Posted on 05/31/2005 9:59:15 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
The mainstream media and international human rights organizations have relentlessly portrayed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as a depraved torture chamber operated by sadistic American military officials defiling Islam at every turn. It's the "gulag of our time," wails Amnesty International. It's the "anti-Statue of Liberty," bemoans New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.
Have there been abuses? Yes. But here is the rest of the story -- the story that the Islamists and their sympathizers don't want you to hear.
According to recently released FBI documents, which are inaccurately heralded by civil liberties activists and military-bashers as irrefutable evidence of widespread "atrocities" at Gitmo:
A significant number of detainees' complaints were either exaggerated or fabricated (no surprise given al Qaeda's explicit instructions to trainees to lie). One detainee who claimed to have been "beaten, spit upon and treated worse than a dog" could not provide a single detail pertaining to mistreatment by U.S. military personnel. Another detainee claimed that guards were physically abusive, but admitted he hadn't seen it.
Another detainee disputed one of the now-globally infamous claims that American guards had mistreated the Koran. The detainee said that riots resulted from claims that a guard dropped the Koran. In actuality, the detainee said, a detainee dropped the Koran then blamed a guard. Other detainees who complained about abuse of the Koran admitted they had never personally witnessed any such abuse, but one said he had heard that non-Muslim soldiers touched the Koran when searching it for contraband.
In one case, Gitmo interrogators apologized to a detainee for interviewing him prior to the end of Ramadan.
Several detainees indicated they had not experienced any mistreatment. Others complained about lack of privacy, lack of bed sheets, being unwillingly photographed, the guards' use of profanity, and bad food.
If this is unacceptable, "gulag"-style "torture," then every inmate in America is a victim of human rights violations. (Oh, never mind, there are civil liberties chicken littles who actually believe that.)
Erik Saar, who served as an army sergeant at Gitmo for six months and co-authored a negative, tell-all book about his experience titled "Inside the Wire," inadvertently provides us more firsthand details showing just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam -- to a fault, I believe -- the officials at the detention facility have been.
Each detainee's cell has a sink installed low to the ground, "to make it easier for the detainees to wash their feet" before Muslim prayer, Saar reports. Detainees get "two hot halal, or religiously correct, meals" a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims' call to prayer five times a day.
Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca. Moreover, Gitmo's library -- yes, library -- is stocked with Jihadi books. "I was surprised that we'd be making that concession to the religious zealotry of the terrorists," Saar admits. "[I]t seemed to me that the camp command was helping to facilitate the terrorists' religious devotion." Saar notes that one FBI special agent involved in interrogations even grew a beard like the detainees "as a sort of show of respect for their faith."
Unreality-based liberals would have us believe that America is systematically torturing innocent Muslims out of spite at Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, our own MPs have endured little-publicized abuse at the hands of manipulative, hate-mongering enemy combatants. Detainees have spit on and hurled water, urine and feces on the MPs. Causing disturbances is a source of entertainment for detainees who, as Gen. Richard Myers points out, "would turn right around and try to slit our throats, slit our children's throats" if released.
The same unreality-based liberals whine about the Bush administration's failure to gather intelligence and prevent terrorism. Yet, these hysterical critics have no viable alternative to detention and interrogation -- and there is no doubt they would be the first to lambaste the White House and Pentagon if a released detainee went on to commit an act of mass terrorism on American soil.
Guantanamo Bay will not be the death of this country. The unseriousness and hypocrisy of the terrorist-abetting Left is a far greater threat.
You must be thinking of Maureen Dowd.
Michelle you are so hot
The words I would use to describe Dowd are not to be published in this family friendly forum.
Cool sig line. :)
I do. For lots of reasons. But, to be brief, I will give the least of these reasons and say it would be unprofessional.
And, in case you feel like dragging the old canard out, I do not care what degenerate terrorists and dictators do to their prisoners. They are not the standard by which we measure our behavior.
Some of them are not. In case you haven't noticed, a number of prisoners have been cleared and sent home. Some of them are just teenagers. Some are citizens of allied countries. How long do you torture someone who's innocent? Until they confess to some made up crime? How long do you torture an ally's citizen? Do you call up the Canadian embassy and ask them exactly how much torture is allowed?
When torture becomes standard practice for military prisons, do we implement it in the USDB? And from there, Federal prisons? I don't think PVT Graner is sufficiently contrite, and he's screwing up his girlfriend's trial, let's give him a few hours of electrical shocks, maybe he'll say something that will incriminate COL Karpinski and we can braid her on the wheel....
save
"It's about Bush being an anti-gay, pro-life, born again Christian."
Or, to put it another way (and I think more accurately), its about destroying America. One good reason to consider the possibility that, unbeknownst to American Liberals themselves, people outside the US are actually calling the American Left's tune.
Michele, ping.
I've met her. Believe it or not, she's even more attractive in person
No offense to Michelle Malkin, but I think her writing is uninspiring, dry and incoherent. She has good ideas, but she doesn't put them together very well. I think she has done a wonderful job on bringing attention to the Illigal Alien issue, but her writings leave alot to be desired.
Sorry, but I(and virtually all FReepers) find her writing to be totally inspiring. Guess it's all in the opinion of the reader eh?
I believe islamic killers should be afforded all the perks and niceties a Christian would get.No more and no less.
Oh yes, but when you turn your back on the average christian, he won't behead you!!!!
Agreed. We should never have brought them to our soil. The fact that we do, allows them certain "rights" as stated by the Supreme Court.
What can we say about a media that will believe anything our worst enemies say and deliberately doubt and slander our president and believe the worst about our military without any evidence? For our media, the word of Islamo-fascist murderous thugs is better than that of the people who protect their right to print and air their (media) anti-American screeds. Are they simply incompetent or backstabbing, traitorous, leftist stooges? My guess is both.
You are so correct. If we had found Baghdad to be full of wmds, it would not have stopped the media one whit in smearing Bush and Republicans. They would just gone on to some other manufactured scandal. If it was Clinton or Gore doing what Bush is doing, the media would be doing cartwheels screaming about what a great things the president is doing. It's all about getting Bush.
"The same unreality-based liberals whine about the Bush administration's failure to gather intelligence and prevent terrorism. Yet, these hysterical critics have no viable alternative to detention and interrogation -- and there is no doubt they would be the first to lambaste the White House and Pentagon if a released detainee went on to commit an act of mass terrorism on American soil."
Michele is usually not wrong, but here...I think that they'd be rejoicing if we were struck again. Don't we all know that from nearly every university in America there is the clarion call to jihad against Americans, supported by the ACLU, every leftist 'rag' in America, as well as nearly every mainline media outlet, plus countless leftist groups?
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