..OFK..
..”AI” is still smarting from the 04 election..

Amnesty International Leadership Donated Thousands To Kerry
http://www.juiceenewsdaily.com/0505/news/amn_intl.html

so dont expect much help from them..its that anybodybutbush bs..
..if the UN was more than a collegiate debate society your concerns and those of a million others would be addressed…again maybe a man like John Bolton is exactly the kind of man we in the US need to shake up the UN,imhho..but never give up there is hope……………..

Posted by Rob_NC at June 3, 2005 06:59 AM

It's a shame that Amnesty International has chosen to sacrifice it's credibility on the altar of politics.

Organizations like this would do well to follow the lead of Alcoholics Anonymous in sticking to a single issue and having no interest in politics.

As it stands now, A.I. may just as well reverse it's initials to I.A., because it's become little more than a clone of International Answer.

I think you folks spending so much time bashing AI are both making the point and missing the point. By this I mean I suspect that AI's use of the word gulag was partially intended to provoke a gut response ... mission accomplished.

But you're missing the point by misinterpretting the statement "Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time." I don't think this statement was aimed at OFK, who clearly has more information on gulags than most. It was aimed at the general public, who, if they are like me, interpret gulag as a symbol of social injustice perpetrated by a world power. To put it another way:

"Guantanamo has become the symbol of social injustice perpetrated by a world power of our time."

However bad North Korea's, or even China's camps may be, Guantanimo has become the symbol. That's a simple statement of fact. And someone or some group of someones is responsible. You'll say it's the liberal media. I'll say the media would have had nothing to report if there had been nothing to report.

Would that were the case.

James, Let me see if I understand your points--

1. Amnesty was being deliberately imprecise with the meaning of "gulag" to raise an emotional reaction.

2. Amnesty only had something to talk about because of Guantanamo.

As to your first point, I think you're essentially conceding that Amnesty has discarded rigor, balance, and precision and become a pressure group. As you say, our criticism means they've succeeded. But succeeding in discarding its credibility doesn't help the people who need Amnesty most--the people in the real gulags.

As to your second point, it's self-evident that if there are real gulags in this world, Amnesty shouldn't have to distort the meaning of the word to find something to talk about.

James -

Calling Gitmo a "gulag" is a slap in the face to Gulag survivers in the same way that calling Bush "Hitler" is pissing on the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

It's a question of scale... orders of magnitude.

Even if Bush turned out to actually BE the criminal that Howard Dean claims he is; to compare him to Hitler is to display either a profound ignorance of history or cynical dishonesty of biblical proportions.


To compare Gitmo to a real Gulag, or for that matter to compare what our idiots at Abu Ghraib did to what SADDAM did there is to display the same profound ignorance. Or dishonesty.

Argument by metaphor is bad enough, but argument by hyperbole carries no intellectual content whatever.

AI wants to make the case that people at Guantanamo Bay are systematically and intentionally deprived of human rights? Fine. Let them make that case.

If they wish to make the case that it is so bad there that it rises to the level of a gulag, or the Holocaust, let them present their facts and make their case.

If they use the word and do not present the facts, they lie.

Their lies are even less excusable when they do not call ACTUAL gulags by that name--no, they reserve it exclusively for America.

..James do some research..there is a gulag on Cuba but its not at gitmo...a little hint..someone`s brother runs it...you can put your faith in ai and the un if you like..many died so you can..but by the same token, many dont,wont,and never will...
personally speaking I`ll trust this government above all others..will they make mistakes..well duh..freedom is on the march, be part of it or get the **** out of the way.................

To Rob_NC. I agree with your sentiments, but disagree with your last line. Freedom is precisely what allows AI, etc. to be so critical of the the U.S. and our government without having to justify their words- pure politics without reponsibility or accountability. They are the result of freedom. Very depressing...

coliva: Not quite. We have freedom of speech, but we also have laws against slander and false accusation. No freedom is absolute. The only way freedom of speech actually works in this case, is when people use it to expose AI's hypocrisy.

