What I Saw at Gitmo

Will the real Mr Cajones please stand up? FInally, someone with a bit of clout says what needs to be said (IMHO of course) about what’s what at the GITMO:

frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadAr … p?ID=18572

(My apologies for the entire quote)

[quote]What I Saw at Gitmo
By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 27, 2005

Last week, I was privileged to be part of a Department of Defense trip to the Joint Task Force - Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. [b]I got to see the operations of this

Uh, is that supposed to be taken seriously, in any way, shape or form? It is a DOD press release, slightly rewritten by some Col. (who I presume is still in the service) that simply tries to push the stock emotional buttons ("our brave boys, yadda, yadda, yadda) (I should mention I am very fucking sick of hearing “support our brave lads and lasses” everytime someone comments on the blundering which has been the Bush Dynasty and the Iraq/Iran/Afgan/Saudi Adventures).

But back to this sterling bit of unbiased DOD news. Uh, I just realized Col. Cucullu is playing the same role Hanoi Jane (Fonda) did when she mouthed the horseshit about how the US POWs were being treated so well and it was the brave NVA prison guards who were at risk. In many ways it is simply the mirror image of that. Is Col. Cuculu the evil mirror image twin of Hanoi Jane?

I do not object to propaganda, but it needs to be done with a wee bit more of a “light touch”.

yours in unbiased war reporting,
Sad Sack Brian

Despite the pro-military tone, I found the list of services and amenities provided to the prisoners impressive…better than welfare in most states.

Are you suggesting that what he states they have and get are somehow misleading? Or are you just mad that these foreign combatants do not get the same civil rights as US citizens?

What HUMAN rights have they been denied: The right to shoot people they disagree with politically or religiously?

Cry me a river. And you’re as unbiased as I am Irish. :wink:

[quote=“brianlkennedy”]Uh, is that supposed to be taken seriously, in any way, shape or form? It is a DOD press release, slightly rewritten by some Col. (who I presume is still in the service) that simply tries to push the stock emotional buttons ("our brave boys, yadda, yadda, yadda) (I should mention I am very f***ing sick of hearing “support our brave lads and lasses” everytime someone comments on the blundering which has been the Bush Dynasty and the Iraq/Iran/Afgan/Saudi Adventures).

But back to this sterling bit of unbiased DOD news. Uh, I just realized Col. Cucullu is playing the same role Hanoi Jane (Fonda) did when she mouthed the horseshit about how the US POWs were being treated so well and it was the brave NVA prison guards who were at risk. In many ways it is simply the mirror image of that. Is Col. Cuculu the evil mirror image twin of Hanoi Jane?

I do not object to propaganda, but it needs to be done with a wee bit more of a “light touch”.

yours in unbiased war reporting,
Sad Sack Brian[/quote]
So, still no evidence, eh?

not a leg to stand on. if you locked up random innocent people you would expect a number of them to react violently. an article containing proof of what these people did would be more convincing. otherwise you may as well have just said “these guys are bastards so we locked them up” and skipped the rest of the article.

Getting caught on a battlefield with weapons firing at Coalition troops does not qualify one as an innocent bystander.

Average weight gain is 13+ pounds. Prayer rugs and Korans supplied. For a great number of these yahoo’s its the first time theyve seen indoor plumbing. They have been ordered to lie about their treatment.

Its quite silly that people are letting their sick “Hate Bush” fetish cloud their judgements. Makes them look a bit demented.
Added comment: To compare this Col’s statement to Jane Fondas actions and comments is absolute stupididty.

Prove that all were caught on the battlefields with weapons firing at the COWs.

I wish I was a Gitmo detainee.

[quote=“TainanCowboy”]
Getting caught on a battlefield with weapons firing at Coalition troops does not qualify one as an innocent bystander.
.[/quote]

Yeah, i have no doubt that the majority of people there deserve to be locked up but the article is ridiculous right down to its premise. locking people up in storm fence cages indefinitely without trial doesn’t look better because you gave me an ice cream pop. either they deserve to be there or they don’t. getting a happy meal is not going to make anyone feel better about it.

