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June 28, 2005
De-Durbinising GITMO
This morning, in a post about Camp Delta titled Club Gitmo, Vilmar of Ranting Right Wing Howler fame linked to an article in FRONTPAGEMAG.COM by Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu, who wrote about a visit to GITMO to see first hand this detention center referred to by (Bene)Dick(t) Durbin as everything from a concentration camp to Pol Pot's killing fields.
In the article, the author described extremely humane circumstances, big meals and generally a state of detention any inmate in a carefully monitored U.S. federal prison would envy.
The only inhumanity he cited was the agressive hostility of the prisoners, who physically attack guards who are bringing them meals or other items, reaching under face masks to try to rip out eyes, trying to grab and break guards' limbs, thowing feces, yelling death threats, you need to read the article, then compare what you read with the remarks of Dick Durbin.
You are right to worry about inhumane treatment taking place at GITMO. But your concern should be for the dedicated, well trained, highly professional American men and women who are subjected to a daily barrage of feces, urine, semen and spit hurled at them along with vile invective as they implement a humane, enlightened system of confinement on men who want nothing more than to kill Americans.
These quiet, professional Americans, who live under the motto "Honor Bound for Defense of Freedom," deserve our utmost respect and concern. Shame on anyone who slanders or disrespects them for short-term and short-sighted political advantage.
As Vilmar pointed out in his post, you'd better read it there because you won't see it anyplace else, and he was definitely correct there, as I searched several MSM venues for any reference to the fact that Durbin had it backwards: The detainees are the people doing the mistreating. You know, the detainees the liberals are so deferrent to, those peaceful Islamic souls who would just as soon butcher an American liberal's six month old baby as they would any other American's.
I did find an article over at Fox News titled Senators Agree On Gitmo Operations that unsurprisingly got no mention in the New York Times. After all, it wasn't anti-Bush enough to earn its place in the Newspaper of Record.
WASHINGTON- A group of senators who travelled to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, this weekend to observe the conditions at the detention facility held separate news conferences on Capitol Hill Monday, but seemed to agree on one point--- that the facility should not be shut down.
Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Ben Nelson of Nebraska said that while they believe some kind of standard should be set for the status and treatment of the prisoners there, they did not observe anything in interrogation practices or conditions that would prompt them to agree with a call to shut the facility down.
"It is my opinion that closing the detention camp at Guantanomo Bay would result in less accountability in the treatment of prisoners, not more," Wyden said. "The question we have to ask is who do we trust more to treat these prisoners humanely --- Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt or the United States?"
...Wyden said that past practices he had heard about at Guantanamo, a.k.a. Gitmo, have been changed, and procedures and conditions at Camp Delta, where the prisones are housed, offer the best committment to human rights. He acknowledged that the prisoners at Guantanamo "are not your garden-variety criminal defendants.
"However, the most urgent task now is for Congress to articulate what reasons can justify holding these prisoners and for Congress to finally establish the precise legal status of these prisoners," Wyden said. "Just because it is a war doesn't mean there shouldn't be any concrete rules."
That's nice. The Democrat couldn't find anything wrong and couldn't very well make anything up about what he saw because also present were two GOP senators, so he told the truth about Camp Delta, albeit putting a nowwww it's okay spin on his statements and adding that Congress needs to establish the legal status of the detainees and justification for detaining them, a little lip service to his party. His remark that, "Just because it is a war doesn't mean there shouldn't be any concrete rules." is pretty lame.
I don't remember finding any special humanitarian rules posted anyplace that determined special guidelines for fair and balanced treatment of those human beings who died in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on the morning of 11 Sep 01. Still the point has been made by two Dem senators that conditions at Camp Delta are fine.
Also on the trip were Repulican Sens. Jim Bunning of Kentucky and Mike Crapo of Idaho, both of whom went further than Wyden and Nelson and said not only are conditions acceptable at Guantanamo Bay, but that they want to "set the record straight" that prisoners are being treated in a way that's totally consistent with American values. They noted that the new facilities at Gitmo include air conditioniong, good meals, facilities for religious worship and "top-notch health care."
Prisoners have "everything to make them as comfortable as possible in detention," Bunning said.
"It's my conclusion that I don't think you would be able to find a detention facility where people were better treated ... the health care is better or equal to what our own troops get," added Crapo, who did say it might be useful to come up with some kind of new status for these prisoners. Crapo said the reason is not to ensure better treatment but only because it would set a universal understanding of their status.
When I looked through the NY Times earlier for some mention of this visit and these remarks and couldn't find any, I figured there are two possible reasons:
1. GITMO being found not to be the gulag they'd hoped the two Dems would report it to be is not in their best interest to share with their liberal readership.
2. They might print the story later, after they've had the time to get the right anti-Bush spin on it.
What!? No gulag? No killing fields? No electrodes for the detainees' testicles? This... This is outrageous!
Posted by Seth at June 28, 2005 08:49 PM
