Amnesty International & Hypocrisy

The Most Offensive Defence is A Spun Offence.

Published on June 8, 2005 By kingbee In Politics

gulag.

amazing that one small word can be so powerful or evoke such a horrific response.

i first became familiar with the concept while reading 'one day in the life of ivan denisovich' by alexander solzhenitsyn when i was still in grade school (clearly my recreational reading tastes were a bit precocious as well as extreme). for a week during the summer between 7th and 8th grade, i shivered in the heat and humidity of late july in da motah city as ivan and i--convict slave laborers--endured the frozen extremes of siberia and the brutally inhumane excesses of a pitiless totalitarian state that had nullified our lives.

why were we there? for how long would we remain? there was no way of knowing. worst of all, no one--least of all our former families and friends-- except those who kept us here and our fellow slaves knew for sure we even existed.

amnesty international's international report, released on may 25, 2005, characterizes as a gulag the facility at guantanamo, cuba where the us holds some of those captured in its war on terrorism. not surprisingly, the current administration refutes that designation. according to bush, it's an obvious case of disassembly (which he defines as lying).

not surprisingly, there are more than a few ju bloggers who are outraged by the amnesty international report.

the war on terror is an honorable endeavor being waged against those who hate us and are willing to go to any length to destroy us because--as our president has proclaimed--they hate freedom.

finally amnesty international has revealed its true agenda and shown it hates us and our freedom as well.

how could we have been so foolish as to believe that an organization which has, for years, despised the freedom enjoyed in north korea, china, vietnam, algeria, myanmar, the maldives, turkey, morroco, today's russia, the former soviet union and its eastern european colonies, chile (under pinochet), argentina, cuba, the sudan and dozens of other bastion of freedom countries wouldn't eventually add us to the list.?

fortunately we have plenty of examples on which to base our response---thanks to those nations for which this whole thing is old hat.

before we go there, let's clear something up. guantanamo isn't a network of slave labor camps in the wilds of siberia into which millions of our own citizens disappear, most never to return. hell, it's not even cold there.

on the other hand, perhaps amnesty international meant it figuratively. after all, there are 500 people who've been locked up in gitmo for nearly 3 years without ever having been charged with any crime. as far as they know, it could be another 20 years before they'll have a day in court. their families have no clue as to their status. no one except the force that's detaining them knows whether they're well or ill or alive.

nawwww. that couldn't be it.

ai has a lotta nerve. after all, didn't the president pledge in his 2nd inaugural address that the us was dedicated to spreading democracy and freedom. aren't we spending billions and putting our military into harm's way to do just that in iraq? if you can't trust our government, who can you trust?

(who better to answer that question than those of you who join heston in announcing that they'll have to pry your gun outta your cold dead hands. but then again, amnesty international doesn't own any guns huh?)

so anyway we're busy spreading freedom and democracy not only by deed but by example--certainly there's no better advertisement than good example--and all amnesty international can do is criticize us.

no wonder cheney took offense and won't take ai seriously. he's a flexible guy and just because he, the president and rumsfeld used to take them seriously enough to cite them multiple times in white house position papers on hussein's iraq Link (In August 2001 Amnesty International released a report entitled Iraq -- Systematic Torture of Political Prisoners, which detailed the systematic and routine use of torture against suspected political opponents and, occasionally, other prisoners. Amnesty International also reports "Detainees have also been threatened with bringing in a female relative, especially the wife or the mother, and raping her in front of the detainee. Some of these threats have been carried out." ) , don't mean he cant change his mind. or maybe his mind is the same but amnesty international is different. ( i can hear him singing along with joe walsh...'everybody's so different, i'm still the same.' )

fact is, amnesty international provided a good deal of the source material used by bush, cheney and rumsfeld to justify their planned invasion of iraq. so having ai slam em now must really not bother them a bit because the organization just doesn't have any credibility

not that everything ai had to say about america was bad. they approved the supreme court ruling that requires a court hearing for prisoners of the 'war on terror'. big deal huh?

the final straw has to be ai's outrageous demands that the us stop secretly holding prisoners incommunicado (ghost prisoners), permit the international red cross access to all prisoners, ensure due process for all prisoners, implement an independent investigation of all allegations of torture and prosecute all who cause detainees to be brutalized or tortured while in the custody of the us.

if that sounds familiar, it's probably cuz those damn amnesty international freedom-haters stole it directly from past presidents who demanded the soviet union do the same thing at their gulags.

if all of this pisses you off, you're not alone.

i'm pissed off too. pissed off really badly that my country has engaged in the type of thing for which we used to condemn rogue states like north korea and the soviet union. pissed off that my president says he wants to promote democracy and freedom throughout the world while eroding the essentials of democracy and freedom at home. pissed off that such blatant hypocrisy is ignored and--even worse--approved by those who claim to be the most stalwart advocates of the rule of law and our constitution.

one final note: in another thread, one commentor said he was dismayed because amnesty international had diminished the horror of the gulag in its report. after all, there's no comparison. this same commentor claims to be a student of history. not a very good student in my opinion or he'd remember that gulags--like rome--aren't built in a day. once you lay the first stone, the next one is a little easier.

