shame

The United Nations released a report today calling on the United States to release or bring to trial everyone being held in the Guantanamo Bay prison, Cuba, and to shut the facility down.

The report is a summary of an investigation by five UN experts. It calls on the US government "to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and to refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." The UN report is found here..

It comes as no surprise that the US discredits and ignores the report. It's not like they give a shit about human rights, or international opinion, or... anything except their own agenda. Not much new there. But these kinds of reports are important nonetheless. Reliable third parties must document the abuses of the most powerful. It's bad enough the US rewrites its own recent history; they can't be allowed to rewrite it for the entire world.

One of the US's complaints about the UN report is that the investigators rejected an invitation to visit Guantanamo. The US had invited the experts to the prison - but wouldn't let them interview the people being held there. Because they were not to be given free access, the investigators refused to go. Their findings were instead based on interviews with former detainees, public documents, media reports, lawyers and a questionnaire filled out by the U.S. government.

The Guantanamo Bay prison is one of the great shames of the United States. If there was ever justification for imprisoning the people held there - without charges, without trials, without even the protections that POW status would confer - it has long, long since vanished. These prisoners are the often forgotten victims of the US's war of terror.

AP story here.

Comments

  1. James Redekop16 February 2006 at 05:46

    I still find the fact that Bush's boys have been able to get away with this almost incomprehensible. I keep wondering what would happen if all those supporting Bush got one simple idea into their heads:

    "Would you want Hillary Clinton to have the powers that have been given to George Bush?"

    As sad as the jellyfish Dems have been in the past six years, the really disgusting ones have been the press -- free pass after free pass to the administration, only waking up for the occasional juicy (but not significant policywise) story like Cheney's disregard for basic hunting safety rules.

    ReplyDelete
  2. laura k16 February 2006 at 06:03

    I still find the fact that Bush's boys have been able to get away with this almost incomprehensible.

    Me too. Mind-boggling, without exaggeration.

    Excellent question re Hillary. Allan says that all time time - imagine if Clinton (meaning Bill) had done this, or Gore??

    ReplyDelete
  3. Granny16 February 2006 at 06:16

    Raze it to the ground and seed the land with salt.

    ReplyDelete
  4. allan16 February 2006 at 06:40

    I prefer it be used as a retirement home for Cheney, Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Meyers, Ashcroft, Norquist, Powell, Gonzalez, etc., etc., etc.

    I'm sure a bunch of unemployed Iraqis could be found to run the place.

    No need for any oversight, of course. It didn't seem to need it before.

    ReplyDelete
  5. James Redekop16 February 2006 at 08:19

    I prefer it be used as a retirement home for Cheney, Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Meyers, Ashcroft, Norquist, Powell, Gonzalez, etc., etc., etc.

    The Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings

    Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
    And build them a home, a little place of their own.
    The Fletcher Memorial
    Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings.

    And they can appear to themselves every day
    On closed circuit T.V.
    To make sure they're still real.
    It's the only connection they feel.

    "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Reagan and Haig,
    Mr. Begin and friend, Mrs. Thatcher, and Paisly,
    ("Hello Maggie!")
    Mr. Brezhnev and party.
    ("Scusi dov'รจ il bar?")
    The ghost of McCarthy,
    The memories of Nixon.
    ("Who's the bald chap?")
    ("Good-bye!")

    And now, adding colour, a group of anonymous Latin-American meat packing glitterati."

    Did they expect us to treat them with any respect?
    They can polish their medals and sharpen their
    Smiles, and amuse themselves playing games for awhile.
    Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you're dead.

    Safe in the permanent gaze of a cold glass eye
    With their favorite toys
    They'll be good girls and boys
    In the Fletcher Memorial Home for colonial
    Wasters of life and limb.

    Is everyone in?
    Are you having a nice time?
    Now the final solution can be applied.

    ReplyDelete
  6. M@16 February 2006 at 14:06

    I meant to say doublethink of course.

    ReplyDelete

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