Amnestiy International

[spurster]

The world changes and, if no one else is willing, you have to make some rules... There is absolutely no provisions of the Geneva conventions into which these murderous bas s can be shoe-horned.

Making things up here. BushCo chose to classify them as "enemy combatants" instead of prisoners-of-war.

[The Ressurrected One]

Making things up here. BushCo chose to classify them as "enemy combatants" instead of prisoners-of-war.

No, that's how they'd be classified. It's not a "choice." Prisoner of War status is reserved for combatants that are associated with a nation-state with whom we can negotiate the treatment of each other's captives.

This is not the case in this war.

[Clandestino]

we have seen how they treat our prisoners... they cut their heads off.

[Dr.Phil]

What some of you have to ask yourselves is, "Where is this hatred coming from?".
Until your are willing to answer that question you are doomed to make some mistakes in your lives.

[The Ressurrected One]

Let's talk more about the "gulag," because, well, I don't think we're ever going to agree on the appropriateness or method of detaining those now at Gitmo -- particularly since none of you have suggested an alternative to what should be done with those "enemy combatants," beyond my alternative of trying them on the battlefield and executing them. So...

When Newsweek reported that a Guantanamo Bay guard had flushed a detainee's Koran down a toilet, the Muslim world erupted in protests, some of which turned violent. Newsweek later retracted the story. More significantly, so did the detainee who made the original allegation--a fact that went largely unreported. Nevertheless, the U.S. military commissioned Brigadier General Jay Hood to look into allegations of Koran mishandling at the Guantanamo facility. General Hood delivered his report on June 3; it can be accessed here. (Yeah, I know, about as many of you will read this report as did the David Kay report on Iraq's weapons programs -- and thus will continue the circle of ignorance.)

The report, read together with the ensuing press coverage, suggests how far our public discourse has diverged from any realistic understanding of war, prisons, or human behavior.

The Hood report do ents an exquisite, almost irrational, concern for the religious sensibilities of Guantanamo's detainees. Consider the implications of this incident:

On 18 AUG 03, two detainees complained that the guards had violated the Koran search policy when they touched the surgical masks used to hang detainee Korans from cell walls during a security, safety, and welfare inspection. The incident was recorded in the electronic blotter system. The guards stated in the blotter log that they were not violating Koran search policy because they did not actually touch the Koran when they squeezed and felt for bulges in the surgical masks. The SOP in place at the time of the incident did not address searching the Koran through the masks.

Or this one:

On 5 JAN 03, a translator was called to translate during a search of a cell. The detainee residing in the cell refused to show his Koran during the search. The guards informed the detainee that if he did not show his Koran they would be forced to search it. The detainee did not comply. The MPs put on clean latex gloves and used a clean towel as they conducted the search. During the search, detainees in nearby cells continuously threw water at the MPs. As the translator departed the cell, the detainee spat on him. The translator recorded the incident in a sworn statement.

Or this:

On 18 AUG 03, at 1220 hours, a guard conducted a routine search of a detainee's cell. During the search, the guard accidentally knocked the detainee's Koran out of its holder (a surgical mask) and onto his bunk. The block NCO responded to the cell and explained to the detainee that the incident was an accident. The ICRC asked MG Miller, Commander JTF-GTMO, about the incident during a meeting on 09 OCT 03. MG Miller told the ICRC that he had investigated the incident and determined it to be an accident. A guard recorded the incident in sworn statement.

There can't be a single instance, in all of human history, where the spiritual sensitivities of captured enemy combatants have been so scrupulously regarded. This is borne out by those few cases where "abuse" was actually found; they are, in the words of the often-puzzling cliché, exceptions that prove the rule. Consider what the apology and disciplinary action taken in this instance tell us about the rarity of such events:

On 25 JUL 03, a contract interrogator apologized to a detainee for stepping on the detainee's Koran in an earlier interrogation. The memorandum of the 25 Jul 03, interrogation session shows that the detainee had reported to other detainees that his Koran had been stepped on. The detainee accepted the apology and agreed to inform other detainees of the apology and ask them to cease disruptive behaviors caused by the incident. The interrogator was later terminated for a pattern of unacceptable behavior, an inability to follow direct guidance and poor leadership. We consider this a confirmed incident.