Comments (Page 5)

Dr Guy

on Jun 09, 2005

The trap that you fell into was the one where you thought "i'll be really clever and basically call him a wife beater, then, when he takes offence and raises he issue I will cliam that I never claimed, so therefore he cannot claim that I claimed. Mwohahaha! .....I am clever"

Dont put words into my mouth. I fell into no traps. If asking a question is falling into a trap, you are in an inescapable one.

When arguing with liberals, one does not need to be clever. They always trip themselves up and then change the subject.

Ionolast

on Jun 09, 2005

Consider it one hell of a restraining order that he is under. If a man gives someone a reason to believe that he wishes to harm them, can we arrest the guy? Can we put him in jail? No, we just create a restraining order keeping from contact with that person he wishes to harm (which I consider to be laughable, how many women have been killed by husbands that have restraining orders against them?). Just consider the guys at Gitmo and Mr. Padilla at the base in SC to currently be under one whopper of a restraining order.

Now I'm going to edit that quote so you can fully comprehend what you said.

Consider it one hell of a restraining order that he is under.(which I consider to be laughable)

To all of you who are asking for evidence that the detainees are being mistreated, why isn't the Red Cross allowed to do an inspection?

drmiler

on Jun 09, 2005

62 by Içonoçlast
Thursday, June 09, 2005

Consider it one hell of a restraining order that he is under. If a man gives someone a reason to believe that he wishes to harm them, can we arrest the guy? Can we put him in jail? No, we just create a restraining order keeping from contact with that person he wishes to harm (which I consider to be laughable, how many women have been killed by husbands that have restraining orders against them?). Just consider the guys at Gitmo and Mr. Padilla at the base in SC to currently be under one whopper of a restraining order.

Now I'm going to edit that quote so you can fully comprehend what you said.

Consider it one hell of a restraining order that he is under.(which I consider to be laughable)

To all of you who are asking for evidence that the detainees are being mistreated, why isn't the Red Cross allowed to do an inspection?

More BS!
Want to try again?

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the U.S. government that the U.S. military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantanamo allegedly amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of June there.
The USA and Torture
Doctors and Torture, an article by Robert Jay Lifton

Legalizing Torture

The team, which included experienced medical personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at Guantanamo were participating in planning for interrogations, in what the report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics."

The report alleges that doctors and medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners' mental health and vulnerabilities to their military interrogators.

That information, according to the report, was usually transmitted through a group called the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, or BSCT. That team, known informally as Biscuit, is composed of psychologists and psychological workers who advise the interrogators.

The U.S. government, which received the report in July, sharply rejected its charges, administration and military officials said.

The report was distributed to lawyers at the White House, Pentagon and State Department and to the commander of the detention facility at Guantanamo, Gen. Jay Hood.

The New York Times recently obtained a memorandum, based on the report, that quotes from it in detail and lists its major findings. It was the first time that the Red Cross, which has been conducting visits to Guantanamo since January 2002, asserted that the treatment of detainees, both physical and psychological, amounted to torture.

The report of the June visit said investigators had found a system devised to break the will of the prisoners at Guantanamo, who now number about 550, and make them wholly dependent on their interrogators through "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions." Investigators said that the methods used were increasingly "more refined and repressive" than what the Red Cross learned about on previous visits.

The report also said that in addition to exposure to loud and persistent noise and music and to prolonged cold, detainees were subjected to "some beatings." The report did not say how many of the detainees were subjected to such treatment.

Asked about the accusations in the report, a Pentagon spokesman provided a statement saying, "The United States operates a safe, humane and professional detention operation at Guantanamo that is providing valuable information in the war on terrorism."

Internal debate

The conclusions by the inspection team, especially the findings involving alleged complicity in mistreatment by medical professionals, have provoked a stormy debate within the Red Cross committee. Some officials have argued that it should make its concerns public or at least aggressively confront the United States.
Why America Fights the ICC
The American government fights the International Criminal Court for reasons that are obvious:

The USA promotes the use of torture

The USA engages in torture

The USA has fought against the strenghtening of a treaty on torture, specifically because it would result in inspections of its prisons.

