THE TERROR APOLOGISTS AT AMNESTY International are at it again, decrying Gitmo and condemning the U.S. for it's treatment of prisoners there. Here are some of the highlights from a piece by the AP.
LONDON -- Amnesty International branded the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay a human rights failure Wednesday, calling it "the gulag of our time" as it released a report that offers stinging criticism of the United States and its detention centers around the world...
"...Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time," Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan said...
The use of the word Gulag is so completely beyond the scope of reality it is hard to know where to begin. Gulag is the term used for an entire system of forced labor camps, refilled at the whim of Soviet leadership for a period of decades. Millions upon millions of people died either in, or on their way to, these camps. People were rounded up at random to fill the ranks, and their sole purpose was to drive the Soviet economy through slave labor.
As a result, between 1929, when they first became a mass phenomenon, and 1953, the year of Stalin's death, some 18 million people passed through them. In addition, a further 6 or 7 million people were deported, not to camps but to exile villages. In total, that means the number of people with some experience of imprisonment in Stalin's Soviet Union could have run as high as 25 million, about 15 percent of the population.
Ironically, if one google's the words "gulag" and "torture," it is much more likely they will find vast references to liberal blogs using the term to describe Gitmo or Abu Ghraib. Are these idiots merely uneducated as to the true nature of the Gulag? Or, are they purposely minimizing what happened in the Soviet Union as a hysteria tactic designed to undermine the war effort?
Of course, since we all know that liberals are smarter than conservatives, the comparison is obviously intended to draw a comparison between American treatment of prisoners and Soviet treatment of political prisoners.
Imagine Stalin's Lubyanka prison, where men and women are being strapped to tables. Their teeth are kicked out; they are forced to stand in vats of urine, or stare at two-thousand-watt lightbulbs, or sit on hot pipes until their buttocks are burned through. Their genitals are lashed with wet towels, needles are stabbed through the back of the neck until the spinal cord is injured and convulsions begin. Pregnant women are kicked to death in front of their husbands, children are slowly murdered in front of their mothers..."
'...Others had their testicles kicked to a pulp, were seated on red-hot stoves, had needles rammed under their fingernails, were scalped, had their jaws ripped down to their necks, and had their eyes gouged out and their tongues torn out. Executions took place in specially equipped death cells. Elsewhere ...victims were bound to trees with iron hoops before being burned alive. Others had been buried alive, some after having had their scalps and hands skinned.'
Comparing this kind of brutal and widespread torture and mass killing with a couple of instances at Gitmo where a handful of prisoners were subjected to women's sexuality, some sleep and sensory deprivation, and uncomfortable positions, is ludicruous and dangerous.
For this kind of propoganda, Amnesty International should be condemned in the strongest terms. Not just for attempting to frame our treatment of prisoners as something it is not, but also for the despicable insult to the victims and survivors of the Gulag.
What is wrong with these people anyway?
3 comments:
Yes, they are purposely minimizing what happened in the Soviet Union as a hysteria tactic designed to undermine the war effort.
That is all.
Funny you should mention it. Just this morning I sent to Amnesty's U.S. office this letter:
"I have been an active supporter of Amnesty International since the Conspiracy of Hope tour in the late 1980's.
I have a small issue to take up with you regarding the press release regarding human rights abuses in the United States. While I share Amnesty's concern about possible violations at Guantanamo Bay, and don't approve of our setting aside provisions in the Geneva Convention, I am bothered by it being called a "gulag". The gulags in the former Soviet Union were prison camps full of prisoners who committed nothing more offensive than speaking out against the state. Millions of people died there of abuse, starvation, torture, or execution. To compare a camp full of those accused of fighting a war against the United States to a gulag is offensive, not only to those running Gitmo, but to the millions of those who died in real gulags.
Amnesty's reputation of being an independent force for human rights protection is tarnished when such unfair claims are made."
I do take exception to you're calling Amnesty "terrorist apologists" however. Amnesty has been fighting diligently, and often times successfully, to release prisoners of conscience whose disappearance would otherwise go unnoticed.
Kevin,
Good of you to send the letter. Although I don't believe it is a "small issue." I believe it is a very large issue. Furthermore, your reference to the Geneva Convention is not accurate. The Geneva Convention was not designed to protect terrorists. In fact, it was specifically designed to discourage their type of warfare. People who murder civilians, or promote the murder of civilians should never be covered by the Geneva Convention, lest we run the risk of that becoming a legitimate style of warfare.
When you argue that these tactics should be rewarded by Geneva Convention coverage, you further the degradation of the very meaning of the standard.
As far as AI's reputation, it is pretty much already in the tank. They have zero credibility on the subject of human rights as far as I am concerned. Like so many of these so-called "independent" organizations, like the International Red Cross, they have demonstrated a strong anti-American agenda.
Regarding your thoughts on AI being "terror apologists" well, they have had far more to say about suppposed human rights violations by America than they have about actual human rights violations of Islamofascists.
Like so many others, they exist in a state of fear of terrorism, and find it much easier to beat up on us, which risks them nothing. That, in my book, is a terror apologist, regardless of other actions they may take that are seperate from the war on terror.
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