This article from The Register (UK) is about the Navy's somewhat tasteless use on a Web site of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's description of the Guantanamo branch of the gulag as being "the least worst place" to store those captured in Afghanistan and declared by the sovereign will and knowledge of George W. Bush to be "enemy combatants": Guantanamo Bay loses 'least worst place' status - Navy 06/23/04.
The slogan has been removed from the Web site, as this paragraph mentions. But it's actually an aside that is even more attention-grabbing:
"The removal was ordered because the commanding officer did not feel it accurately reflected his vision of the base," said Navy spokesman Lieutenant Mike Kafka.
The reporter, Ashley Vance, clarifies for the readers:
(Yes, you're reading that correctly. A man named Kafka has been deployed to field questions about a prison where the criminals are only vaguely charged with crimes, can't speak to lawyers and likely will never get out.)
Via Michael Froomkin's Discourse.net blog.
Franz Kafka, of course, wrote a famous story called The Trial in which the defendent never knows what it is for which he is being tried. I've also seen a 1966 movie version starring Anthony Hopkins and Kyle MacLachlan. I remember the music as being especially good, but I don't believe the soundtrack was ever released.
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