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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (105650)	6/5/2005 12:01:18 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

The article might also have pointed out that at least one training manual for al Qaida members contains specific instructions, if you are captured, to allege abuse whether or not it happens. I know of no such manual for Gulag prisoners, and I suspect that complaints would merely have meant more punishment.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (105650)	6/5/2005 9:10:52 PM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

"From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair." William Blum thirdworldtraveler.com Okay, now I thought that was a very interesting quote. I don't think most proud Americans realize what the United States will do when it perceives that it is in its strategic interests to do so. I especially think it is really funny that Amnesty International is the new scapegoat for this administration, a distraction really, just like Newsweek was a few weeks ago. This administration is very skilled at making everyone else the problem. Here is the center of why Amnesty Internatonal's spokesman compared Guantanamo and the war against terror generally to the gulag, which we need to remember was an attention getting device: Schulz said, "We don't know for sure what all is happening at Guantanamo and our whole point is that the United States ought to allow independent human rights organizations to investigate." He also said he had "absolutely no idea" whether the International Red Cross had been given access to all prisoners and said the group feared others were being held at secret facilities or locations. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and, most recently, Rumsfeld have repudiated the Amnesty report. The United States holds about 520 men at Guantanamo, where they are denied rights accorded under international law to prisoners of war. Many have been held without charge for more than three years. Schulz noted that it was Amnesty's headquarters in London that issued the annual report on global human rights, which said Guantanamo Bay "has become the gulag of our times." Asked about the comparison, Schulz said, "Clearly this is not an exact or a literal analogy." "... But there are some similarities. The United States is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared ... And in some cases, at least, we know that they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed." "And whether the Americans like it or not, it does reflect how the more than 2 million Amnesty members in a hundred countries around the world and indeed the vast majority of those countries feel about the United States' detention policy," he said. Biden added: "More Americans are in jeopardy as a consequence of the perception that exists worldwide with its existence than if there were no (Guantanamo)." reuters.myway.com