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While I concur that Amnesty International is a bit shrill in their assesment, I ask: Why is the United States detaining Asians in a Cuban prison? What little common sense I possess wonders, WTF?!
In its annual report on human rights worldwide, Amnesty International said the detention facility had become "the gulag of our times," equating it to the vast, brutal Soviet system of forced labor camps in which millions of prisoners died.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050527/...amo_general_dc
While I concur that Amnesty International is a bit shrill in their assesment, I ask: Why is the United States detaining Asians in a Cuban prison? What little common sense I possess wonders, WTF?!
One thing is for sure, Condi Rice would like for these allegations to go away...
Yahoo NewsSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice brushed off growing calls for an independent investigation of conditions at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and in an interview labeled as "absurd" a new Amnesty International report equating the facility with Soviet-era gulags Asked in an interview with Knight Ridder about an outside probe, Rice responded that it isn't necessary.
"The United States is as open a society as you will find," she said and the administration is being held accountable....... "by a free press,...... by a Congress that is a separate and co-equal branch of government,...... and by its own expectations of what is right."(i added the dots)
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a close Bush ally, this week demanded an investigation of allegations that U.S. interrogators abused the Quran, the Muslim holy book, at Guantanamo Bay.
By its own expectations of what is right? Sounds to me like another case of the fox guarding the hen-house.
I don't know why the uproar. The concern for policing the Executive Branch was always intended to ensure that Presidents aren't getting blown by interns in the Oval Office, but not to worry about whether basic human rights are upheld in prison camps or anything like that.
Would this even be an issue if it had been Toby Keith?
So I guess the question is, who's the bigger troublemaker, Amnesty or Newsweek?
do you think gitmo is like the soviet gulags?
I don't think that should be the pertinent question.
I don't know much about the Gulag, but I'm sure it's more severe than what goes down at Gitmo.
However, I do think there are human rights violations at Gitmo, and to me the more pertinent question is do Americans feel they have the right to violate human rights when they deem nessecary?
Yeah, "Gulag" might be a bit of hyperbole at this point, but let's not forget that Gulag was in existence for over 10 years before it evolved into the monumental horror that it became. Gitmo is going on what, 4 years now? We'll see what happens down the road. But like Manny said, even if they are exaggerating a bit, there are definitely some shameful things happening there. That's where the attention should be going, and kudos to Amnesty or anyone else with the courage and conviction to make that public.
The thing is, if we shut down Gitmo and similar prisons world-wide most of us don't even know about, what's to keep the administration from just shipping their 'prisoners' to holes like Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia were there is no question they will be tortured for what they do or don't know? Better that we get out of the torture business altogether, or rather that it is used only in severe cases and becomes so rare, that it isn't worth mentioning.
elpimpo, you have to consider that at it's peak, the people held by the Gulag outnumbered the people held in modern-day US operated camps 100 to 1, maybe more. Also there are tens of thousands of do ented Gulag deaths, compared to a handful at Gitmo (at this point). While I agree the Gulag wasn't as bad as the Nazi system, to say that Gitmo is already worse than Gulag is quite a stretch overall. Keep in mind that some people had it worse than others in both scenarios.
Excellent editorial on the Amnesty gulag allegations..
Amnesty International Report Upsetting Only Because It’s True
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- (OfficialWire) -- 06/03/05 --
We all know that George W. Bush suffers from impaired speaking, but in fact, he does not know what the he's talking about. Or he does and he’s a liar. Either way, he's an idiot.
There is no question that America, under the leadership of the Bush administration, has developed extensive systems of abuse and continues with outrageous illegal behavior, in the name of its brand of Freedom.
Amnesty recently criticized the Bush administration's treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, calling the facility "the gulag of our times," a reference to political prisoners held by the former Soviet Union.
Bush and his supporters quickly responded by calling the accusation absurd.
"I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd - it's an absurd allegation," Bush said.
It would appear the Bush administration objects to Amnesty's use of the word "gulag". Often people automatically assume "gulag" refers to work-camps, but a closer look reveals a more broad definition, including:
"A place or situation of great suffering and hardship, likened to the atmosphere in a prison system or a forced labor camp."
