While the pundits and public debate the merits of keeping the detention centers at Guantanamo Bay open, no such debate is taking place in the Bush regime. Why?

You don't have to dig far to find out why. Last year, Halliburton received another construction contract for work on yet another prison facility there. This $30 million contract was not the first for a company that was Dick Cheney's former employer and where Cheney continues to have incredibly valuable stock options in the company. It is extremely unlikely that this will be the last Halliburton contract at Gitmo.

Throughout the War on Terror, protecting the country has been of little or no concern to the Bush regime, which is far more interested in justifying bilking the taxpayers than fighting terrorism. If Bush cronies could make money by handing bombs to bin Laden, the Bush regime would do everything possible to facilitate the transaction.

People for the American Way has started an online campaign calling for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the Bush Administration's domestic spying program.

http://action.pfaw.org/SpecialProsecutor

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' public statements have made clear that he is unwilling or unable to conduct the independent, objective, criminal investigation that is needed to resolve the legal issues involving warrantless NSA spying. Gonzales' efforts to spin the massive spying on Americans eliminate any credibility he would have to address the issue.

A special prosecutor is desperately needed to independently investigate the Bush Regime's domestic spying activities, bring criminal charges, and make sure that nobody is above the law.

When were the local police informed?

Was a police report filed?

If so, will that police report be made public?

Have the Secret Service agents present at the time been deposed?

Will those Secret Service agents be deposed later?

Was the shooting victim wearing the bright orange clothing hunters usually wear?

The latest news about Dick Cheney's alleged hunting accident raises some serious questions.

Why was there a one-day delay between the time of the shooting and the reports of it in the media?

Has Dick Cheney been tested to find out if he was under the influence of alcohol, prescription drugs, or illegal drugs at the time of the shooting?

Has there been a medical exam to determine if Cheney is suffering from Alzheimer's or some other kind of senile dementia, which might have contributed to or caused the shooting?

Were there any personal disagreements or hostilities that Cheney might have harbored towards the man he shot, hostilities which the man who was shot had no knowledge of?

Would an ordinary person have been arrested under the same circumstances?

Will Cheney be placed under arrest?

Will the corporate media ask any of these questions, or will they assume their typical role as propagandists for the GOP?

Much has been made of the twelve famous cartoons mocking Islam and its founder, Mohammad. However, there is a thirteenth cartoon which deserves considerable attention.

It appeared in the satirical French publication, Charlie-Hebdo, along with the twelve more famous cartoons.

View the Cartoons

The cartoon, at the upper left of the gallery, shows a saddened and angry Mohammad saying, "C'est dur d'être aimé par des cons" ( It's tough to be loved by morons). This cartoon deserves far more attention than the original ones that have caused the wave of anger, protest, and terrorism.

I wonder how many of the Muslim fundamentalists have realized that their wave of hysteria has resulted in millions of people seeing cartoons that otherwise would have been unknown to all but a few readers of an obscure Danish publication.

Ayaan Hirsi, a Somali-Dutch member of Holland's parliament, has backed the decision of Jyllands Posten to publish the cartoons which have depicted the founder of Islam in an unfavorable light and the decisions of other papers to republish them.

Today the open society is challenged by Islamism.

Note: I think the BBC could have done a better job of translating the quote.

Ms. Hirsi describes herself as a "dissident of Islam." She has praised some of Mohammad's teachings, while condemning the founder of Islam's decree that gays and apostates should be killed.

Even the commentary of Ahmed M. Rehab, director of communications for the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Chicago, offers some hope. Although the author does not adequately defend the free speech rights of the publishers, there is a recognition that the response is inappropriate.

Muslims would do well to consider angry and destructive mobs as a personal insult to the Prophet, who preached that "the best amongst you are those who can reign themselves in when angered."

One can only hope that the feeding frenzy of religious extremism will subside.

The current wave of Muslim fundamentalist insanity is becoming a source of international terrorism. A Danish lawyer was shot in Russia by an Islamic terrorist. Terrorist mobs have attacked Danish and other European embassies.

If Muslims are offended by Islam being equated with terrorism in the cartoons, you would think that there wouldn't be so many Muslims trying to prove the cartoons right.

Australian commentator Tim Blair has taken the courageous step of republishing the cartoons on his blog as have newspapers in many European countries, Israel, and in New Zealand. I hope that more people on the left stand up for freedom and secular values. People like George W. Bush would like nothing more than to see the left give in to the notion that critiques and satire of religion are forbidden. Freedom of expression always must come before religious extremism.

It's funny how George W. Bush and Tony Blair talk tough about terrorism when they want to justify an illegal war in Iraq, but they refuse to stand up to these terrorist threats and publish the cartoons on the web sites of their respective governments.

Civilized people who have followed the controversy over a few cartoons depicting Islam and Mohammed unfavorably have to be concerned by the firestorm of madness that has burst forth among militant, fundamentalist Muslims.

One could see why Muslims might disagree or object to the cartoons, but the reactions of most of the Muslim world have gone farther than that. There have been unreasonable demands that governments that do not control the media should apologize, undermining freedom of the press and freedom of expression. Even worse, fanatics have demanded that governments punish newspapers that publish the cartoons, even though this violates every developed standard of human behavior.

The worst has come from the terrorists whose bomb threats forced the Danish government and publishing newspaper to apologize when neither had any reason to do so. Religions, like all other human instutitions, are perfectly fair game for satire and ridicule. It is interesting to note that the French paper that republished the cartoons, and then fired the editor in a craven act, also published cartoons ridiculing Christ.

Also, it would be a mistake to portray this merely as a problem between Islam and Christianity and Judaism. Phony nations like Pakistan would never have become states if so many Muslims did not insist on imposing their religion on the government. Many of the world's civil wars are resulting from the obsession that Muslim-majority regions of countries have to split off and form Islamic republics. Many Muslims are as willing to trample on the rights of Hindus and Sikhs as the rights of anyone else. And, do not think for a minute that atheism is tolerated in a Muslim fundamentalist regime like the one in Saudi Arabia.

Of course, the large Christian Right here in the US shows that all religious extremism is dangerous. However, the latest incident and the terrorist campaign against Salman Rushdie have heightened the sense that many Muslims are not merely violent in response to bad social conditions or government policies. Terrorism over minor slights suggests that there is something qualitatively different between Islam and all of the other religions of the world.

I have always hoped that Muslims and non-Muslims could coexist, but the fact that so few Muslims have even disagreed publicly with this insanity, much less condemned it, makes me wonder. It would be a shame if the right actually is correct when it claims that Islam is incompatible with civilization. This would be a sad time for the right-wing's stopped clock to be correct.