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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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 Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 2:17 am Post subject: Amnesty USA backs off Gitmo as 'gulag' |
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Amnesty USA backs off Gitmo as 'gulag'
June 6, 2005
Amnesty International, which set off a storm by calling the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our times," backed away from the label Sunday.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had ripped as "reprehensible" the description, made last month when the human rights group's secretary general, Irene Khan, issued its annual report.
Amnesty International was comparing American jails for prisoners in the war on terror with the "gulag" operated by the former Soviet Union. The Soviets maintained an extensive system of prison camps, many in remote Siberia.
On "Fox News Sunday," host Chris Wallace asked William Schulz, director of Amnesty International USA, if he stood by the description of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison.
Schulz responded by saying, "Clearly, this is not an exact or a literal analogy, and the secretary general has acknowledged that."
"In size and in duration, there are not similarities between U.S. detention facilities and the gulag," Schulz said. "People are not being starved in those facilities. They're not being subjected to forced labor |
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-gitmo06.html |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 5:59 am Post subject: |
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| It's probably a good thing. The administration was able to use 'gulag' as a way of changing the subject and distracting the public from AI's specific claims. (The old "If you can't refute the crux of the issue, quibble about the vocabulary" thing.) |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:54 am Post subject: |
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| The headline in that article is wrong. |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 3:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| It's probably a good thing. The administration was able to use 'gulag' as a way of changing the subject and distracting the public from AI's specific claims. (The old "If you can't refute the crux of the issue, quibble about the vocabulary" thing.) |
I agree. Except that "claims" is hardly accurate, since the truth of what they have been saying has been corroborated, and more, by such sources as the Intl Red Cross and even the FBI.
When even the pro-war voices such as Thoimas Friedman are calling for the shutdown of Gitmo, the administration has no other rhetorical alternative than to latch onto a stray word and make the implication that Amnesty is anti-US for making comparisons to the Soviet Union, forget the fact that they were happy to use them as a source to make their "humanitarian" arguments against the former regime in Baghdad.
Absurd to watch this crowd claim to be the vanguard of freedom and democracy in the middle east when we are perpetrating this fraud. The truth is that Amnesty Intl has demonstrated a greater commitment to the principles of this country than the present batch of clowns and criminals ever has ...
| Quote: |
| The headline in that article is wrong. |
Yes. From the article - the part of it not quoted in the OP :
Schulz maintained that some similarities did exist, saying the United States keeps a network of prisons worldwide, "many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared." In some cases, he said, prisoners are being tortured and killed. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 4:15 pm Post subject: |
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| The Bobster wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| It's probably a good thing. The administration was able to use 'gulag' as a way of changing the subject and distracting the public from AI's specific claims. (The old "If you can't refute the crux of the issue, quibble about the vocabulary" thing.) |
I agree. Except that "claims" is hardly accurate, since the truth of what they have been saying has been corroborated, and more, by such sources as the Intl Red Cross and even the FBI.
When even the pro-war voices such as Thoimas Friedman are calling for the shutdown of Gitmo, the administration has no other rhetorical alternative than to latch onto a stray word and make the implication that Amnesty is anti-US for making comparisons to the Soviet Union, forget the fact that they were happy to use them as a source to make their "humanitarian" arguments against the former regime in Baghdad.
Absurd to watch this crowd claim to be the vanguard of freedom and democracy in the middle east when we are perpetrating this fraud. The truth is that Amnesty Intl has demonstrated a greater commitment to the principles of this country than the present batch of clowns and criminals ever has ...
| Quote: |
| The headline in that article is wrong. |
Yes. From the article - the part of it not quoted in the OP :
Schulz maintained that some similarities did exist, saying the United States keeps a network of prisons worldwide, "many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared." In some cases, he said, prisoners are being tortured and killed. |
Uh-oh, the same person from Fox News has found your post and has given it a headline! "Bobster talks about two countries that have the letter U".
Sigh. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 5:51 pm Post subject: |
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| I agree. Except that "claims" is hardly accurate, since the truth of what they have been saying has been corroborated, and more, by such sources as the Intl Red Cross and even the FBI. |
many of them haven't been
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| The head of Amnesty International's American branch yesterday acknowledged that he "doesn't know for sure" what is going on at Guantanamo Bay prison, |
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050606-123303-2127r.htm
| Quote: |
| When even the pro-war voices such as Thoimas Friedman are calling for the shutdown of Gitmo, the administration has no other rhetorical alternative than to latch onto a stray word and make the implication that Amnesty is anti-US for making comparisons to the Soviet Union, forget the fact that they were happy to use them as a source to make their "humanitarian" arguments against the former regime in Baghdad. |
why Gitmo isn't the gulag of our times.
| Quote: |
| Absurd to watch this crowd claim to be the vanguard of freedom and democracy in the middle east when we are perpetrating this fraud. The truth is that Amnesty Intl has demonstrated a greater commitment to the principles of this country than the present batch of clowns and criminals ever has ... |
I don't know how you can say that when AI slandered the US.
Yes. From the article - the part of it not quoted in the OP :
| Quote: |
| Schulz maintained that some similarities did exist, saying the United States keeps a network of prisons worldwide, "many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared." In some cases, he said, prisoners are being tortured and killed. |
[/quote]
You know that having somethings in common with something doesn't make it that thing.
Or from our other conversations maybe you don't. |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 12:50 am Post subject: |
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| mithridates wrote: |
| Uh-oh, the same person from Fox News has found your post and has given it a headline! "Bobster talks about two countries that have the letter U". |
Can I have a link, please?
Hey, dude, it was you who pointed out that Amnesty did not in fact "back down" despite what the headline says or what Joo over there wants us to believe ... funny about how the parts he left out of the quote tend to show the opposite of what he wants us to think, eh?
Yeah, real funny, laugh a minute ...
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
| Quote: |
| I don't know how you can say that when AI slandered the US. |
Like this one - hilarious.
Hint : Rumsfeld and Bush and Rice are "slandering" America by allowing this tripe to continue. They built it, and it's existence is not a secret and has never tried to be kept one - it is illegal, and the Supreme Court has said so, and now they are slowly allowing tribunals, even though the tribunals completely ignore any testimony or evidence of abuses being committed there.
To say that Gitmo is "the gulag of our times" is pointing out that that Soviet prison has been dismantled, and there is today only the US that carries on secret detentions, 3 AM kidnappings, incarceration without trial or legal recourse on anything similar to the scale that Solzhenitzin described - this does not make it identical, but it does show similarities.
Oh, yeah, and further hint : calling attention to abuses that make America look bad is an effort to end those abuses, so that ultimately the US will not only look better but actually BE better. This is not slander - it is giving a damn.
| Quote: |
| You know that having somethings in common with something doesn't make it that thing. |
And you know that making a metaphorical comparison to something is not the same as describing equivalency. You know it and the spinmeisters in the White House know it ... and you know that the paragraph I quoted describes similarities top the Soviet gulag system, and you try to assert that this is not important.
Like I said, a laugh a minute.
| Quote: |
| Or from our other conversations maybe you don't. |
You wanna make THIS thread all about The Bobster, too? You REALLY wanna do that?
Laugh a minute. |
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