Why we pay attention to U.S. human rights issues

The report from the June visit said that the Red Cross team found a far greater incidence of mental illness produced by stress than did U.S. medical authorities, much of it caused by prolonged solitary confinement. It said the medical files of detainees were "literally open" to interrogators.

Last month, military guards, intelligence agents and others described in interviews with the New York Times a range of procedures that they said were highly abusive occurring over a long period, as well as rewards for prisoners who cooperated with interrogators.

The people who worked at Camp Delta, the main prison facility, said one regular procedure was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels.

Sexual taunting

Some accounts of techniques at Guantanamo have been easy to dismiss because they seemed so implausible. The most striking of the accusations, which have come mainly from a group of detainees released to their native Britain, has been that the military used prostitutes who made coarse comments and come-ons to taunt some prisoners who are Muslims.

The Red Cross report said that complaints about the practice of sexual taunting stopped in the last year.

Guantanamo officials have acknowledged that they have improved their techniques and that some earlier methods they tried proved to be ineffective, raising the possibility that the sexual taunting was an experiment that was abandoned.

Red Cross officials are able to visit prisoners at Guantanamo under the kind of arrangement the committee has made with governments for decades. In exchange for exclusive access to the prison camp and meetings with detainees, committee representatives have agreed to keep their findings confidential. The findings are shared only with the government that is detaining people.

The report said the Biscuit team met regularly with the medical staff to discuss the medical situations of detainees. At other times, interrogators sometimes went directly to members of the medical staff to learn about detainees' conditions, it said.

'False allegation'

The report said that such "apparent integration of access to medical care within the system of coercion" meant that inmates were not cooperating with doctors. Inmates learn from their interrogators that they have knowledge of their medical histories and the result is that the prisoners no longer trust the doctors.

Asked for a response, the Pentagon issued a statement saying, "The allegation that detainee medical files were used to harm detainees is false." The statement said the detainees were "enemy combatants who were fighting against U.S. and coalition forces."

"It's important to understand that when enemy combatants were first detained on the battlefield, they did not have any medical records in their possession," the statement continued. "The detainees had a wide range of pre-existing health issues including battlefield injuries."

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is based in Geneva and is separate from the American Red Cross, was founded in 1863 as an independent, neutral organization intended to provide assistance for victims of war.

bakerstreet

on Jun 09, 2005

Vune, it isn't serving your argument to just make a joke and dodge the question, or answer a question with a question.

I asked you very plainly if you think Amnesty International would be considered a reliable, unbiased witness by any jury against the Bush administration. Witnesses with a vendetta aren't taken seriously, thank God. The 'gulag' statement and continual over-the-top grandstanding makes them suspect. They have shown themselves to be on a 'mission'.

So, you are claiming that accusations are proof, and those accusations are coming from sources that would almost certainly be considered very biased against the 'defendant'. You pretend you have proof, but all you offer are the hateful accusations of people on a campaign against the Bush administration.

ericseba

on Jun 09, 2005

Now I'm going to edit that quote so you can fully comprehend what you said.

Editing people's quotes is one of the oldest liberal tricks. Icon, what kind of a moron would take my words edit them for all to see and try to convince people that is what I meant to say?

Edit my quotes all you want but you and Vune will NEVER be able to give a viable alternative to Bush's war on terror. You can only sling mud and disagree with him.

Gideon MacLeish

on Jun 09, 2005

kingbee,

The problem I had with the "gulag" statement was that it was a subjective judgement, horribly uncharacteristic for Amnesty International. Have the actions at Guantanamo Bay been somewhat questionable? Probably. Do they compare with a forced labor camp where the Soviet Union sent its dissident CITIZENS? Definitely not.

This does not in any way condone or support the actions at Gitmo, mind you. I have not had a chance to dissect the AI 2004 report as of yet, but their previous reports have been well constructed and full of quality objective analysis. If the bulk of this report differs from that pattern, I will be surprised.

AI has generally been a nonpartisan watchdog group, and we can thank them for much of their work, INCLUDING their detailing the actions of Saddam Hussein upon which much of the justifications for our military actions were based. Equally valuable were the reports on the actions of Taliban led Afghanistan.

I disagree with the use of the word "gulag". While I believe the statement was meant to show the level of international disgust that Gitmo has drawn (comparing THAT, rather than the actions of our troops, with "gulag"), it is an unreasonable comparison and an overreach that does not belong in their report.

Texas Wahine

on Jun 09, 2005

Editing people's quotes is one of the oldest liberal tricks.

Bwahahahahaa...why, I can remember my great grandfather complaining about the nasty liberals going around editing his quotes, too.

