No, no documentation, at least not yet. Read the cite.
Regards,
Shodan
After reading Eolbo’s link. it seems that Shodans assertion that “three quarters of your cases don’t seem to have much to do with abuse or torture” is a distortion of what the article says. It says that only a quarter of the cases have been investigated. That doesn’t mean that no uninvestigated death was a result of abuse, it just means that the deaths are under investigated.
Not exactly. Three quarters of the time, there isn’t even a prima facie case for death due to abuse. And no investigation has uncovered any clear proof that the US has tortured anyone to death. Certainly not as a matter of policy -
Except in the minds of the reflexively anti-American for whom no proof is necessary, and simply assume without question that the worst is always true about America.
It’s a big part of the problem in cases like this. All it takes is an accusation, and the knee-jerkers instantly assume it’s true - and begin misrepresenting the nature of the case. Sometimes it even leads to deaths, as with the riots over the false story about the Qur’an in the toilet.
A good deal of this kind of thing is faith-based, anyway. If no evidence exists, it’s because of a cover up. 27 accusations (out of some 65,000 prisoners taken), even with no proof, is enough to trigger screams of “torture is US policy!!!”
I hope we don’t get to the point where we dismiss this kind of thing out of hand just because of the hysteria of fools, but it is sure a temptation.
Regards,
Shodan
You’ll forgive me if I dismiss anything the Pentagon says out of hand. Saying that “no policy condoned abuse” is just weasel speak, especially when the military is allowed to decide for itself what the definition of “abuse” is.
The photo images i have would seem to show some pretty graphic examples
of the humiliation and violence inflicted on captives at said base, not very nice
Who is doing the painting and why? Will they also paint the Red Cross as being a leftist extremist group? They also speak out against the abuses at Guantanamo. Who is left to defend it who has actually investigated?
Does the Nobel Peace Prize mean nothing anymore (“but Arafat won it”)? It hasn’t been that long since it was awarded to Amnesty International.
Technically, not really; we’re just tenants. On the other hand, it’s all making our landlord look a little better by comparison. :eek:
This sentence carrys a great burden of innuendo. I’m sure you will agree that it could be interpreted to imply that such persons as disagree with you have “minds of the reflexively anti-American” and “simply assume without question …the worst…”.
That would be unfortunate. I assume you will rush to clarify.
Hmm… from the above, it sounds like “legal red tape” equals “due procees” and the fact that said tape is broken shouldn’t bother us. Big Brother’s in charge.
Not trying to put words in your mouth, 'cause you’ve already said you don’t agree with current policy. Yet that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?
I think that if my Grandmother had wheels she’d been a bicycle. But even a bicycle would question that “analysis.”
As for the bolded part, who was it? How hard are you (in the collective sense) working to find out?
My guess as well. And they’re getting a free pass, why, exactly?
Please do.
How about you restrict yourselves to actually attacking those who attacked you as opposed to chasing and making up ghosts?
Oh no, I wont, you don’t get of that easily. It’s far more than an “unjust prison camp” no matter how that makes you feel. Sorry, but if it fits, wear it.
Semantic quibbling has little to do with it
Other than the fact that I am agaisnt capital punishment, yes, the conditions are rather frightening. More so if you and your family knows you’re innocent.
While time passes, all sorts of abuses are being commited under your name – Americans. How long can you afford to wait and do something about it?
Not long.
The people in the US should care more since their tax dollars are paying for it and it obviously affects their image abroad. Amnesty
If anybody understands the seriousness of oppression going on today, it would be Amnesty. I don’t think they, in any way want to minimize what is going on elsewhere. They are after all one of the premiere organizations for documenting it and fighting against it. Amnesty’s point is that the US’s attitude is encouraging the torture going on in the rest of the world.
From the foreword of the 2005 report-
"Instead, the US government has gone to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions and to “re-define” torture. It has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques, the practice of holding “ghost detainees” (people in unacknowledged incommunicado detention) and the “rendering” or handing over of prisoners to third countries known to practise torture. The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, **entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention ** [bolding mine] in violation of international law. Trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process.
