Lidt mere om Amnesty og Gitmo

På Tech Central Station har Debra Saunders nogle fornuftige kommentarer til den seneste ballade om Amnesty og USA:

Amnesty called on the Pentagon to close Gitmo and either charge or release all the prisoners there. Bad idea, countered Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: Twelve of the 200 detainees who had been released from Gitmo "have already been caught back on the battlefield, involved in efforts to kidnap and kill Americans." He has an obligation to his troops to not release back to Afghanistan or Iraq someone who will try to kill them.

Then there's Amnesty's insistence on pinning all mistreatment on the top brass, despite the fact, as noted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard B. Myers at a press conference last week, that abuses took place "on one shift in Abu Ghraib -- not the shift before, not the shift after, but one shift."

Another beef: The word torture is being overused. Amnesty now combines "torture and ill treatment," and lists as examples "beatings with hard objects" -- fair enough, that's torture. But it also adds "ill treatment during arrest, internment and interrogation" and "acts of humiliation with detainees being paraded naked."

That is poor treatment, to be sure. But it is not torture.

Og om den påståede koran-skænding:

It wasn't too long ago that conservative Christians were enraged that the federal government funded an exhibition with a crucifix in urine. That was a matter of free speech, and woe to the taxpayer who dared to complain. So why complain if a U.S. soldier might have treated the Koran as poorly as a U.S.-funded artist treated the crucifix?

Jeg har faktisk set det argumenteret at i og med at den amerikanske regering ikke må blande sig i religiøse sager kan den heller ikke legalt beskytte hellige bøger mod vanhelligelse, og dermed heller ikke straffe folk for at vanhellige dem. Hvis den argumentation holder, så bryder USA faktisk loven ved at straffe soldater der kunne have gjort koraner noget.

Nå. Mens vi snakker om Cuba (Guantanamo Bay ligger på Cuba), så faldt jeg over denne kommentar til sagen fra en af de cubanere Castro har fået til at flygte fra Cuba - han kører bloggen Bbabalu blog, og jeg skal advare mod udbredt brug af bandeord hen mod slutningen:

Somewhere in Cuba, there are prisoners of conscience, political prisoners, sitting in their excrement infested 3 foot by 6 foot completely enclosed cells rotting away for maybe owning a typewriter or for writing a poem or, far worse, for expressing their opinions.

They eat maggot filled slop maybe twice a day. Dont see the light of day and are tortured both physically and mentally in so many different ways that I, so far removed yet so read up on the subject, even have trouble imagining. .....

That's what happens in the REAL GULAGS in Cuba. Where desperation and real torture and humiliation reign supreme. Where thousands upon thousands of men have endured that torture and humiliation for decades upon decades. Where thousands of men have died and the rest have been marked for life.

So dont come to me and talk to me about the "Gulag" and Guantanamo Bay. Dont come to me to convince me there's a "gulag" being run by the evil Americans. Dont come to me and and tell me the use of the word "gulag" is appropriate in reference to Gitmo.

Because there's no way in HELL that it is. Because the true gulag isnt just over the gottdamn fence of the Naval base, the true gottdamn gulags arent just found on the island of Cuba, scattered about from one tip of the crocodile to the other, filled with men and women who are truly tortured souls. No, the true gulag is the island of Cuba itself. Where it's not so much as how one is allowed to handle a holy book but to OWN one. To READ one. To BELIEVE in one.

Fuck you, Amnesty International. You have just spit upon the many who had hope in you. You have just spit upon those that supported you. You have just spit upon all of those that have died waiting for you.

Waiting for you, Amnesty International, in their very real Cuban fucking gulags.

Jeg meldte mig selv ud af Amnesty i sidste uge.

Henrik