..coliva..please excuse my frankness..if I truly felt "ai" was really concerned with these issues ..trust me when I tell you they would have no stauncher supporter..but the smell of their latest report stinks of politics..and yes I will be a voice that will scream until judgment day..be part of the solution not part of the problem..and right now them and their ilk are exactly that.......

...if half of the effort of the anybodybutbush crowd was put into solving issues as the ones that began this thread; we could bring this tormented world a huge step forward..until we work together..these goals will be just out of reach.....

OFK, you and all of the other respondents have grasped the tail (or trunk, or leg), but missed the elephant of my point.

I don't care about amnesty international. My point was this: Guantanamo has become an internationally recognized symbol of injustice. Here, maybe putting it in a separate paragraph will help:

Guantanamo has become an internationally recognized symbol of injustice.

The fact that AI uses the word gulag is just evidence of this fact. You can argue all you want whether it's a fair comparison, but it doesn't change the fact that:

Guantanamo has become an internationally recognized symbol of injustice.

And all you guys talking about how AI ought to be complaining about North Korea, etc., only reminds me of the episode from the Gospel (I don't know which), where Mary Magdalene uses all these expensive oils on Jesus, and the Apostles complain that she ought to sell the oils and give the money to the poor. Jesus' response was to the effect of "Give her a break. If she's doing something good which she doesn't have to do, don't give her grief because she could be doing something better."

As far as I'm concerned, AI is providing a service by highlighting injustice where it's found. And if it's found in my own backyard, all the better, because that's where I'm more likely to be able to do something about it, however little that something might be. I understand that AI is far left, and so I take that into account when gathering information. But who am I to tell them what to do? (or complain about it after the fact?)

But in case you missed it, my main point is:

Guantanamo has become an internationally recognized symbol of injustice.

How do you deal with that?

"Guantanamo has become an internationally recognized symbol of injustice. "

Gitmo has BECOME that through a series of false accusations and overblown hyperbole; such as the A.I. rhetoric.


More importantly, it wouldn't have mattered what we did or did not do, because the "Anybody but Bush"
crowd, whether we're talking American citizens or foreign leaders; would have found SOMETHING to complain about.

Let me just say two things for the record:

Gitmo should have been a "Prisoner of War" camp, although I understand the 'Damned if you do, Damned if you don't conundrum facing our govt, regarding how to classify those prisoners.

Dumbass things have been done by people in the field, such as at Abu Ghraib; that NEVER should have happened.

But just as we hear about the few bad things, but never the hundreds of good things; it wouldn't have mattered how perfectly we acted, because those people that like to set themselves up in opposition to anything that's not THEM would still have found something to complain about.

And how do you deal with THAT?

"Guantanamo has become an internationally recognized symbol of injustice. "

James, YOU are the one continually missing the point.

The point is not that it HAS become a "symbol of injustice" but whether or not it DESERVES to.

What are the facts? If 90% of the planet believes the Earth to be flat does that make it flat? If 90% believe Guantanamo to be "another gulag" that doesn't make it so.

What else have people believed that isn't so and wasn't fair?

One famous example: that Jews control the world's financial systems and exploit them for their own benefit. This belief is STILL held over large parts of the world.

What would you say to that, James? That Jews need to ask themselves why they are an international symbol of injustice and what they want to do to make it up to the people who ascribe crimes to them that they don't commit?

So why should the US grovel when we are accused of things we don't do--ESPECIALLY when the people who REALLY ARE doing the things that we are wrongfully accused of are let of the hook?

What the hell is wrong with you, James? Since when is truth determined by majority vote?

But this is alll we need to know about the "gulag" charge: they make it in press releases, but not in their official reports.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158626,00.html

WALLACE: But Mr. Schulz, and we do have to wrap this up. I mean, you're hardly just a bystander here. You're the one, who in your presentations, specifically called Rumsfeld and Attorney General Gonzales high-level torture architects.