The USA, as the unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power, sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity. From Israel to Uzbekistan, Egypt to Nepal, governments have openly defied human rights and international humanitarian law in the name of national security and “counter-terrorism”. "
You can see from this context they mentioned gulags explicitly to note the similarity of indefinite and arbitrary detention. Not to bring to mind mass murder, ect… that some people are complaining about.
The fact that people are seizing on this one word and trying to make something out of it, instead of reacting to the real injustice is a little bit sickening.
Moving the goal posts? We’re discussing AI’s statement describing Guantanamo as “the gulag of our times”. Saddam’s regime was worse than USA. Lots and lots and lots worse. Can we return to discussing Gitmo now?
Keep fighting 
Because a few sentences later you write
Keeping people imprisoned indefinitively without trial, denying them contact with lawyers and family is the chief component in making the gulag comparison defendable, IMO. No torture really needed for that. But beating people to death, breaking their fingers, forcing them to walk barefoot over barbed wire, choking them with water – all these qualify as torture in my book. (Oh, and to repeat myself: Saddam was worse. Your goverment is better than Saddam’s. Congratulations.)
As for the “matter of … policy” part (“routine” is your word):
(Guantánamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive power) Is there any way to interpret this that does not give a strong message of “if you ‘accidentally’ torture or kill a detainee, don’t worry, we’ll cover your ass (just keep the digital cameras away)”?
“A day in the life of Ivan Denisovitsj”? I rad that one as a teenager, back when “sent to Siberia” was shorthand for disappearing into lawless prison camps, for being denied all rights, for government abusing its power. These days, I’ve heard and used “holiday in Cuba” to mean something similar.
No, because it is a large part of the problem, and essentially revokes your credibility (on this topic, at least). If “The US uses torture and murder as a matter of policy” means no more than “the US has been accused, and I care nothing about the evidence - I believe and will trumpet it” - then go ahead, but don’t expect anyone to take you any more seriously than a creationist.
But calling Guantanamo “the gulag of our times” implies that the US and the USSR are doing the same kind of things - and we aren’t. You are making a comparison that does not stand up to reasonable examination. That’s what I was getting at in my discussion with MGibson about use or misuse of the term “concentration camp”. It implies that things are systematically worse than they are - so much worse as to constitute a difference of quality, not simply of degree.
IOW, I’m not moving the goal posts. The gulag comparison sets up the goal posts. The US in Gitmo is no closer to those goal posts than the forty yard line or so. To overextend an analogy.
Perhaps there we have to agree to disagree. By this standard, any equivalent to a prisoner of war camp is a gulag, and that stretches the applicability of the term well beyond the breaking point. Did the US violate the human rights of the POWs in WWII because they didn’t provide every German draftee they captured with his own lawyer?
It seems that definition of “human rights violation” means nothing more than treating these captives as a military matter rather than a civilian criminal one. And treating what the ACLU or its international equivalent says as gospel, when they go into full defense lawyer mode.
What this seems to be saying is that lack of evidence should be considered damning. Which only makes sense if you assume guilt from the outset. But if you do that, you don’t need evidence to be convinced.
YMMV. Mine certainly does.
Regards,
Shodan
Actually what it seems to be saying is that it hasn’t been properly investigated which raises suspicion and doesn’t allow them to rule out the possibility of widespread abuse. The bottom line is they are decrying the lack of judicial oversight not condemning them without it.
The evidence is beyond question that the US has used torture and murder, and that att least some abuses were tacitly endorsed from the top. When the Pentagon denies that torture is “policy” it’s only playing with words. We know they’ve redefined torture but they’re also being weaselly about the meaning of “policy.” I will say again, the kidnapping, imprisonment without charges and deprivation from family or counsel, is in itself an official policy of human rights violations and abuse. The physical torture and murders (they they have unquestionably occurred) are not even necessary to make the case for Guantanamo as an American “gulag.” -
“I believe and will trumpet it” - then go ahead, but don’t expect anyone to take you any more seriously than a creationist."
