A news story has surfaced that claims Nigerian police are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

It says, “Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police, saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.” The story adds that there is a substantial belief in witchcraft in parts of Nigeria.

Bloggers say he was “a scapegoat.” Seems to me he’s not exactly a goat-to guy. I also wondered if wearing a wire as a police informant would have made him a Judas goat.

One fellow wanted to know “if they were going to lock him up in “Goatanamo — Goatmo for short.”

Speaking of the real Guantanamo Bay prison that President Obama wants to close, the Associated Press recently reported that a terrorism suspect released from there is now an al-Qaida commander in Yemen. It said at least 18 former Gitmo detainees have “returned to the fight” and 43 others may have resumed terrorist activities. What a surprise.

AP also reported that European Union countries, some of whom were highly critical of America because of Gitmo, now say they would take in certain of its prisoners after it shuts down, “but only after detailed screening to ensure they don’t import a terrorist.” About 60 of them may face abuse or even death if returned to their homelands — places like Algeria, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. (And they thought it was bad to be in a jail that’s run by Americans?)

Why are these jaspers at Gitmo in the first place? Most were captured under circumstances that would reasonably suggest they posed a major threat to civilized people, and nobody wanted them to get loose to work mischief in America. In Cuba, they would have nowhere to go, and there would be no federal judges to rule that their rights had been violated and free them.

Were some of them confined at Gitmo or other harsher and more clandestine sites by mistake? Maybe so, and as U.S. Sen. John McCain says, that’s taken too long to address.

Gitmo’s inmates are neither legitimate combatants nor ordinary criminal suspects, but are in a league of their own — the type that doesn’t observe the Geneva Convention which now protects it, but livestreams images of its brave warriors sawing the heads off their screaming captives.

One is a Canadian teenager who developed a compassionate following thanks to videos that showed him crying during interrogation. The sympathy ended when word got out he had killed an American soldier with a grenade. (How about some credit for the professionalism of that soldier’s well-disciplined buddies, who took him alive?)

History offers plenty of clues that we’re not as pure as some folks like to think.

Of the 45,000 Union soldiers who passed through the Andersonville prison camp run by the Confederates in Georgia, 13,000 died. Its equally hellish, but less notorious, Union counterpart was Camp Douglas in Chicago: 6,000 of the 26,000 Confederates it housed during the Civil War died there.

That was in the 1860s. An Alabama sheriff was jailed for contempt of court only a few weeks ago for feeding his prisoners what amounted to a starvation diet so he could pocket $212,000 in meal money he didn’t spend — and the law allowed him to do it.

McCain recently told CNN’s Larry King he believes it’s wise to close Guantanamo Bay. However, he is concerned about prisoners who remain a threat to the United States, even though there is insufficient evidence to prosecute them. He said it should not have taken years for the trials of Gitmo’s inmates to begin.

McCain also was a chief sponsor of a law recently enacted by Congress that bans cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of foreign detainees. He has said that harsh treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere only helps the recruitment efforts of al-Qaida and other terrorists.

Having spent more than five years as a Prisoner Of War in North Vietnam gives McCain a perspective I couldn’t argue with. At the same time, I cannot be critical of the things some of my friends tell me they found it necessary to do in that war and others. It is a nasty business that nobody can appreciate unless he’s been part of it.

Some of the American reporters who covered the Vietnam War as noncombatants picked up weapons and used them for the same reason America’s noncombatant medics often carried sidearms (and, under the Geneva Convention, became subject to execution if captured) during World War II: Their own survival, and the survival of other Americans, depended on it.

Regardless of what we think of Gitmo or some of the other measures initiated since 9/11, there have been no more terrorist attacks on American soil. Was all of it necessary? Argue about it as much as you like; there may not be a satisfactory answer. (Some people believe it was wrong to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II. American veterans who say the bombs saved them from dying during an invasion of Japan disagree with them.)

For every jackass like that sheriff in Alabama, there are countless other Americans who do work like that of the Salvation Army, churches, food banks or our local Union Rescue Mission ... what some of us still call God’s work.

The overwhelming majority of those in our military and in other roles that serve to guard our collective backs are also people we can respect and admire.

America is what it is because it stands for principles that involve knowing what separates right from wrong and putting that knowledge into practice. If it sets those principles aside for too long or abandons them altogether, it will become something less.