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Oh, my. On one level, I feel sorry for the staffer who fell for this, but on the other, it's so stupid that either McConnell's staff is unsupervised or incompetent.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell broke it down in this manner: “The letter is actually asking an Assistant Secretary of Defense if GiTMO Bay al Qaeda detainees are getting—not just veterans’ benefits—but the enhanced veterans benefits of the post 9/11 G.I. bill. You got that? Mitch McConnell’s staff wants to know if the Obama administration is giving veterans’ benefits to the people the Obama administration believes would like to blow up America.”
In the constituent’s note, which was also uncovered by Wired magazine, the individual points out that there was no information about this online, not even on the Pentagon’s website. Instead, the constituent [says] the only place such a claim can be found is in an article on The Duffel Blog, a military news satire website.
I cannot imagine that his staffer or her supervisor bothered to actually read the blog post, because if they had, they might have questioned this:
DoD spokesman Wesley Manheim said that it was all a matter of fairness, “The DoD has been doing everything it can to prevent torture from being used against detainees at GiTMO. By allowing the detainees to use the Department of Veterans Affairs, we hope to completely crush their souls with bureaucracy, which to be noted, is completely different from torture. I mean hell, the V.A. does that to our veterans on a daily basis.”
The front page of that blog is hysterical, and also quite obviously a competitor with The Onion for best satire and parody site. There's no way anyone could take it seriously, not with headlines like "Method Actor Prepared For Bin Laden Role By Founding Al Qaeda Cell, Blowing Up Bus Station" and more.
Or I should say, anyone who was thinking rather than reacting. I'll bet you twenty bucks that young staffer just graduated from Liberty University. Any takers?
