My apologies in advance for this long posting comprised mostly of quotes, but I wanted to handle these three stories together. For some reason, I think they just flow into each other to form a greater narrative.
US details Guantanamo ‘mishandling’ of Koran
The U.S. military for the first time on Friday detailed how jailers at Guantanamo mishandled the Koran, including a case in which a guard’s urine splashed onto the Islamic holy book and others in which it was kicked, stepped on and soaked by water.
U.S. Southern Command, responsible for the prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, described five cases of “mishandling” of a Koran by U.S. personnel confirmed by a newly completed military inquiry, officials said in a statement.
In the incident involving urine, which took place this past March, Southern Command said a guard left his post and urinated near an air vent and “the wind blew his urine through the vent” and into a cell block.
It said a detainee told guards the urine “splashed on him and his Koran.” The statement said the detainee was given a new prison uniform and Koran, and that the guard was reprimanded and given duty in which he had no contact with prisoners.
Southern Command said a civilian contractor interrogator, who was later fired, apologized in July 2003 to a detainee for stepping on his Koran. In August 2003, prisoners’ Korans became wet when night-shift guards threw water balloons in a cell block, the statement said. In February 2002, guards kicked a prisoner’s Koran, it added.
Note the dates there. We’re discussing isolated incidents, few and far between. I’ll be honest, though — I would like more details on the water balloon story.
In the fifth “confirmed incident” of mishandling a Koran, Southern Command said a prisoner in August 2003 complained that “a two-word obscenity” had been written in English in his Koran. Southern Command said it was “possible” a guard had written the words but “equally possible” the prisoner himself had done but they did not offer any explanation of his possible motive.
[…]
[Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, commander of the Guantanamo prison,] Hood said there were four additional incidents of “alleged mishandling” of the Koran that “we cannot determine conclusively if they actually happened.”
“Mishandling a Koran at Guantanamo Bay is a rare occurrence. Mishandling of a Koran here is never condoned,” Hood said.
No flushing. None. Minimal abuse of the Islamic holy text. Allegations investigated at each occurrence and action taken.
In retrospect, these detainees are being treated in a perhaps unprecedented manner for their deserved non-POW status. Their faith is being respectfully honored and Newsweek’s allegations should never have gone to print as fact and cost lives.
Amnesty Chief: ‘Gulag’ Not the Best Analogy
The American head of Amnesty International admits his group did not pick the best analogy when it compared detainee conditions at Guantanamo Bay to the Soviet-era “gulag” forced-labor system.
“There are only about 70,000 in U.S. detention facilities, and to the best of our knowledge, they are not in forced labor, they are not being denied food. But there are some analogies between the gulags and our detention facilities,” William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in an interview with FOX News.
Sure, and there are some analogies to be made between gulags and an unwilling child’s being forced to go off to summer camp. That doesn’t mean they make for valid points in public discourse.
“The U.S. is running an archipelago of detention facilities — many of them secret facilities — around the world and people in those are being disappeared into them … they are being held incommunicado.”
Amnesty International recently slammed the United States’ treatment of terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba. In its latest worldwide report, Amnesty International angered many U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, with its gulag analogy. President Bush called claims of improper detainee treatment “absurd.”
“It’s an absurd allegation,” Bush said in the White House Rose Garden this week. “The United States is a country that … promotes freedom around the world. When there’s accusations made about certain actions by our people, they’re fully investigated in a transparent way. It’s just an absurd allegation.”
Bush said “every single complaint” regarding those detained is investigated.
“It seemed like to me they [Amnesty International] based some of their decisions on the word of — and the allegations — by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth,” the president added. “And so it was an absurd report. It just is.”
While U.S. officials admit there have been sporadic cases of questionable treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, they say it’s not at all widespread or of the magnitude Amnesty International claims. To refute that, Amnesty International on Thursday said officials should just open the doors of the detention center to humanitarian workers so they can see for themselves.
Did you catch that? Well, let me translate it for you:
We know you’re doing wrong. We have no way of proving it, but we’ll say it until you give us a chance to disprove it.
That’s a pretty shabby approach for an international organization with such lofty endeavors.
Maybe they should be slapped around a little more for the gulag reference.
During a press briefing this week, Rumsfeld noted that most would define a “gulag” as where the Soviet Union kept millions of forced labor concentration camps “or where Saddam Hussein mutilated and murdered untold numbers because they held views unacceptable to his regime.”
“To compare the United States and Guantanamo Bay to such atrocities cannot be excused,” he said. “Free societies depend on oversight and they welcome informed criticism, particularly on human rights issues. But those who make such outlandish charges lose any claim to objectivity or seriousness.”
He added that “no force in the world has done more to liberate people … than the men and women of the United States military” and called Amnesty International’s allegations “reprehensible.”
Not bad, but let’s back it up with someone who actually knows the stupidity of the analogy. How about Natan Sharansky, who actually suffered for his beliefs at the hands of the Soviets?
Sharansky argued that Amnesty International compromises its work by refusing to differentiate “between democracies where there are sometimes serious violations of human rights and dictatorships where no human rights exist at all.”
“This comparison between gulag and Soviet Union and United States of America, erases all these differences,” he said. “It makes moral equivalence between these two very different worlds and that’s unfortunately very a typical, systematical, mistake of Amnesty International.”
I do not fault Amnesty International for pointing out what they feel are human rights violations; rather, I fault their manner of doing so, absent any frame of reference or sense of scope. By doing so, they impair their efforts against the great violators, undermine the efforts of minor offenders and damage their own reputation.
Military Tops Public Confidence List in New Gallup Poll
The American public has more confidence in the military than in any other institution, according to a Gallup poll released this week.
Seventy-four percent of those surveyed in Gallup’s 2005 confidence poll said they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the military – more than in a full range of other government, religious, economic, medical, business and news organizations.
The poll, conducted between May 23 and 26, involved telephone interviews with a randomly selected sample of 1,004 people 18 and older, Gallup officials said. Those surveyed expressed strong confidence in the military, with 42 percent expressing “a great deal” of confidence in the military and 32 percent, “quite a lot” of confidence. Eighteen percent said they have “some” confidence, 7 percent, “very little,” and 1 percent, “none.”
Public confidence in the military jumped following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has remained consistently high, Gallup officials noted. The 2002 survey reflected a 13 percent increase in confidence in the military over the previous year’s poll. The public expressed a 79 percent high-confidence rate in the military in 2002, an 82 percent rate in 2003, and a 75 percent rate in 2004.
Well, the dip in 2004 is easily accounted for with the Abu Ghraib abuses being repeatedly plastered all across the mainstream media. Underplayed or entirely omitted by the media’s coverage was that the military had announced an investigation months in advance of the “breaking” story. Just as was the case in the first story above about Koran abuse at Gitmo, the military was already correcting its issues long before the media came along to stir the pot. Maybe, just maybe, that’s the reason for the close of the story.
The Gallup organization noted that public trust in television news and newspapers reached an all-time low this year, with 28 percent of responders expressing high confidence in them.
The American military takes care of itself by policing its own. Generally, the public recognizes this despite attacks by the media and organizations like Amnesty International. Why is this so? Well, a large portion of the citizenry has had close relations with those who serve their country honorably. Few have personally had any positive contact with the media and have to rely on visible examples, such as Dan Rather’s crumbled and pathetic defense of the AWOL forgeries and the blood on the retracted hands of Newsweek.