Ayatollahs Stock Up On Sunscreen

If I were a political or military leader of Iran, Syria, North Korea, and any country with large oil reserves, I would be treading lightly right now, after hearing that the Bush administration is negotiating with Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen to accept transfer of their nationals who are currently imprisoned at Guantanomo Bay. If these negotiations go as expected, 70% of the prisoners currently at Gitmo will be gone. Hmmm...wonder what's up...who's going to be filling up all those vacant cells? Matthew Waxman, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs (yup, we need an a Defense Dept official whose only job is to handle detainee affairs) claimed that this was a normal process, ``We, the US, don't want to be the world's jailer. We think a more prudent course is to shift that burden onto our coalition partners.'' It would have been nice if they took the same approach in coalition building for jailing prisoners as they did in actually invading a country. Of course, then it would be difficult to see that all the spoils of war go to Halliburton.