In one widely-reported incident, several copies of the Koran got wet when guards tossed water balloons into the detainees' compound:

On 15 AUG 03, two detainees complained to the swing shift guards (14002200 hrs) that the detainees' Korans were wet because the night shift guards had thrown water balloons on the block. The swing shift guards recorded the complaints in the block blotter log in accordance with normal procedures. We have not determined if the detainees made further complaints or if the Korans were replaced. There is no evidence that this incident was investigated. There is no evidence that the incident, although clearly inappropriate, caused any type of disturbance on the Block. We consider this a confirmed incident.

The Hood report doesn't explain what led up to the water balloon bombardment, but in the murderous context of Islamist terrorism, it's hard to get exercised about "torture" via water balloons.

The other incident that was widely reported
following the Hood report's issuance involved an unlucky soldier who couldn't wait to relieve himself until he went off duty, and chose an unfortunate spot:

On 25 MAR 05, a detainee complained to the guards that urine came through an air vent in Camp 4, and splashed on him and his Koran while he laid near the air vent. A guard reported to a Block NCOIC that he was at fault. The guard had left his observation area post and went outside to urinate. He urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into the block. The Sergeant of the Guard (SOG) responded and immediately relieved the guard. The SOG ensured the detainee received a fresh uniform and a new Koran. The Joint Detention Operations Group (JDOG) commander reprimanded the guard and assigned him to gate guard duty where he had no contact with detainees for the remainder of his assignment at JTF-GTMO. This incident was recorded in a series of contemporaneous sworn statements made by Camp 4 guard force members. There is no record that this incident caused any type of disturbance in the block. We consider this a confirmed incident.

Read in its entirety, the Hood report do ents an extraordinary level of sensitivity to the detainees' religious concerns. Altogether, the investigators confirmed five instances where intentional or unintentional mishandling of the Koran apparently occurred, and four more where the guards' conduct "may have been inappropriate." This superlative record should be seen as a tribute to the training and discipline of the Army's guards and translators.

The Army did find, however, 15 instances of blatant Koran abuse at Guantanamo. All were committed by detainees. For example:

On 14 MAY 03, a guard observed a detainee rip his Koran into small pieces. The guard recorded the incident contemporaneously in a sworn statement.

On 5 JUN 03, a guard observed two detainees accuse a third detainee of not being a man. In response, the detainee urinated on one of their Korans. The detainees resided in adjacent cells. The event was recorded in FBI FD-302s, on 5 JUN 03 and 19 JUN 03.

On 19 JAN 05, a detainee tore up his Koran and tried to flush it down the toilet. Four guards witnessed the incident and it was recorded in the electronic blotter system.

On 23 JAN 05, a detainee ripped pages out of his Koran and threw them down the toilet. The detainee stated he did so because he wanted to be moved to another camp. Four guards witnessed the incident and it was recorded in the electronic blotter system.

If one were to sum up the Hood report in a headline, it might be: "Army Do ents Extraordinary History of Respect for Koran." Or, "No Truth to Claims of Koran Abuse." Or perhaps: "Koran Abuse? Blame the Detainees." But that isn't how the story was played. Here were the headlines in England: "U.S. Admits Koran Abuse at Cuba Base", and "US Admits Guard Soiled Koran at Guantanamo". The London Times, not normally noted for anti-Americanism, led off with this summary:

An American guard at Guantanamo Bay urinated on a copy of the Koran while others kicked, stepped on and soaked copies with water balloons, the Pentagon admitted last night.

In India, the headline was "Guantanamo Guards Guilty".

