Difficile est satiram non scribere.
(It is difficult not to write satire.)
--Juvenal
Another Guantanamo Base Translator Arrested
Tue September 30, 2003 05:33 PM ET
By Greg Frost
BOSTON (Reuters) - A civilian translator at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for al Qaeda and Taliban suspects was charged on Tuesday with lying to federal officials about apparently classified documents that he was carrying when he arrived in the United States from Egypt.
The arrest of Ahmed Fathy Mehalba on Monday brought to three the number of people detained after being assigned to work at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba where nearly 680 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members are held without charge.
Some commentators have suggested that the United States might not have had to rely quite so heavily on foreign-born translators if the military had not discharged several translators-in-training upon learning that they were homosexual. The military, however, disagrees. “We’d much rather have a bunch of spies working for us than gay men. Spies you can shoot. With the way the courts are now, we can’t even beat Gays up like we used to,” said Lt. Rock Macho, of the Guantanamo Bay Manly-Men association. “Spies can carry away your secrets, but if you were to let actual gay men into a military base like Gitmo, they could spread their gay germs all over the base. If that happened, we’d be defenseless against the Cubans, who sent all their homosexuals to Miami.”
Barry Rodgers, of the Southeastern Gay Pride Task force, disagreed. “First of all, Gayness isn’t a disease, spread by germs. It’s an orientation, spread by exposure to high-school drama productions. Secondly, most gay men are – for reasons beyond my comprehending – loyal to this country and eager to serve it in the war against terror, as long as they can do so in a tasteful way.”
Asked if the military might relax its anti-Gay rules for non-combat positions to fill desperately needed positions in, e.g., interpreting, Lt. Macho demurred “If we do that, the terrorist have won.” When this reporter suggested that the fundamentalist Islamic minds behind al-Qaeda were unlikely to be pushing a homosexual-rights agenda, Lt. Macho spit, scratched himself, burped, then said “Real men shoot things. Real men win wars. Do the math.”
(Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product. The rest is the fakey part.)
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