- MIAMI -- Last week Duncan
Hunter, chairman of the powerful U.S. House armed services committee, went
on TV to rebut charges by Amnesty International that the Bush administration
is running "the gulag of our time" at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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- His ludicrous performance reminded me that my father,
who dealt with many politicians when he was chairman of Elgin Watch Co.,
called congressmen "used car salesmen from Biloxi." Hunter is
from California, but the shoe fits.
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- The San Diego Cicero waved some fruit and a chicken leg
at viewers to illustrate Guantanamo's haute cuisine, declaring its inmates
have "never eaten better ... they've never been treated better --
courtesy of the American taxpayer!"
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- Those lucky, lucky 540 Muslims at Gitmo.
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- One wonders if Hunter plans to spend his next vacation
there. Apparently it's a great, all-inclusive resort, with programs like
sleep deprivation, intense noise assault, cigarette burning, water torture,
beatings, humiliation. Deluxe wire cages are even included in the package.
And what food!
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- Not to be underthought, VP Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary
Don Rumsfeld also rushed to Gitmo's defence. Cheney advanced the masterful
thesis that the camp had to be kept open because it held "bad guys."
Rumsfeld claimed it must stay open because taxpayers had invested $100
million US to build it and spend $90 million annually to run it.
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- The Senate majority leader, Republican Bill Frist, added,
"to cut and run because of image problems is the wrong thing to do."
Brilliant, Bill. In an earlier time, you might have advised: "Mein
Fuhrer, ignore all that stupid criticism of our concentration camps. Stand
firm!"
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- Fortunately, decent Americans find the Guantanamo gulag
an outrageous violation of everything the nation stands for. Former president
Jimmy Carter, who has become the country's conscience in a time of growing
totalitarian impulses, demanded it be closed, as have a growing number
of legislators, including the Republican party's most courageous senator,
Chuck Hegel.
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- Americans are being told that all Guantanamo inmates
are mad-dog terrorists. Not true. Many were rounded up in Afghanistan by
local warlords offered $10,000 or more per head by the U.S. for "terrorist"
captives.
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- Some are Pakistanis who were visiting Afghanistan for
religious or family matters. Some had joined Taliban forces to fight the
Russian-backed Afghan Communist Party known as the Northern Alliance --
not against the U.S. Others were jihadis preparing to fight Uzbekistan's
brutal communist regime or to oppose Indian occupation of Kashmir. Only
a handful of real anti-U.S. al-Qaida members are there.
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- Sen. John McCain, himself a former POW, is right to call
for speedy trials of Guantanamo's inmates and an end to their indefinite
jailing. But the past three years have shown that people charged with terrorism
are unlikely to get fair trials in post-9/11 America. A military defence
lawyer told Congress this week his superiors warned that if he represented
a prisoner at Gitmo, "only a guilty plea would be accepted" --
shades of the U.S.S.R.
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- ABC News revealed the U.S. Navy's general counsel, Alberto
Mora, warned in 2003 that interrogation methods used against Muslim prisoners
might expose senior officials to "liability and criminal prosecution."
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- Guantanamo violates the Geneva Conventions, international
and U.S. law. There are reports that in the rest of the secret U.S. gulags
in Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Diego Garcia,
even worse crimes are being committed against those suspected of anti-U.S.
activities.
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- If true, this is a criminal enterprise, and those involved
should be prosecuted -- starting at the top.
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- The White House says Taliban and jihadi fighters were
"illegal combatants" deserving no mercy or legal protection.
Then what of the 20,000 plus non-uniformed U.S. and British mercenaries
operating in Iraq and Afghanistan as "civilian contractors,"
and non-uniformed U.S. Special Forces?
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- Guantanamo, just 150 km from Miami, is not a problem
of image. It is an arrant violation of every American value. It's worthy
of KGB. Close this disgrace now.
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- http://www.torsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Margolis_
Eric/2005/06/19/1095168-sun.html
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