Reuters' story on the report omitted any mention of the detainees' treatment of the Koran, and began:

The U.S. military for the first time on Friday detailed how jailers at Guantanamo mishandled the Koran, including a case in which a guard's urine splashed onto the Islamic holy book and others in which it was kicked, stepped on and soaked by water.

Anti-Americanism in foreign news coverage is perhaps not surprising. Here at home, however, the slant was not much different. The San Francisco Chronicle, not previously known for its solicitude for things spiritual, headlined: "U.S. Tells How Koran Was Defiled". The Los Angeles Times echoed, "Pentagon: Koran Defiled". Newsday wrote, "Quran Abuses Verified", while ABC headlined, "U.S. Confirms Gitmo Soldier Kicked Quran". Such headlines could be multiplied indefinitely. Many papers dwelt especially on the few drops of urine that inadvertently landed on a Koran, which inevitably prompts the recollection that only 16 years ago, the federal government not only tolerated the immersion of a crucifix in a jar of urine as a work of "art," but actually paid for it.

It seems that the Army--or maybe it's the United States--just can't win. It is almost inconceivable that the Hood report could have been more favorable to the Guantanamo guards and interrogators, yet the international and American press treated it as a confession of wrongdoing, at times with a hint that the Newsweek allegation had proven true after all. Little (frequently, nothing) was made of the fact that it was the Muslim detainees, not American guards or interrogators, who had perpetrated precisely the acts that were the excuse for anti-American riots in the Muslim world.

No matter how virtuous American conduct may be, the many members of the press raise the bar higher, with no regard for the realities of warfare, the inevitable sordidness of prison life, or the frailties of human nature. It is hard to see any purpose in this hypercriticism--no other country, except perhaps Israel, is held to such an extraordinary standard--other than to make it impossible for the United States to detain and interrogate prisoners. Or to fight a war.

[Clandestino]

this whole koran abuse is bull .. who gives a ... the media should be talking about these terrorists and their buddies and the people they killed, maimed, injured.... and also, how these s behead their prisoners on al-jazeera...

[RandomGuy]

A) The people being held at Guantanamo Bay are stateless mercenaries/terrorists captured in either Afghanistan, Iraq,

Really, so we had a trial with some evidence and know that they are terrorists, or was it a capricious wave of the hand? You still have not answered my question.

ARE YOU OR ARE YOU NOT ADVOCATING DETAINING PEOPLE INDEFINITELY WITHOUT A TRIAL?

A simple yes or no question. You seem to be pretty intelligent, so I await your answer.

B) Guantanamo Bay is not a criminal detention facility, it is a repository for enemy combatants removed from the field of battle where they can be interrogated for valuable information and kept from engaging in further hostilities until the cessation of all hostilities. They're neither en led to criminal due process nor is it warranted in their case;

Really? So how long do we keep them? So you really are for keeping people without trials.

[RandomGuy]

we have seen how they treat our prisoners... they cut their heads off.

It is precisely because we ARE better than those we fight that we act in a moral and responsible fashion. Moral authority goes a long way in a propaganda war.

[RandomGuy]

Let's talk more about the "gulag," because, well, I don't think we're ever going to agree on the appropriateness or method of detaining those now at Gitmo -- particularly since none of you have suggested an alternative to what should be done with those "enemy combatants," beyond my alternative of trying them on the battlefield and executing them. So...

I have a simple solution. Give them a trial with honest to goodness impartial judges. If we really can make a case then let's do it. At the heart of it, terrorism is criminal behavior, and should be treated as such. I have a big problem with "enemy combatants" in a war that will never end.

... the U.S. military commissioned Brigadier General Jay Hood to look into allegations of Koran mishandling at the Guantanamo facility. General Hood delivered his report on June 3; it can be accessed here. (Yeah, I know, about as many of you will read this report as did the David Kay report on Iraq's weapons programs -- and thus will continue the circle of ignorance.)

Not a very long do ent. Interesting reading.