And I'd like to finish, if I might, by quoting The Washington Post, which has hardly been a supporter of President Bush's and the Bush administration's treatment of prisoners. This is what they had to say in a recent editorial. And let's put it up on the screen, if we may. "Turning a report on prisoner detention into another excuse for Bush-bashing or America-bashing undermines Amnesty's legitimate criticisms of U.S. policies."

Is it possible, sir, that by excessive rhetoric or by your political links, that you have hurt, not helped, your cause?

SCHULZ: Chris, I don't think I'd be on this station, on this program today with you if Amnesty hadn't said what it said and President Bush and his colleagues haven't responded as they did. If I had come to you two weeks ago and said, "Chris, I'd like to go on Fox with you just to talk about U.S. detention policies at Guantanamo and elsewhere," I suspect you wouldn't have given me an invitation.

WALLACE: So you're saying if you make irresponsible charges, that's good for the cause?

SCHULZ: I don't believe that they're irresponsible. I've told you the ways in which I think that there are analogies between the Soviet prison system and the United States.

But the important point is -- the important point is -- and I should say first that we said alleged architects of torture. That's very important...


What else is there to say? They are doing it on purpose to make headlines, and they say one thing in the press and another in the report, as is documented here:

ystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/686hyaeq.asp



"...The questions that reporters might have asked AI about its extraordinary accusations were instead directed at the Bush administration.

When I called and asked AI's press office why none of this was in the report itself, I was told that, after all, the report covered 149 countries and there simply wasn't room..."

"...But if the United States is what HRW says it is, why would the arch-criminals--in Washington, that is--care about doing anything so obviously, well, good? Which is it to be? The United States government and its leadership are a gang of criminals who should be isolated, sanctioned, arrested, and condemned as in principle no better than the undeniably criminal Sudanese government--but, by the way, it would be excellent if the Great Satan would also mount its noble charger, rattle its weapons, gird up its loins, and intervene to defend the people of Sudan. Please report to the International Criminal Court's dock in The Hague to be tried for torture and war crimes and what-not--but on your way, could you stop by Darfur, using military force if necessary to protect the people from genocide, make sure the peace treaty ending the war in the south doesn't fall apart, and don't do anything that we might regard as unnecessary collateral damage (we'll be watching, and we'll add anything we don't like to the list of your crimes). And, oh yes, be sure to arrest and bring the wicked Sudanese leaders and militias along with you to The Hague, so they can be prosecuted after we finish with you.

There is something morally perverse about this. Can you really hold these positions simultaneously and still count yourself a human rights organization acting solely on principle? Unlikely. What it means in the real world, of course, is that these human rights organizations, whether Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, simply indulge themselves in rhetorical overkill. They do not mean what they say. Amnesty instinctively recognized this by putting its nonsensical charges in its press releases and not in its report. Human Rights Watch announces this horrific moral equivalence--then it calls merely for a special counsel to investigate further. Neither group means what it said, even though, like clockwork, letters to the editor will be received next week insisting that they really, really did. We, for our part, instinctively know better.

We also know that it is suicidally irresponsible for groups that depend on the moral force of their pronouncements to habitually say things they don't actually mean. Rhetorical inflation is a dangerous indulgence for the human rights movement. And it is a bad thing for the cause of human rights..."

Vet,

Thank you for going on the record and espousing the position that any reasonable person on my side of middle should agree with.

Gitmo should have been a prisoner of war camp. Dumbass things have been done.

I disagree that it wouldn't have mattered how perfectly we acted. If we had acted perfectly, what could anyone complain about? Gitmo would not be the symbol.

The problem was not the dumbasses who did the dumbass things. It's human nature that some people will abuse positions of authority. The problem was the dumbass policy that wanted information at all costs. The policy that said the Geneva conventions rules on torture were quaint. The policy that said we can hold people as long as we want and there are no laws that can touch them. The policy that said let's go as far as we can without breaking the letter of the law. When you push as close as possible to the edge, you get a lot more dumbasses falling over the edge. It's all well and good to prosecute them. I just think some responsibility lies at the top.

