Uncle Sam: "Got Any Enemy Combatants I Can Buy"

Word is out that the U.S. offered bounties for captives it could label as "enemy combatants" or perhaps "prisoners of war". One U.S. military officer was quoted as saying he was sent to Afghanistan with a suitcase full of cash ($3,000,000 worth) to use in firming up relations with Afghan warlords. What better way to cozy up to warlords than to pay for people you can imprison, thus benefiting the warlord and the U.S. military!

Of course, who knows if the captive brought in for bounty is actually a combatant at all! Maybe it was someone’s unpopular cousin. Maybe it was a deserter who got caught and given the ultimate punishment — turned over to the Americans. Maybe these people never fired a gun in anger at anyone, much less the Americans. But if bounty money is available, you got to take advantage of it — right!

No wonder so many detainees at Guantanomo say they are totally innocent. They probably are. They probably got snatched up, Shanghaied by their own people in exchange for a thousand bucks.

It would be interesting to know how many detainees in American military prisons were actually taken captive in battle; versus how many were either obtained for bounties from strangers, and how many were simple rounded up in house to house neighborhoods searches by the U.S. military.

Remember the old WWII movies about the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation? Remember how those damned Nazis used to just break in doors and haul off people for interrogation? Remember how the poor French women would scream and sob? That is what is happening now in Iraq and Afghanistan. Except that the Nazis have been replaced by boys from Paducah and Dubuque and El Paso. They raid homes and take any male between 12 and 60 and lock them up so they can be processed for "information". I wonder if any of them are offered bounties to tell on their neighbors and relatives?