

Sure, Loftus said he was sorry and that "mistakes happen." But mistakes don't just happen. People make mistakes. Slavering publicity whores make mistakes when they're dry humping the press machine for bigger speaking fees and book contracts. Perhaps they forget that to win a case as a prosecutor, you have to prove something "beyond a reasonable doubt." Ahh, but that's such pre-9/11 thinkin', no?

Oh, and the swarthy Middle-Easterner who used to live there, Iyad Hilal? He's a Garden Grove, CA grocery store owner who has gone into hiding with his family. Hilal says he broke off ties to the Muslim group accused of being a terrorist organization in 1997 when he "didn't agree with certain ideologies that were being put forth" at a London conference. Bakri Mohammed, the cleric who said Hilal was head of the U.S. branch of the group, called the U.S. branch a small group of "reformers."

But Gitmo America has no place for such shadings. It's just rights and wrongs, blacks and whites, might and right.