...more...
LMOA!
Comparing 1 terrorist holding camp with 600 detainees, where no one (to my knowledge) has been murdered or starved; to a 247 camp gulag system for political detainees where 12 million met their death through starvation or summary execution is neither true nor plausible.
AI has become a farce...
Did you read where their governing board and Executive Director all gave the max individual contribution to the Kerry Campaign?
Do you have a reading comprehension problem? The point of the article is that a gulag is not a death camp, but a interment prison where prisoners are put to work. You missed the best quote in the article...Comparing 1 terrorist holding camp with 600 detainees, where no one (to my knowledge) has been murdered or starved; to a 247 camp gulag system for political detainees where 12 million met their death through starvation or summary execution is neither true nor plausible.
"I wonder whether or not when America begins to see "Made In Guantanamo" on its products, will its citizens act to remove Bush, or will they celebrate the lower prices?"
They're making products down there?
Use of the term "gulag" was obsene hyperbole.
Agreed. Down in the muck with the rest of us now.Use of the term "gulag" was obsene hyperbole.
So you are all for detaining people without trials?
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory...utlook/3200298
May 26, 2005, 8:58PM
Our anti-Statue of Liberty at Gitmo: Just shut it down
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I am talking about the war-on-terrorism POW camp at Guantanamo Bay. Just shut it down and then plow it under. It has become worse than an embarrassment. I am convinced that more Americans are dying and will die if we keep the Gitmo prison open than if we shut it down. So, please, Mr. President, just shut it down.
If you want to appreciate how corrosive Guantanamo has become for America's standing abroad, don't read the Arab press. Don't read the Pakistani press. Don't read the Afghan press. Hop over here to London or go online and just read the British press! See what our closest allies are saying about Gitmo. And when you get done with that, read the Australian press and the Canadian press and the German press.
It is all a variation on the theme of a May 8 article in The Observer of London that begins, "An American soldier has revealed shocking new details of abuse and sexual torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in the first high-profile whistle-blowing account to emerge from inside the top-secret base." Google the words "Guantanamo Bay and Australia" and what comes up is an Australian ABC radio report that begins: "New claims have emerged that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are being tortured by their American captors, and the claims say that Australians David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib are among the victims."
Just another day of the world talking about Guantanamo Bay.
Why care? It's not because I am queasy about the war on terrorism. It is because I want to win the war on terrorism. And it is now obvious from reports in my own paper and others that the abuse at Guantanamo and within the whole U.S. military prison system dealing with terrorism is out of control. Tell me, how is it that more than 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody so far? Heart attacks? This is not just deeply immoral, it is strategically dangerous.
I can explain it best by analogy. For several years now I have argued that Israel needed to get out of the West Bank and Gaza, and behind a wall, as fast as possible. Not because the Palestinians are right and Israel wrong. It's because Israel today is surrounded by three large trends. The first is a huge population explosion happening all across the Arab world. The second is an explosion of the worst interpersonal violence between Israelis and Palestinians in the history of the conflict, which has only recently been defused by a cease-fire. And the third is an explosion of Arabic language multimedia outlets - from the Internet to al-Jazeera.
What was happening around Israel at the height of the intifada was that the Arab multimedia explosion was taking the images of that intifada explosion and feeding them to the Arab population explosion, melding in the minds of a new generation of Arabs and Muslims that their enemies were JIA - "Jews, Israel and America." That is an enormously toxic trend, and I hope Israel's withdrawal from Gaza will help deprive it of oxygen.
I believe the stories emerging from Guantanamo are having a similar toxic effect on us - inflaming sentiments against the United States all over the world and providing recruitment energy on the Internet for those who would do us ill.
