Did I make a poorly constructed, hyperbolic argument? Was my comparison less than ingenuous?
OK- I can admit it.
Can you?
I am. I really have not heard. What are they?
Well, for one thing I the prisoners were forced to wear white shoes before Memorial Day. Also, they were forced to wear a brown belt with white shoes, so you know that’s no good.
Sure, and a comparison of Ted Bundy to John Wayne Gacy is similarly unfair.
Further, Ted Bundy never buried bodies in the crawlspace of his house. Likewise, it is unfair to compare Gacy to Jeffrey Dahmer, because Gacy didn’t eat any of his victims. Similarly, a comparison of Richard Ramirez to Gacy is unfair because Ramirez didn’t dress up like a clown.
Little thought experiment: what SHOULD we be comparing the activities at Gitmo to?
“All that torture and mistreatment: it’s like a Girl Scout camp!”
nope, that ain’t it …
“All that brutal interrogation – it’s like a church social!”
Close, but somehow not quite right …
“All that chaining people in the floor in their own excrement – it’s like a high school pep rally!”
Still not quite right … maybe Durbin used the examples he did because they’re what’s generally associated in people’s minds with brutal torture and maltreatment???
It worked for the republicans when they did their little WMD song and dance. At least in this case we have solid evidence that bad things are being done at Guantanomo and elsewhere. Is ratcheting up the rhetoric a tactic reserved only for the administration?
So you are saying the Durbin comparisin is invald?
Egads! I thought they were simply chained up and forced to poop their pants!
Yeah. Clearly the Filthy Liberals™ are overacting again. Go back to sleep. We are still the shiny city on the hill and the beacon for freedom and democrazy.
OK- Kidding aside. What torture techniques are we using?
Obviously the problem lay in comparing American crimes to those of previous regimes. That’s just backwards thinking and defeatism. It’s downright un-American!
So, I will state, for the record, that the way American ‘happy fun time gathering camps’ abuse prisoners is not like any previous regime’s actions. Oh no. This isn’t any musty dusty historical atrocity. This is modern space-age-a-go-go inhumane treatment. Now I hope all those American hating libruls will stop comparing our actions to previous actions, and just say “In the future, this will simply be labled the period of American tyrany.”
That should solve everything, eh?
OK, in just a little bit I will try to dig up cites for this. Before I do, however, I would request that you assure me that this is a sincere question, and not some preamble to a point you are making that the particular methods that we have been using are not technically torture.
All right, let’s take a closer look at this quote, shall we?
Cut it down to: “If I did not tell you that it was Americans, you would believe [they were] Nazis, Soviets, or some mad regime that had no concern for human beings.”
There’s some politique wording here, but basically: These Americans look like Nazis. No, he’s not saying they are Nazis, merely that they look like Nazis. I understand that there is a difference. I agree that Guantanamo is bad on multiple levels, but where is the genocide? Believe it or not, I could not see anything like Guantanamo happening in Nazi Germany- there, it would have been at least ten times worse. Sitting in uncomfortable positions in uncomfortable temperature is just too, well, mild to be Nazi-caused. For regular Germans, it was usually just normal prison conditions; for the “lesser” groups, it was extermination camps and slave labour. Lack of due process? It’s not like America’s forgotten McCarthy, though not as many will remember that Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus. Actually, I would say that Guantanamo Bay is best compared to a cross between the internment of the Japanese by America and Canada during WW2 and the American treatment of Loyalists during the American Revolution.
So yeah, newcrasher, you weren’t specifically talking to me, but the comparison is invalid. Useless, too, if this thread is any indicator. Would any Doper who decided to oppose Guantanamo specifically because of this thread and the quote in question step forward, please?
Nor are the prisoners at Gitmo, the ICRC collects and sends thousands of messages from there to and fro family.
The Red Cross is allowed access and full inspection rights at Gitmo, you know. Just as the Geneva Conventions require.
Not that it’s a playground by any means. It appears to be quite unpleasant.
Well, if you come up with cites that say we are holding them down and tickling their feet with feathers, I may call bullshit.
But it is a sincere question.
Remember, the government itself has admitted that as many as 90% of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were innocent civilians. These are people we were supposedly “liberating.”
The abuses at Guantanamo Bay include frequent beatings, mysterious deaths, similar techniques of sexual humilaiation, the above-mentioned shackling in extreme conditions of heat or cold without food or water, “stress positioning,” which is the shackling of the victim in excruciatingly painful physical positions for prolonged lengths of time, various kinds of verbal and psychological abuse including the now confirmed desecration of Korans, and of course, the cruelest torture of all, the indefinite and ongoing deprivation of any contact with family members now stretching into years without any charges being made against them, without any access to counsel and without any opportunity to prove their own innocence.
Nope. I haven’t done that and neither did Durbin.
How many prisoners have actually been allowed to see their family members in person or talk to them on the phone? I don’t consider mail to be meaningful or acceptable contact, especially since none of these people have been accused of any crimes.
Well, got called away but I see that friend Diogenes the Cynic covered this so I will let it stand at that.
I assure you sir, there may be times when people are not “nice” to prisoners, there are also times when someone hurts them maliciously. However, I can also assure you that abuse is handled swiftly in U.S. prisons. My husband works at a facility and it is NOT tolerated there. My husband fired an officer for simply putting on gloves as he approached an inmate and saying “do you want to go?”. “Abuse” occurs, but nothing like sleep deprivation, longterm interrogation, permanent isolation, flushing Korans or other abuses we have heard about. If they do, the individuals are FIRED, not protected under the system.
Do NOT insult the brave men and women who staff our domestic prisons by comparing them to the tyrants of these camps.