James, you've got to stop assuming the things you are obligated to prove.

"The problem was the dumbass policy that wanted information at all costs. The policy that said the Geneva conventions rules on torture were quaint."

You can't back up these assertions with FACTS.

"The policy that said we can hold people as long as we want and there are no laws that can touch them."

The Geneva conventions on unlawful combatants are what justifies THAT policy.

"The policy that said let's go as far as we can without breaking the letter of the law."

And now you've contradicted yourself, because your first two assertions are that we are breaking the law.

It is widely known that the US imprisons people and denies them access to a civil judge, denies the choice of a lawyer and further denies them imprisoned lawyer-client confidentiality. The imprisoned are denied access to an open trial, or even access to a jury; they are barred from all the evidence against them and denied an appeal to an independent judge. Many of them are tortured and many of those tortured die. These people are effectively murdered. Furthermore, many of those imprisoned are transported secretly to regimes that are infamous for their brutal treatment of detainees. The brutality manifests iteself in the detention without due process (unknown in the civilised West), torture and murder, often by memorable means such as being boiled alive.

Gabriel Hanna is silent in the face of this litany of brutality. Maybe his eyes are on the prize. Perhaps he could share with us why exactly the work of Amnesty International is worthless in highlighting this activity? Is this shocking infringement of human rights occurring, and is AI a credible source?

dirk:

"It is widely known" should more accurately read "it is assumed by people who hate Bush". If you care about what credibility you have left, then quote actual incidents, verifiable on public record. Attributing to some massive conspiracy isn't good enough; remember, these people couldn't hide a simple breaking and entering, or a simple case of adultery in the Oval Office. Remember also that just because you saw it in the news doesn't make it so. That's the kind of thinking that cost Dan Rather his career.

As GH points out above, "it was widely known" once upon a time that the earth was flat. That didn't make it so.

Interesting bit of trivia...

"It is widely known" and it's verbal equivilants; are a common rhetorical device in Islamist political discourse. This device is used by Islamist Muslim clerics when they wish to present a "fact" that they have no evidence for.
e.g;

"It is well known that the jews are compelled by the torah to use the blood of christian children to make their passover bread.

---


As far as the allegations that Dirk made; it is true that the US holds enemy combatants in a limbo between criminal prisoners and Prisoners of War.

I personally believe that we would have been better served to label them as POW's, but it must be kept in mind that the rights ascribed to POW's arise from the Geneva Convention.

The problem is that not only is Al Queda not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, but they cannot even be protected under the rules of warfare that define "guerilla" or "partisan" warfare.


As to the accusation that the US govt is systematically torturing these prisoners, that accusation assumes facts not in evidence.

How was that election, dirk? :)

And as for the argument of whether the "story is true" canard, I would offer this: The credibility of the accuracy is what is at issue here. That is why Amnesty International is being so roundly criticized. AI will be referenced when someone wants to level that accusation at the US now, the fact that there is no proof notwithstanding.

But by analogy: How much credence would you give the report of a social worker accusing you of child abuse, if that social worker couldn't distinguish between your behavior and Jeffrey Dahmer's?

How much credence would you give the report of a physicist whose report claims a comet will strike the earth, if that physicist can't distinguish between the Sun and the moon?

How much credence can you give a Human Right's Organization's report on torture when that organization cannot, or worse, WILL not, distinguish between a Soviet gulag and an American prison?

Welcome back, dirk strom. You and I have had this discussion before, about moral equivalence and unsubstantiated assertions.

While you continue to troll, I have nothing to say to you. "It is widely known" is not a substitute for evidence; it is merely a sign of one's willingness to believe in rumors and innuendo, and parrot them.

A Vet: Did you know the Geneva conventions--at least, the protocols that the US is party to--require that a POW get paychecks?

Geneva also defines a "prisoner of war" as a soldier.

That means, they have to wear a uniform of some kind, they have to have a clear chain of command, they have to distinguish themselves from the civilian population.