No, what I’m saying is that the military denying that torture is “policy” is a meaningless, Clintonesque, non-denial given that the miltary itself is defining both what is “policy” and what is “torture.”
They are both political prisons used to disappear people, hold them for years without charges and sometimes torture or kill them. That’s a close enough comparison for me.
You need to look up the definition of “concentration camp” because that’s actually a more accurate description of Gitmo even than “gulag.”
They didn’t deny German POWs their rights under the Geneva Convention.
Gitmo is not a POW camp. We are not at war, the prisoners have not been shown to be combatants or miltary enemies of the US and we have denied them all rights as POWs under the Geneva Convention…including the right not to be tortured and murdered.
We are NOT treating these captives as military prisoners. Read a newspaper, why don’t you.
[quoet]And treating what the ACLU or its international equivalent says as gospel, when they go into full defense lawyer mode.
[/quote]
Is this supposed to be some sort of rebuttal to anything. Show us where AI or the ACLU are wrong in their demands, don’t just wave your hands at them. What kind of due process should these prisoners receive and when?
No, it means the lack of will for the miltary to investigate itself is damning. The evidence for abuses is plentiful.
Since the 2004 election, because the US is a democracy, and because a majority of the voters (in the Electoral College) re-elected Bush, the US voters are responsible. They saw the evidence of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Gitmo, and decided to support the administration.
And that’s the terrible thing as far as the effect of this in the rest of the world. Before the election, you could say it was just the administration, and had not been endorsed by the people of the US. But now the American people have spoken, and have said that the US Government carrying out torture is fine (as long as it is done in some other country to some other people, as part of the War on Terrorism).
It’s poisoned US relations with the rest of the world – not just the Islamic world – for at least a generation, and has made it that much more difficult to generate democracy where it is needed.
Well, since you have already made it clear that you will not consider anything that contradicts your assumptions, your assessment of what is “beyond question” is essentially meaningless.
You keep saying that. Cite?
Regards,
Shodan
You know, this part is pretty much true.
The US voters, having considered all the evidence, have not decided that torture is a US policy, or that putting non-traditional combatants into Gitmo is a horrific abuse of human rights. Those on the other side, at least one of which makes it explicitly clear that he will disregard everything on one side and assume every accusation is true without evidence, disagree.
Therefore it seems to me that we have to move on. Apparently, these kinds of accusations-without-substantiation are not enough to bring about change. So far, there is no indication that torture is US policy, that Gitmo is comparable in any substantial way with the Soviet gulags, and no evidence has appeared against any administration official. I suspect that once you come up with anything like that, you might get a little more traction than you do.
Regards,
Shodan
The War on Terrorism is a metaphor. The US has not delared war on any foreign state. Even if it had declared war on Iraq before invading, the regime it was opposed to has ceased to exist, and the current government of Iraq is on friendly terms with the US. And you can’t declare war on Al-Qaeda any more than you can on other private organisations such as the Mafia, the Communist Party or the Republican Party.
Actually, I would argue that the US voters have assumed that those in Guantanamo are guilty without evidence. How else could you justify indefinite and arbitrary detention without significant judicial oversight?
the allegations that amnesty actually made are not in dispute. Just out of curiosity, can you name any other famous penal systems that practiced arbitrary and indefinite detainment that Guantanomo should be compared to?
Do you deny that torture and murder has occurred at both Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib?
You’ve been a Doper for how long and you still haven’t learned who bears the burden for factual assertions?
My “cite” is that there has been no formal declaration of war by the US, no definition of an “enemy,” no defined arena and no defined goals. What the hell makes “at war?” Who is the enemy? How will we know when it’s over?
“War On Terror” is a catchphrase, a bumper sticker, a slogan, like “War On Drugs” or “War On Poverty.” It’s not a literal war.