Those who have freed their minds, courtesy of the blogosphere, know that the inmates at Gitmo eat better than some Americans.

As visitors to Michelle Malkin now know, Dummocrats.com is selling The Gitmo Cookbook so you, too, can know just how lousy we feed inmates.

I don’t blame you if you believe that we feed War on Terror inmates slop. Maybe you’ve been snookered in by the steady media drumbeat of “five minor Koran abuses in 2 1/2 years is an epidemic of abuse.” Maybe you’ve been fooled by dishonest editorial writers and Liberal Medal of Honor Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonists who believe that penning opinion relieves you of any obligation to be either fair or accurate.

So what are Gitmo inmates served for breakfast and dinner (they eat an MRE lunch)? Among the delicacies are baked tandoori chicken breast, mustard-dill baked fish, Lyonnaise rice, and fish amandine. Where you get your ingredients is up to you, but the dishes at Gitmo are certified halal, which means the ingredients conform with Muslim dietary laws.

As for a little further perspective, let’s look at what it takes for meat to be certified halal — it’s a lot more complicated than an imam looking at it and saying, “looks OK to me.” Because animal blood is considered haram, or unclean, the halal way to kill an animal is to slice through the arteries after saying “In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful.” The animal has to be conscious — it is unclean if it is stunned first. If you forget to pray before you cut, the meat is unclean, because Muslim dietary laws forbid eating meat slaughtered in the name of anyone but Allah.

Many Islamic food stores not only certify their meats as halal, but also have videotape of the slaughtering so the discriminating and strong-stomached Muslim customer can cook for the family with a clean conscience.

This is what we do for men who were captured trying to kill our troops, and for at least one who helped plan Sept. 11. What did the hijackers feed their passengers that fateful day? Come to think of it, what meal, if any, did Iraqi hostages get before their heads were sawed off?

Just for giggles, let’s compare what prisoners eat to what this soldier is subjected to for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I am not a fussy eater — a trooper will shovel anything down his throat if he’s hungry — but our chow hall makes a Queens dumpster look like the Four Seasons. We call it the “Fear Factor Deli” because the food tastes like it was meant to be eaten on a dare. I can’t imagine what our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan are subjected to at the dinner table.

And as for the torture allegations I’ve been reading about (staying awake, standing up, being poked), I suffered worse in boot camp.

So anyway, the cookbook sounds like a decent gift for someone who likes good food or just wants to piss off an MSM journalist. It truly is too bad that we have to rely on a cookbook to provide balance, but if we bloggers have to do the media’s work along with our own day jobs, why can’t Julia Child also pitch in?