Saturday, June 25, 2005

I Heart Gitmo

Is the American far right nuts. It is the same "community" that worked long and hard for there to be no official condemnation of lynching until last week.

The radical right have now leapt to the defense of Gitmo. Because many people and organizations have charged the whole system of indefinite imprisonment beyond the reach of either national or international law. The national law is the Yanks own constitution. The International law is the Geneva Accords. During the WWII the only two powers that did not follow the Geneva Accords were Soviets, who killed 20 million of their own citizens before the war, and the Japanese Empire. The Germans half followed the rules. Against the Soviets, who shot their own returned POW's, the German treated them badly. However captured allied, non-Soviet troops, were treated by the rules generally. After WWII the Yanks had a similar problem they have now in recognizing POW status, see James Bacque's Other Losses.

I went to Ted Rall's site and came across this bizarre "I Heart Gitmo" cartoon. A cursory search finds lots and lots of wing nuts who have some sense of pride in the latest atrocities. The latest pointless atrocity. The early reports showed that the professionals, FBI interogators, were aghast at pointless brutality of the interrogations. If torture and other "non-traditional" interrogation techniques truly worked the tyrannies that employ them would be the safest places in the world.

The American far right has now leapt to defense of the poor benighted troops that are forced to be jailers and torturers. Proving Sir John A . Macdonald's dictum that a true friend is someone who will defend you when you are wrong.

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