The report, read together with the ensuing press coverage, suggests how far our public discourse has diverged from any realistic understanding of war, prisons, or human behavior.

I think you are right about this. Sensationalism sells and it is unfortunate that this leads to distortions on a regular basis.

Read in its entirety, the Hood report do ents an extraordinary level of sensitivity to the detainees' religious concerns...
If one were to sum up the Hood report in a headline, it might be: "Army Do ents Extraordinary History of Respect for Koran."

HOLY !!! An internal investigation by an organization determined that the organization did NOTHING WRONG?!?!?
(sacasm) I am that has NEVER happened (/sarcasm)

Seriously though. I actually have a good deal of confidence that the report is generally accurate, but I HIGHLY doubt that if it weren't the army would admit it. A good critical thinker should always be a bit leery of ANY internal investigation's public results, as I am in this case.

It seems that the Army--or maybe it's the United States--just can't win... the international and American press treated it as a confession of wrongdoing, at times with a hint that the Newsweek allegation had proven true after all.

Agreed. This is exactly the reason we MUST 100% take the moral high ground. We are held to an impossibly high standard and must behave accordingly.

[The Ressurrected One]

Well, you seem reasonable, Random Guy...so, let's continue the debate using the words of Thomas Sowell [I'll highlight the pertinent passages but think the entire article is worth reading]:

June 6, 2005

We may look back on some eras as heroic -- that of the founding fathers or "the greatest generation" that fought World War II -- but some eras we look back on in disbelief at the utter stupidity with which people ruined their economies or blundered into wars in which every country involved ended up worse off than before.

How will people a century from now look back on our era? Fortunately, most of us will be long gone by then, so we will be spared the embarrassment of seeing ourselves judged.

What will future generations say about how we behaved when confronted by international terrorist organizations that have repeatedly demonstrated their cut-throat ruthlessness and now had the prospect of getting nuclear weapons from rogue nations like Iran and North Korea?

What will future generations think when they see the front pages of our leading newspapers repeatedly preoccupied with whether we are treating captured cut-throats nicely enough? What will they think when they see the Geneva Convention invoked to protect people who are excluded from protection by the Geneva Convention?

During World War II, German soldiers who were captured not wearing the uniform of their own army were simply lined up against a wall and shot dead by American troops.

This was not a scandal. Far from being covered up by the military, movies were taken of the executions and have since been shown on the History Channel. We understood then that the Geneva Convention protected people who obeyed the Geneva Convention, not those who didn't -- as terrorists today certainly do not.

What will those who look back on these times think when they see that the American Civil Liberties Union, and others who have made excuses for all sorts of criminals, were pushing for the prosecution of our own troops for life-and-death decisions they had a split second to make in the heat of combat?

The frivolous demands made on our military -- that they protect museums while fighting for their lives, that they tiptoe around mosques from which people are shooting at them -- betray an irresponsibility made worse by ingra ude toward men who have put their lives on the line to protect us.

It is impossible to fight a war without heroism. Yet can you name a single American military hero acclaimed by the media for an act of courage in combat? Such courage is systematically ignored by most of the media.

If American troops kill a hundred terrorists in battle and lose ten of their own men doing it, the only headline will be: "Ten More Americans Killed in Iraq Today."

Those in the media who have carped at the military for years, and have repeatedly opposed military spending, are now claiming to be "honoring" our military by making a big production out of publishing the names of all those killed in Iraq. Will future generations see through this hypocrisy -- and wonder why we did not?

What will the generations of the future say if we allow Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, which are then turned over to terrorists who can begin to annihilate American cities?

Our descendants will wonder how we could have let this happen, when we had the power to destroy any nation posing such a threat. Knowing that we had the power, they would have to wonder why we did not have the will -- and why it was so obvious that we did not.

Nothing will more painfully reveal the irresponsible frivolity of our times than the many demands in the media and in politics that we act only with the approval of the United Nations and after winning over "world opinion."

