Mr. Khalid's Neighborhood

Is anyone else out there -- like me -- starting to sense, however slightly, that the Bush White House has some desire to use fear mongering for their own political ends?

I suppose the sense of this started to dawn on me -- I dunno -- immediately when Bush was elected, when he started talking down the economy. And I've grown in the conviction (ha ha) that it's so! No one else has noticed that? OK, it must just be me...

But what do you make of this? The Supreme Court ruled that detainees at Guantanamo Bay have legal rights. In other words, being human beings, I guess, and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable right, among them apparently being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they have some right, however slight it may be, to know what they're charged with and to see some semblance of due process to determine their guilt or innocence. Shocking!

So here's the White House's spin on this, that now the detainees will be released and will be walking our streets! This from Dana Perino: "I'm sure that none of us want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed walking around our neighborhoods," referring to al-Qaida's former third in command.

Can you picture that? Khalid strolling down the block? "How you doin' today, Mrs. Brown?" "Great, Khalid, how's your wife?" "She's good. Oh, hello, Mr. B!" "Hey, Khalid, old man, glad to see you're finally out of Gitmo!" "Yeah, thanks, it was really just a little misunderstanding." Little Jenny's ball rolls across the road. Khalid tells him to stay put, "I'll get it for you, Jenny!" "Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies, Khalid?" "You have to ask? Let me see how much money I've got."