I don’t know how many Americans have been dismayed at the breast-beating of the British elite and much of the British media over the apparent (and in most cases alleged) condition of the Al-Qaeda fighters currently cooped up in Cuba.
Incantations of solicitous concern for their welfare jostle for front page space with dire warnings to the US government about the consequences of ignoring the Geneva Convention. The BBC has just stopped short of launching ‘Taliban-Aid’
It’s all a delicious irony really. Most of these Guardianistas would pay good money to be hooded, handcuffed and pushed around by big, burly men in uniform
Maybe the Americans have been disappointed by all this, maybe not. Maybe they couldn’t care less. But in the event that they have been taken aback then let them take heart from, of all places, the Richard and Judy Show
The ‘Richard and Judy Show’ is a daytime magazine programme aimed strictly at the ‘British Street’, and the female part of that street to boot. It is wall-to-wall gossip, recipes, beauty tips, agony aunts, fashion reviews and is wildly popular. Occasionally, though, the producers like to get serious and hold a phone-in poll on some hot current topic or other. Yesterday that topic was the Al-Qaeda prisoners in Cuba and was their treatment fair or unfair?
Some 5000 viewers phoned in. The result? 8% thought their treatment was unfair and a whopping 92% thought that the US was doing the right thing
Assuming that these kind of polls are an accurate reflection of grassroots opinion then clearly pro-Amercian feelings are far thicker on the ground than they are in the lofty towers of the political/media nomenklatura and yet another indication of the ever-widening gap between the people of Britain and the establishment that rules over them