How long this will take and what our enemies will be doing in the meantime while we are going through these futile exercises is something that gets very little attention.

Do you remember Osama bin Laden warning us, on the eve of last year's elections, that he would retaliate against those parts of the United States that voted for Bush? The United States is not Spain, so we disregarded his threats.

But what of future generations, after international terrorists get nuclear weapons? And what will our descendants think of us -- will they ever forgive us -- for leaving them in such a desperate situation because we were paralyzed by a desire to placate "world opinion"?

[The Ressurrected One]

Now, the Amnesty Internation guy who started the whole "gulag" mess says he was just exercising hyperbole to bring attention to the "archipelago" of secret prisons being operated by the US around the world. While he doesn't go on to enumerate or identify any of these "secret prisons," his choice of the word "archipelago" is as stupefying as his initial use of the word "gulag."

Anyone who has a working knowledge of the Soviet gulag system probably informed much of their opininon reading such works as "Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn...who, by the way, was a prisoner in Stalin's gulag.

So, while Amnesty International is willing to back down on the "gulag" statement, it turns right around and evokes (or attempts to), by inference, the same visual in their use of the term "archipelago."

While I am sympathetic with the American Left's outrage over Amnesty International's slander of Soviet gulags by likening them to the United States' incomparably evil prison detention center at Guantanamo Bay, I thought I would review Solzhenitsyn's description of the Soviet Camps in his classic.

In the first place, it might be noted that prisoners of the Soviet camps were generally not those who had declared war on modern civilization, who had taken up arms against the state, or who had aided, abetted and collaborated with those who were at war with the regime. They were not arrested on the battlefield while waging war against the mother country.

No, they were often just political prisoners, whose sin might have been merely to criticize the repressive government -- sometimes in private correspondence. Solzhenitsyn, relating his own arrest, wrote,

"I knew instantly I had been arrested because of my correspondence with a school friend, and understood from what direction to expect danger."

The prisoners of the gulag were those who dared dissent from a government that obliterated the very notion of liberty, whereas those at Gitmo are most likely ones who are opposing freedom and democracy in the United States, the Middle East and the rest of the world.

If the Left could bring itself to take a hiatus from its hyperbole in redefining "torture" so as conveniently to encompass the detention practices of the U.S. military in Guantanamo and elsewhere, perhaps it could rediscover the true meaning of torture by perusing the pages of Solzhenitsyn's gripping account.

If they want to understand what real torture-minded interrogators have been known to do, they could begin with the chapter on "The Interrogation." The chapter begins,

[quote=Gulag Archipelago]"If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov who spent all their time guessing what would happen in 20, 30, or 40 years had been told that in 40 years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings; that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath; that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the 'secret brand'); that a man's genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible cir stances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov's plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums."

Nor were these isolated, extreme, or extraordinary events being practiced...

"...by one scoundrel alone in one secret place only, but by tens of thousands of specially trained human beasts standing over millions of defenseless victims."

Oh, yes, and lest we forget, the interrogators of the Soviet camps were not trying to extract information from their subjects for such laudatory purposes as preventing the further slaughter of innocent human beings such as the victims of the Sept. 11 massacres.

"Throughout the years and decades, interrogations under Article 58 were almost never undertaken to elicit the truth, but were simply an exercise in an inevitably filthy procedure: Someone who had been free only a little while before, who was sometimes proud and always unprepared, was to be bent and pushed through a narrow pipe where his sides would be torn by iron hooks and where he could not breathe, so that he would finally pray to get to the other end. And at the other end, he would be shoved out, an already processed native of the Archipelago, already in the promised land. (The fool would keep on resisting! He even thought there was a way back out of the pipe.)"

Solzhenitsyn goes on to specifically enumerate 31 torture techniques, none of which include water balloons or soiled scriptures, which was only a partial list:

"Is there much left to enumerate? What won't idle, well-fed, unfeeling people invent?"

Amnesty International is without shame...

[Nbadan]