Husain Haqqani, a thoughtful Pakistani scholar now teaching at Boston University, remarked to me: "When people like myself say American values must be emulated and America is a bastion of freedom, we get Guantanamo Bay thrown in our faces. When we talk about the America of Jefferson and Hamilton, people back home say to us: 'That is not the America we are dealing with. We are dealing with the America of imprisonment without trial.' "
Guantanamo Bay is becoming the anti-Statue of Liberty. If we have a case to be made against any of the 500 or so inmates still in Guantanamo, then it is high time we put them on trial, convict as many possible (which will not be easy because of bungled interrogations) and then simply let the rest go home or to a third country. Sure, a few may come back to haunt us. But at least they won't be able to take advantage of Guantanamo as an engine of recruitment to enlist thousands more. I would rather have a few more bad guys roaming the world than a whole new generation.
"This is not about being for or against the war," said Michael Posner, the executive director of Human Rights First, which is closely following this issue.
"It is about doing it right. If we are going to transform the Middle East, we have to be law-abiding and uphold the values we want them to embrace - otherwise it is not going to work."
A) The people being held at Guantanamo Bay are stateless mercenaries/terrorists captured in either Afghanistan, Iraq, or some other country in which they were neither citizens or legally present; where would you have them detained? In fact, Iraqi and Afghani detainees are kept imprisoned in their home countries with the assistance of the respective governments;
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;
C) Being that the detainees are stateless (meaning they were engaged in an armed conflict on soil where they were neither invited by the legitimate government nor where they were, by right of citizenship, en led to be), they are not en led to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions and, accordingly, could be given quick field tribunals and executed. I ask you, do you think the detainees would be better situated as worm food in the nameless places they were caught in the various countries in which they were caught instead of receiving 3 squares, bathing privileges, their own Koran, 5 daily calls to prayer, and individual signs to point them to Mecca? [Personally, that would be my preference but...alas, the feeling is these detainees may have valuable intelligence and, therefore, are afforded the luxuries of Gitmo.
D) Where would you put them? Over 2 dozen former Gitmo detainees have been recaptured on the battlefield after international pressure, from people like you, to have them released.
E) I can't leave without a word on the Koran crap. By a margin of 3 to 1, detainees have deliberately defaced or abused their own Korans at Gitmo...and, most of the incidents involving guards wasn't deliberate as much as it was an insensitivity to the "holiness" of the book -- that, as had probably been witnessed by the guards -- wasn't held in such high reverence by at least 15 of the detainees.
In other words, Yes.
Okay, for Manny the Lawyer wannabe...
I am opposed to imprisoning criminals without a trial. I am not opposed to parking enemy combatants in a secure facility until the end of a war.
So, Manny, what would you do with them? What crime have they committed?
Damn, now that is a great question. But you're asking the wrong person. The burden of proof for that should be on the government doing the detaining.
And when will this war end? When will it be safe to release them?
I'm all for detaining threats to the country. But that due process thing is also rather important to me.
Actually, I can answer that. They haven't committed a crime that you can find in any U.S. Penal statute. Why? Because they're ing enemy combatants on a distant Non-U.S. battlefield. Surely, you're not that dense Manny.
When one side is defeated or surrenders or is obliterated, I would imagine.
It may never be...but, ask me if I care that some scrote that took up arms or aided the taking up of arms against American soldiers ever sees the light of day again. By all rights they should be dead and probably would be if their captor didn't think they had some valuable information that might be extracted from them.
That's all well and good if ALL the provisions of due process were available, but, really what you're suggesting is ludicrous.
I can see it now. An entire platoon of soldiers is pulled from the battlefield, and shipped to Guantanamo Bay for an arraignment. Then, two weeks later, their back as State's witnesses.
Really, don't you think our soldiers have more pressing matters than ensuring the due process rights to a group of people not en led?
What next, should they be released because they weren't advised of their Miranda rights on the battlefield?
You're being silly and very ignorant not to see the difference between a criminal and a combatant.
Geneva.
You simply want to justify making a new set of rules as you go along regardless of what is already in place and regardless if what we do violates the spirit - if not the letter - of the laws we have in place.
In other words, you want your messy little war to be as convienet as possible and you want everyone else to shut up about it.
What about Geneva?
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.
No, just be realistic.
I am, however, heartened by the fact you didn't try to explain how we would apply American due process rules in Guantanamo... I really thought you'd come back with some excuse for reading them their rights on the battlefield
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