Amnesty International has even backtracked on the accusations. But they still hold their "fake but true" standard:
"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," Mr. Schulz said, adding that Amnesty International was careful to use the word "alleged" when accusing high-level Bush administration officials.
"Alleged" guilt.
The alleged child-molesting, drug-snorting, Spotted Owl-eating, burger-chomping, terrorist-sympathizing members of Amnesty International should really open up their offices and books to let Army investigators in to check out these alleged violations. I mean, I don't know for sure what is happening in those offices. Why take a chance? Although, like AI, I am careful to use the word "alleged."
The amazing thing about Gitmo is how careful we are--not how brutal we are. By rights, we should be able to shoot the bastards on sight for being unlawful combatants. They are lucky if we simply keep them for the duration of the war:
There can't be a single instance, in all of human history, where the spiritual sensitivities of captured enemy combatants have been so scrupulously regarded. This is borne out by those few cases where "abuse" was actually found; they are, in the words of the often-puzzling cliché, exceptions that prove the rule.
We should not shut down Gitmo and release or charge the inmates. They are unlawful combatants who are damned lucky we don't just shoot them and instead handle them so carefully. Should we shut down Gitmo, it will be a propaganda victory for our enemies who will trumpet the closing as proof their wild charges were true. And then our enemies will claim torture and abuse at another facility. Or won't specify a facility, naming "secret" prisons that don't even exist--all the more damning, really.
The bottom line for many of the critics of our practices at Gitmo is not what we do, but that we are the ones holding the enemy. Amnesty International appears to thinks justice would be served if the tables were turned and Islamists were holding Americans prisoner. They seem to think that America deserved the lesson of 9-11 but since we have failed to just curl up and cry for forgiveness, Amnesty International will help out and try to continue the lesson.
And our press seems to agree. They latch onto the accusations of our enemies and misrepresent what has happened in Guantanamo to attack America. This is just part of the pattern of publishing whatever makes us look bad and ignoring what is good.
Pictures and videos of Abu Ghraib? Never mind that we punish our own for violating our laws and standards. The people have the right to know so they can riot with good reason!
Pictures of people leapong to their deaths on 9-11? Keep them in the vaults. We wouldn't want to enflame the American street and remind them of why we fight. Who knows what American are capable of!
But you won't see those films of 9-11 so you've probably forgotten our recent history. Or rather, you've forgotten how you felt that day. So read this instead (via Powerline). Read it and remember your anger all over again. Remember your determination to hunt down the animals who hurt us. This is the story of one man who survived:
Most people immediately headed for stairwells and elevators. Those who had experienced the 1993 attack were among the first to leave. Others turned their televisions to news channels in an attempt to understand what had happened.
Mr. DiFrancesco joined a clutch of people at the bank of windows. They watched as fire and grey-black smoke poured from the North Tower. People leaned out windows, waving desperately for help.
Those around him speculated that a small aircraft, possibly a Cessna, had crashed into the North Tower. Mr. DiFrancesco discounted the possibility of terrorism. It must have been pilot error, he said.
Within minutes, an official with the Port Authority, the agency that managed the World Trade Center, came over the public address system to reassure people in the South Tower that they were safe. There was no need to evacuate, the official said, and those in the process of leaving the building should return. Some of those who had taken the elevator to the lobby were told to return to their offices.
Mr. DiFrancesco called his wife, Mary. They had met at university and had fallen in love through late-night phone conversations. After more than a decade of marriage, they still talked often: Ron called her four or five times a day from the office.
Although never surprised to hear from him, Mary was shocked by Ron's news: The North Tower had been hit by an airplane. "But it was Tower One that was hit. I'm in Tower Two," he reassured her.
Ron described the scene he had witnessed from the windows of Euro Brokers. People had started to leap from windows to escape the flames. "It's horrible," he said.
Mary turned on the television to watch events unfold as she phoned Ron's family to assure them he was safe.
Mr. DiFrancesco, meanwhile, tried to return his attention to the financial numbers that scrolled down two screens on his desk. He was quickly interrupted by a long-distance phone call from Toronto. A friend, Paul Tepsich, berated him for staying at work while the North Tower burned. "Get the hell out," Mr. Tepsich told his former university classmate.
Feel the tears of hearbreak and rage well up again as you remember why we hold Taliban and al Qaeda thugs in Gitmo. And remember that we could under international law just shoot the SOBs for being part of the operation that led to 9-11 and nearly 3,000 dead in one day.
Fucking bastards!
