Going to go over to first-person on this one.
Vice President Dick Cheney made waves on Memorial Day, accusing Amnesty International of deceit when it compared Guantanamo Bay to a "gulag" in a scathing report on U.S. treatment of enemy prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba. Further, the VP said that he does not take the report seriously.
That's unfortunate.
I have major reservations about some of Cheney's comments. This stems from a conversation that I had with a soldier who had returned from service at Gitmo Bay (before the Abu Gharib scandal came to light).
He was extremely tight-lipped about what conditions were like there and if the prisoners were telling the military anything of value. If he had said "we're getting a treasure trove of information" or "they're not saying too much" or something like that, it would have been one thing, but this man had a guilty look on his face and told me that he didn't want to talk about it. Uh oh.
While this is not proof in itself, I know this man well. He tells the truth and would seriously consider disobeying orders if such an order violated his sense of right and wrong. He takes great pride in his work for the U.S. military; for him to clam up like that with that panicked expression on his face told me that there was a very serious problem and that he may have been forced to keep his mouth shut about what he was seeing. Who knows?
Then the stories and photos of prisoner abuse at the Abu Gharib prison made headlines around the world within a week of the conversation. It does not take a genius to figure out why my friend was so tight-lipped about his time at Guantanamo Bay. I have not asked him those questions again.
Cheney's view (and Limbaugh's too) is that our military provides for their religious needs, food, medical care and so on and so forth and that millions of people have been liberated from oppression in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is all true. It's also true that if the roles were reversed, and a Christian asked for a Bible while in Muslim custody, the same courtesy would probably not be extended that the U.S. military has shown to Muslim prisoners in providing them with the Quran and Muslim clergy to tend to the prisoners' religious needs.
However, if we expect Muslim nations to embrace democracy, we have to stop the perversions (literal and figurative) of international law on treatment of prisoners. And that includes terrorists, as evil as they are. This is complicating the U.S. image problem.
We also have to set the example for other nations to follow. Weakening the Geneva Convention by pretending that the rules do not apply to people based on what they are wearing at the time of their capture is idiocy. They are either criminals, or they are non-uniformed combatants that have rights under established international law. THERE IS NO IN-BETWEEN!!
That's what we would insist on if one of our Special Forces soldiers was captured while on a mission, and if he was wearing local attire instead of a U.S. military uniform. We'd want him to be treated humanely, right?
Let's extend that thinking: sexually abusing someone is a crime, is it not? Rape is a crime, is it not? Hooking electrical wires to a prisoner's genitals is generally considered torture which is illegal, is it not? Beating a handcuffed naked person to death is generally frowned upon is it not? Where were vaunted American values when this abuse was going on? It was checked at the door.
For Bush and Cheney to pooh-pooh the entire Amnesty International report out-of-hand is further proof that this Administration needs to change the way it does business. The government says that the U.S. has an image problem in the Muslim world yet insists that the U.S. is taking the lead in human rights issues. BS!
They are causing their own image problems. The Administration recently criticized the Iraqi security forces for mistreatment of prisoners. Did the pot just call the kettle black? It will criticize other nations, but it won't admit that it is a human rights violator itself?
And if the military wants to stop the insurgency in Iraq, they should continue door-to-door searches and work the problem instead of relying primarily on information taken from prisoners. They net more insurgents that way and seize more stockpiles of weapons, ammunition, bombs and other military/paramilitary equipment.
This Administration doesn't mind breaking international law or changing how it is interpreted for national security purposes. And it doesn't seem to mind treating Gitmo Bay prisoners and other prisoners around the world like they don't exist and therefore do not deserve to be treated humanely AT ALL TIMES.
And President Bush is going to have major egg in his face, too, if the indicators are correct. Those indicators are saying "you've been lied to" or "you're not telling us everything. Again."
More honesty, more dialogue and more attention to the problems! These issues will not go away just because Bush and Cheney say there aren't any problems, and that everything's hunkey-dorey. It most certainly is not hunkey-dorey.
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