We uphold the Geneva conventions by refusing to grant POW protections to people who do not fit the definitions.

There is a fourth Geneva protocol that does give unlawful combatants more protections, and we quite properly refuse to be a party to it.

We go Geneva one better by not shooting them as soon as they are captured, which the Geneva protocols that the US is party to allow.

dirk strom and his ilk want to see people who don't bother to abide by the laws of war treated in the same way as those who do. If we did that, Geneva would be worthless.

What is the point of getting our own guys killed by putting them in uniforms and not quartering them in Iraqi homes? Let's do like the terrorists, and put our guys in plain clothes and mingle them with the civilian population. According to dirk we should then be entitled to all the same POW protections as he claims the people we fight are entitled to. (Al Qaeda is world-renowned for its humanity to prisoners, after all.)

I'm sure that in his revised Geneva there would be some kind of exception for Americans, though.

Not that it would make any difference to the people we are fighting, because they already have proved that they are willing to kill their coreligionists; they are killing Iraqis at roughly ten times the rate that they kill Americans.

Mark Steyn:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?id=6226&page=4

Nobody got killed in Gitmo, so instead America is being flayed as the planet’s number one torturer for being insufficiently respectful to the holy book of its prisoners, even though the Americans themselves supplied their prisoners with the holy book, even though the preferred holy book of most Americans is banned in the home country of many of the prisoners, even though Americans who fall into the hands of the other side get their heads hacked off, even though the prisoners’ co-religionists themselves blow up more mosques and Korans than Americans ever do, and even though the alleged insufficient respect to the prisoners’ holy book occurred at a rate of one verified incident of possibly intentional disrespect per year. But sure, go ahead, close Gitmo and wait for the torrent of rave reviews — right after the complaints that it is culturally insensitive to rebuild the World Trade Center when it’s the burial site of ten devout Muslim flying enthusiasts.

As Rule 18 of that Manchester manual makes plain, the Islamists understand the West’s fetish for self-torture. After all, you wouldn’t bother alleging torture if you were held captive in Saudi Arabia or Syria or the jails of Ahmed Aboul Gheit’s government in Egypt. If you ‘complained to the court of mistreatment’ in Cairo, Mr Gheit’s judges would say, ‘And your point is?’ But I wonder if the Islamists’ ability to play the Western press like a fiddle is quite so smart in the long run. The majority of Americans have a higher regard for their military than their media, and for the jihad to retain its power in the popular imagination it has to be credible. When Newsweek, CBS et al fall over themselves to shill for Islamist spin-doctors, complaining that the infidels are not handling the Koran in appropriately submissive ways, they risk turning the jihad into one huge laughing stock. In that sense, the whiners are doing far more damage to Islam than the urinators are.

jm: The reds prevailed. I generally like it when that happens. I'm not as ecstatic as I was after the Reds triumphed in the classic Battle of Istanbul, but the party I voted for is in power so - reasonably pleased. Electoral reform is more likely now, and boundary changes will increase that likelihood, but the fact it is not yet on the table would be my biggest regret.

gh: Woo. The internet is logjammed with such comparative studies, so directing such towards me is redundant. Another lump will float by soon enough. I'm not entirely sure of your intent in highlighting the treatment of prisoners is such regimes, however. Is it to highlight the sureness of your purpose or your indifference to facts?

“It is widely known” is not a substitute for evidence; it is merely a sign of one’s willingness to believe in rumors and innuendo, and parrot them.

I chose the phrase 'it is widely known' to detail those facts because they are known, by yourself for one. HRW and AI, although by no means the only sources of information, have done much work with regard to US activity. You have cited the work of these organisations in recording torture, disappearance and murder previously, without caveats. I asked you whether you considered them credible.

The truth is, you are not against torture, disappearance or murder per se, only when expressing opposition to such behaviour suits your goals. Your continual reference to the activities of third parties is a furious cranking of the bar to its lowest setting, and your support of extraordinary rendition means you fail to clear even that. I'm not surprised you have nothing to say to me. In your shoes, internal dialogue must be awkward and sparse.

