The New York Times is campaigning to shut down Gitmo , the facility housing enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay.

Their primary talking point is that the prisoners there suffer “despair.” An editorial on Monday spoke of a “netherworld of despair.” Human Rights Watch has chimed in with “incredible despair”. And this morning the Times runs an op-ed headlined “Detainees in Despair” written by someone who has been released from Gitmo.

It contains this line: “I made the mistake of listening to my older brother and going to Afghanistan on what I thought was a dream vacation.” Somehow, he acknowledges, he ended up in an al-Qaeda training camp.

Don’t you hate when that happens? You consult your travel agent, you read your Fodor’s and the Times travel section and you think you’re on your way to Club Med Kandahar but instead of playing tennis and windsurfing you end up firing Kalashnikovs and assembling I.E.D.s. It could happen to anyone.

My Scripps Howard column later this week will tackle this issue.