Terrorist Watch

The killing of Osama bin Laden and the clues which led US forces to his doorstep provided a welcome and interesting contrast to the methods the Bush administration touted as being essential to investigating would-be terrorists.  Specifically, the fact that the clues leading to bin Laden weren't gathered via "enhanced interrogation" methods (AKA torture), but through normal interrogation and good old fashioned detective work.

Yet, one item from the Bush era and the Guantanamo Bay detainees illustrated just how petty and unfocused his team's approaches were:

If al-Qaida could learn anything from the latest classified documents released by WikiLeaks, it would be this: Lose the Casio watch. More specifically, lose the Casio F-91W — either the black plastic or silver bracelet version.

That particular watch came up nearly 150 times in the cache of Guantanamo prisoner assessments from the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo, which made up the bulk of the latest WikiLeaks release. It is clear from a review of those documents that if you have a Casio F-91 (selling for as little as $9.99 on Amazon.com), you're suspect.

Yes, merely having an inexpensive, durable, and basic watch like the Casio F-91W was enough to make you a suspect.  Which is precisely why I ordered mine the day I heard about this stupid story.

 

[caption id="attachment_1158" align="aligncenter" width="717" caption="Terror Watch! (hehe, get it? GET IT?!)"][/caption]

 

Whereas Bush's people were running around checking your clothing accessories, Obama's people followed a much more disciplined and methodical approach to tracking down bad guys, which paid off for Obama's administration far more than it did for Bush.  Maybe I will get added to this list of detainees making the fashion faux pas of wearing the same model watch?