Location location location: Has Gitmo just bought a new home in Kabul? Yeah.

When I was in Afghanistan a year ago, I kept hearing odd rumors about something called "the new Guantanamo".

"They are building a huge new prison facility here," I was told again and again.

"Where? Where are they building it?" I asked.

"Here in Afghanistan, right outside of Kabul. The Justice Sector Support Program of the US State Department is building it."

"But why?"

"It's going to replace Gitmo. They are going to close down Guantanamo and move all of the prisoners here."

"Close down Guantanamo? That can't be true. That will never happen," I always replied. "Bush would never close down Guantanamo." Would he?

Apparently he would.

According to a recent CNN report, "The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and move the terror suspects there to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned." So. It sounds like the deal is on. Apparently Bush has gone ahead and hired his real estate ladies to go and check out prices on houses in the highly popular Pul-i-Charkhi suburb of Kabul.

According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, "UNODC is overseeing a major new project at Pul-i-Charkhi.... Next door the Americans are renovating a block to house suspected terrorists, including Afghans who have been held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay." Pul-i-Charkhi is one of the most notorious prisons in the world, its only major competitor in the notorious-prison contest being an up-and-coming suburb of Baghdad called Abu Ghraib. Go George!

Location is everything.

PS: If anyone wants to publish my book, please let me know before July 13. It has a whole chapter on Afghanistan containing everything you would ever want to know about funky old Kabul under the American occupation. Everybody will want a copy of this book! It should be a best-seller. My current working title for this masterpiece is "Lost in Baghdad: A Fun Guide to Touring George Bush's Crime Scenes in the Middle East".

After mid-July, I'm going to be working on an AIDS project and will no longer have time to write about GWB's crime scenes in the Middle East. But that's okay. I'm tired of writing about Bush's crime scenes in the Middle East. They are so obvious and varied that even a middle-school child could write about them. Let Ms. Olson's sixth grade class take over this job. Why should I continue to pound sand down a rat hole? I gots better things to do.

Everyone knows what Bush's crimes in the Middle East are but no one is doing anything about them. Americans just sit here and watch this terrible train-wreck happening yet nobody here is calling an ambulance or trying to stop it from happening again. So why should I bother? Why should I keep reporting and reporting on this disaster that will eventually drag all of America down with it -- when nobody in America seems to even have enough wisdom or energy or common sense to even try to GET UP OFF THE FREAKING TRACKS.

PPS: There are only a few more days left for me to be available to re-embed in Iraq before my work with the AIDS program begins -- but I'm still not getting any response from my impassioned pleas to CentCom Baghdad, the State Department or the DoD to let me embed. WHY aren't they letting me embed? It doesn't make sense. I have excellent credentials. And I'm an American patriot. Heck, they even let Oliver freaking NORTH embed and he's the person who single-handedly caused the freaking Iran-Contra arms trade scandal. Oliver North gets to trade with the freaking ENEMY and still gets embedded yet I'M the one getting blackballed? That makes no sense.

Just because I asked John McCain a freaking question at a freaking press conference in Baghdad I'm not being allowed to re-embed? That's un-American! All I did was ask McCain a question that every other reporter in America dying to ask but apparently doesn't have the nerve. "After the disaster caused by bombing Iraq, are they still planning to go ahead and bomb Iran too?" And they are blackballing me for that? Huh? Should I have sold arms to America's enemies instead? Apparently that would have gotten me back in.

If I have to do things that are not in America's best interest -- including giving Bush and his corrupt friends a free pass -- in order to get embedded in Iraq these days, please count me out.