Guantanamo a Setback for Civilization

[unhappycamper]

Guantanamo a Setback for Civilization
Translated By Brandi Miller
June 15, 2006

The news ran in bulletins apparently without impressing the world: last Saturday, three prisoners were found dead in their cells at the American military prison at Guantanamo.

The U.S. Department of Defense has frequently congratulated itself for "never having lost a life in Guantanamo." This was an attempt at "preemptive propaganda," to reduce the global condemnation that arose the very day this contemptible American military prison opened in 2002, provocatively installed on a base encrusted in Cuban territory. The brutal comments made by American authorities about what happened added to the confusion, especially for the commander of this detention center, Admiral Harry Harris, who declared: "It was an act of war."

(Editor's Note: Admiral Harris' full comment was, "They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own. … It was an act of asymmetric warfare against us.")

It is a wonder that given the admiral's reasoning, he didn't have the corpses shot to punish them for this "act of war"… Perhaps that way, some sense could be made of President Bush's bizarre insistence, in commenting on the deaths of the three prisoners, that, "the bodies be treated with a maximum of respect." Through the thick fog of Bush's ignorance, this perhaps provides a glimpse of the essential mechanisms that move his administration …

The truth is that Guantanamo is an abnormality of such dimension that even the Bush Administration's allies are compelled to declare that the prison, "is a place without law." And that "either they move it to the U.S. or they close it," as Britain's minister for Constitutional Affairs, Harriet Harman told the BBC, or that Guantanamo is, "an anomaly that must end," as was recently said by Britain's own Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

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[chelaque liberal]

1. I'm waiting for the responses that it's not as bad as the

concentration camps .

As long as something worse happened this can be justified.

[Marlipern]

2. Apparently, someone woke up the mainstream media.

Last night, much to my surprise, the ABC show “Nightline” broadcast a piece about the so-called “Tipton three”, three young British men of Arab descent, who were in U.S. custody for nearly 2 ½ years, the majority of that time at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Why was I surprised? Because it’s not like the mainstream media to broadcast stories about the true horrors of the so-called “global war on terror”. Perhaps the media shills for this administration are just trying to get “ahead of the story” on these young men, since there will be a movie coming out on June 23rd that documents their ordeal. I hope I’m wrong about that.

Here’s an article on their story.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2065626&page=1

Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal Ahmed, and Asif Iqbal were apparently simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and of the wrong ethnicity. These three friends, who made their home in Tipton, England, had traveled to Pakistan in the fall of 2001. During their visit, they answered the call of a cleric at a local mosque to help provide humanitarian aid to neighboring Afghanistan. In route between Kandahar and Kabul, the three became trapped in the middle of fighting between Northern Alliance forces and the Taliban. They were captured in November of 2001 and turned over to U.S. forces, who, after a month of holding them in Kandahar, transported them to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

During their detention at the gulag in Guantanamo, the three Brits witnessed and experienced treatment and techniques that I can only describe as torture. (Note: That is MY choice of words, not theirs. They were much kinder in their description.) Some of these practices included forced injections (they still don't know what they were injected with), hog-tying, beatings, being subjected to blaring music and strobe lights, and being forced to watch videos of prisoners who had allegedly been ordered to sodomize each other.

The men report that they had witnessed numerous attempted suicides during their incarceration at the camp. Even so, until recently, there had been no successful suicides at Guantanamo. But given the treatment, conditions, and hopeless prospects of the detainees currently at the camp, one can understand why some of the prisoners feel that suicide is their only option. And for those who do succeed in taking their lives, their blood is most certainly on the hands of our President and his administration.

Without ever being charged, the three friends were finally turned over to British authorities in March of 2004, who immediately released them. So, for Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal Ahmed, and Asif Iqbal, life is great, right? Not so. All three have moved from their homes in Tipton after receiving death threats. They are constantly being detained and searched when they go through customs at British airports. In February, even two the actors who portray the men in the upcoming film, “Road to Guantanamo”, had been detained and held for questioning under British anti-terror laws. For all intents and purposes, these men’s lives have been destroyed because our government can’t seem to be able to tell the difference between real terrorists and Brits of Arab descent on vacation.

So I applaud ABC News and the Associated Press for covering the story of these young men. And I hope that this isn’t simply an administration-driven ramp-up to try to discredit them and their story. This country desperately needs more entities in the mainstream media to do some real journalism and report the dirty truth and gory details of this so-called “global war on terror”. Perhaps the media is finally waking up and discovering they have an important responsibility to fulfill. Now America, it’s time for the rest of us to do the same.