I think you're missing his point, Dirk.

It's not that we never, to use that pungent colloquialism; "F#ck Up", but that it's atypical behavior for us.

Critics scream that we pissed on a Koran, but were silent when NVA torture specialists shoved glass rods up the members of POWs and broke them.
They complained that we made naked Iraqi dogpiles, but not when Saddam fed prisoners into a wood chipper, feet first.

It's not that we never do wrong, it's that nobody seems to want to give us credit for doing right 99% of the time.

Stories like the ones in the news lately wouldn't be so sensational if the incidents described weren't so out of character for us, and there is NO better army to be a prisoner of than the US Army.

I'm well aware of his point. He aims to combat criticism of US policy by offering an infinitely extensible fallacy, a tactic in which he is well-practiced.

You join him. You go further by associating me with perpetrators of blood libel due to my habit of using words to communicate, a net which catches almost all sentient humans. You are hasty to dismiss their claims. You forget that many Jews confessed to ritual murders for exactly that purpose.

"Blood libel"? Where did he say that? Where is the accusation of anti-Semitism?

Oh, right, there isn't one.

In the meantime, proven anti-Semites in the Middle East get a pass.

This is real blood libel.

This is real anti-Semitism.

Got that, Dirk? Or are you content to sink into the muck with Amnesty International?

Dirk -

I'm going to overlook the astonishingly silly notion that I accused you of spreading the Blood Libel because I am interested in hearing you explain how he, or I; offered an infinitely extensible fallacy.

Dirk Strom, with all your talk about fallacies you commit the fallacy of origin when you say that I should accept everything that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say, if I accept any of it.

I accept what they say, when what they say is true. I extend you the same courtesy. You say there is such a thing as "extraordinary rendition", and that is true. At other times you lie.

When AI and HRW say Guantanamo Bay is the "gulag for our time", and they ignore actual gulags, they lie. When they say that China and North Korea have enormous prison camps and slave labor, they tell the truth--when they are not too busy castigating my country for "crimes" such as abusing a book.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Even a liar tells the truth most of the time. Even objectively anti-American organizations can find the time to tell the truth about dictatorships.

As for "extraordinary rendition", I say it is wrong. Pissing on a Koran is not, even if it is done with malice aforethought.

Giving terrorists paychecks and the rights according to soldiers who obey the laws of war is wrong, as is calling for the United States to do so.

You can take your condescension and shove it, dirk. Nobody cares what you think about me, or America, or any of us here. You chose your side already. You choose to make the perfect the enemy of the good, and it only works to the advantage of evil.

By their fruits do we know them.

Here we have totally unfounded accusations levelled at the U.S. Government by Amnesty International, who admittedly "...don't know for sure what is happening at Guantanamo..." and haven't offered a single shred of credible evidence to support their claims, and a lot of anti-Bush and anti-American types who obviously don't need evidence anyway(any accusation against Bush, his staff or the U.S. must be true and no shred of proof is required to reinforce it) leap to agree with these accusations. "If they say it's a gulag, it must be a gulag".
Idiots.

Except I don't commit that fallacy. What HRW and AI say is supported by evidence, as was their work detailing abuses in Iraq when you cited them. I assume that is why you used their findings. It is amusing to see your accusation precede yet more tired, fallacious hackery. I'm with the terrorists - yawn.

Your assessment of what constitutes torture is perhaps better directed to the human rights groups that you selectively cite. Pissing on a book may not be torture, and whether specific instances of such activity happened at all may be moot. The folly of documented disrespect to the beliefs of 1.6bn people is not moot.

Since beliefs are under discussion, and here those unable to read should feel free to join in - many religious figures have advanced the belief that Jews use the blood of the ritually slain. This is backed up by much historical evidence - the confessions of many Jews that they have committed such crimes. It is a lie to say there is no evidence.

And again the self-professed atheist lobs the Good Book at me - look, I gave at the office, OK?

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