by digby
This is nice:
Lying to the world about the Guantanamo inmates being huge Fifty Shades of Grey fans is one of the least disturbing things to happen at the prison, but it still isn't cool. On Sunday, defense attorney James Connell said he suspected military commanders told members of Congress about the prisoners' passion for the smutty novel as "a joke or some kind of disinformation." His client, Ammar al-Baluchi, says the next night guards put the book in his cell. "He says, 'No thank you.' He does not want the book," said Connell, whose client gave him the book. "It's in my safe and as soon as I am able I will return it to Joint Task Force Guantanamo." Connell said of the apparent taunting, "If this is a practical joke it has gone too far."Nah. It's all good fun, amirite?
I'm old enough to remember when people cared about torture and civil liberties during the big bad Bush years and one of the hallmarks of their twisted regime was a total obsession with Muslim sexytime and a vacuous adherence to the notion that they could manipulate Muslim prisoners by making them all uncomfortable with wimmins and their dirty parts. This alleged interrogation strategy often revealed more about their own hang ups than anything else. And Abu Ghraib was the most glaring example of where that leads.
It was very popular during the early years after 9/11 to regale people with lurid tales of "The Arab Mind" as if they were aliens from another planet. I thought maybe it had gotten old, but it would appear that this sort of thing still works very well on gullible members of congress.
I do not believe for one moment that it was a joke. They just figured they could pull one over on lunatics like Louis Gohmert. Why wouldn't they? It's been proved more than once that at least half of the congress will believe anything, especially if it's something that makes them feel all funny down there.
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