Wait, wait, are you kidding me? Is this real? Where does the U.S. get off building big prisons in other people's countries just willy-nilly? We already have less than 5 percent of the world's population but something like a quarter of the world's prisoners inside our own borders, and now tonight I've just come across this NYTimes report:

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come.

The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift American prison on the Bagram military base north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

[image from jsfbooks.com]