Moderateman

on Jun 09, 2005

Maybe I might pay a little attention to a.i. and there report on gitmo, IF one just one member of a.i. stepped foot in gitmo and saw something with there own eyes instead of relying on the reports and complaints of the terrorist themselves.

I do not trust government much kingbee, but trust the terrorist even less.

Ionolast

on Jun 09, 2005

Editing people's quotes is one of the oldest liberal tricks. Icon, what kind of a moron would take my words edit them for all to see and try to convince people that is what I meant to say?

You made a connection between the detainees' status and someone under a restraining order, then you said the restraining order is laughable. It's not as if I didn't include your original statement.

ericseba

on Jun 09, 2005

Frankly I don't give a damn about the treatment crap, I'm still waiting on one of you bleeding hearts to come up with a plan for our safety from radical Muslims.

I would also like a detailed description of the techniques that you would use to interrogate and extract information from the same radical Muslims.

Again, answers, not smug comments. Criticize Bush all you want, at least he's got the balls to do what you guys obviously have nightmares about. Seriously, if you bleeding hearts ran the country, every American might as well walk around with a bullseye on their back. The terrorists would decimate us all and hide behind their ACLU lawyers claiming it was justified because we ripped their Koran or some other lame ass bleeding heart excuse.

Texas Wahine

on Jun 09, 2005

about what tex? heh heh heh

Well, from what I remember him telling me, the liberals were always taking his quotes about the Scopes Monkey Trial and posting them out of context. It really infuriated him.

He warned me to never trust a liberal when it comes to posting quotes. I guess he was right.

Texas Wahine

on Jun 09, 2005

I would also like a detailed description of the techniques that you would use to interrogate and extract information from the same radical Muslims.

Are you aware that we have actual guidelines for what methods are appropriate (and successful) and which ones are not? There's a great little interactive online that covers these, and if I weren't so lazy, I'd find it for you.

Perhaps you can google it.

ericseba

on Jun 09, 2005

You made a connection between the detainees' status and someone under a restraining order, then you said the restraining order is laughable. It's not as if I didn't include your original statement

My reference to restraining orders being laughable was in the context of a typical restraining order issued under our justice system. You are mincing words because you cannot come up with a better alternative to merely detaining these radical Muslims. You are not jumping on the fact that I admitted in the same post that they are essentially unconvictable under our justice system. You are not jumping on the fact that yes, they are being held under what would be considered an illegal status and condition. No all you can do is edit my words to give your point of view. If you found my analogy lacking, congratulations.

Again, no liberal will take up my challenge. Come up with an alternative to Gitmo. I have conceded that the courts and our justice system is not designed for this sort of individual. They have commited no crime, but rest assured they will. So what do we do? Do we stand by our principles and wait until they have committed a punishable crime under our justice system? Again, I am conceding the fact that an ACLU pig would have one of these guys on the streets in a matter of minutes in our justice system. So please kngbee, please Vune, please icon, quit the criticisms of Bush and my analogies and give me an alternative to Bush's methods.

Think about it, here's your chance to add to the liberal American roll call if you can only show me that there is a better plan out there than the current administration's.

Texas Wahine

on Jun 09, 2005

eriseba: Nevermind, I have it for you, though not in the interactive format.

Scroll down a bit to Taxonomy of Torture.

ericseba

on Jun 09, 2005

Wahine,

I am going to type real slow so maybe you will understand. No smug comments, a real answer is what I am looking for. I don't care about the "appropriate" guidelines. Once again, these people have been taught from birth, by their church, that we are all evil (even your bleeding heart) and we should all die. These people are willing to blow themselves up as long as they take a few Americans with them so that they get their 70 virgins in paradise. These people are not a bunch of patriotic men paid by their government to kill enemy soldiers. These men kill men, women, children, babies. These men did not come here and target just military installations; no they hit two buildings with the express purpose of killing as many American CITIZENS as humanly possible. Yes, before you reply, I don't need to be reminded that they also went for the pentagon and the white house. We are not interrogating a man simply wanted for murder. We are interrogating people who may just have the information that could save thousands of lives. Look at these guys in California, under the right amount of "stress" shall we say, they might could give us the location of the terrorist training camp that they recently visited so we could put it out of business.

Considering what we are up against with these people, I want YOUR answer, I don't want to google and find the bleeding heart guide to "asking a radical Muslim to please tell me where I can find his fellow terrorist buddies". I want you, Mr. intellectual liberal to tell me how we should get information out of these guys that will lead us to their buddies out there plotting how to kill us and get to heaven. Let's say that you knew that you could save as many lives as were lost in the trade center attacks if you could only get some terrorist to give you the info; would you honestly stick to your principles and allow their deaths? My guess is unfortunately yes you would.

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