This is just wrong. Someone in the military chain of command either dropped the ball (making them criminally negligent) or held these children for about 2 years out of misguided malice (making them simple criminals).

Three Afghan boys freed last week from US custody in Cuba are back home with their families.
The boys – thought to be aged between 13 and 15 – were the youngest detainees at the controversial Guantanamo base. …
In August, the US general running Guantanamo agreed they should be released, but said he was awaiting orders from senior defence officials.

I know that everyone here on the Backporch is already thinking they’re gonna make the switch to Pepsi so they can start collecting iTunes credits, so this link may be moot.

With the Tune Recycler, you can send us your unwanted iTunes bottlecap codes and we’ll use them to support independent music. Easy for you, and good for musicians.

Looks like the Feds are looking into JT and JJ’s Super Bowl half-time half-dressed bawdry show. (As good protesting citizens, we were tuned to CNN during the climax, but I had it all downloaded before the 4th quarter.) I think they need to take a few steps back, though. As we pointed out to Steve and Betc, who had brought over their two lovely little girls, during the very first minute of Miss Jackson’s (yes, I’m nasty) opening number: “Do you want to explain to your daughter what a ball gag is?”

Of course I have my own opinions on this (read: it’s bad), but does anyone think that this is okay?

I suppose one could make the argument that in a civilized society we can’t tell people what to do with their free time. (Or who to spend it with for that matter). I’ve never been duck hunting, but I think there’s probably a lot of down time spent chatting (usually with beer). But it just seems like such a conflict of interest. 2 men, alone, in a tiny wooden box in the middle of nowhere — you can’t tell me they don’t talk politics.

Tee-hee. Secret Squirrel has a guest spot working for Bush for this week’s episode of The Modern World. There’s a 50% chance Tom Tomrrow hit the nail on the head, but I’m more expecting Bush to decide that destroying the U.S. decades-old intelligence processes was more beneficial (for us) than the damage (to fur’ners) created by acting on bad intelligence.