If neoconservatives had their way I wouldn’t put it past them to lower the future price of admission to Gitmo to anyone who merely needs some attitude readjustment in order to get with the program and stop making their schemes more difficult, if not impossible.

That would be you, Richardm.

It’s the reeducation camp concept near and dear to the hearts of thought control advocates and propaganda meisters everywhere.

After all, effective thought control and propaganda require a closed shop environment to have any chance at all of succeeding long term. If subjected to the free-for-all of a free speech environment, their innate irrationality and foolish is nearly impossible to conceal.

[quote=“Rascal”][quote]Getting caught on a battlefield with weapons firing at Coalition troops does not qualify one as an innocent bystander.[/quote]Prove that all were caught on the battlefields with weapons firing at the COWs.[/quote]rascal - Prove they weren’t.
And as for “COWs” - is this another method of your building in a diversionary to your post? The reference to Coalition troops was quite specific.
Another group of visitors to the Guantanamo facility weigh in -[quote][b]Senators Laud Treatment of Detainees in Guant

[quote=“TainanCowboy”][quote=“Rascal”][quote]Getting caught on a battlefield with weapons firing at Coalition troops does not qualify one as an innocent bystander.[/quote]Prove that all were caught on the battlefields with weapons firing at the COWs.[/quote]rascal -
Prove they weren’t. [/quote]
You made the claim, I called you on it - so it’s for you to prove, not for me to disprove. Can you?

COW = Coalition of the Willing. What diversionary do you see in using an abbreviation? :s

Here’s a couple that weren’t.

[quote]Bisher al-Rawi, late 30s, of London
Businessman Bisher al-Rawi, in his late 30s, is an Iraqi citizen with UK residency.
Amnesty International says he was arrested, along with his friend Jamil al-Banna, at Banjul airport on a business trip to Gambia in November 2002 on suspicion of links to terrorism.
The pair were moved to Guantanamo Bay early in 2003.
Mr al-Rawi reportedly came to England in 1985 after his father was arrested by Saddam Hussein’s secret police.
His family are UK nationals, but he retained Iraqi citizenship to preserve a link to their homeland.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4245659.stm

Richard Belmar, 25, from London [released]
The US authorities claim he was captured at an al-Qaeda safe house in Pakistan.
His detention seems to have started in February 2002.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4163911.stm
[/quote]

Whether they were bad men or not, I don’t know. I guess that’s for the courts to decide.

Well, maybe not the courts.

Here’s a bit of evidence unearthed by the AP (surely not a big military supporter) that pretty much, uhm, says the same thing as “Major Cajones”

hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/ … 1-16-37-24

[quote]AP: Documents Show Gitmo Inmates Defy U.S.

By BEN FOX
Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Military authorities have previously disclosed some incidents of guard retaliation at Guantanamo Bay, which resulted in mostly minor disciplinary proceedings. What emerges from 278 pages of documents obtained by The Associated Press is the degree of defiance by the terrorism suspects at Guantanamo.

The prisoners banged on their cells to protest the heat. They doused guards with whatever liquid was handy - from spit to urine. Sometimes they struck their jailers, one swinging a steel chair at a military police officer.

And the American MPs at times retaliated with force - punches, pepper spray and a splash of cleaning fluid in the face, according to the newly released documents that detail military investigations and eyewitness accounts of alleged abuse.

Some prisoners at the U.S. base in eastern Cuba have gone on the attack, as in April 2003 when a detainee got out of his cell during a search for contraband food and knocked out a guard’s tooth with a punch to the mouth and bit him before he was subdued by MPs. One soldier delivered two blows to the inmate’s head with a handheld radio, the documents show.

“Several guards were trying to hold down the detainee who was putting up heavy resistance,” recounted a translator who saw the incident. “The detainee was covered in blood as were some of the guards.”

The soldier who struck the inmate, and was dropped in rank to private first class as a result, described it as a close call. “The detainee was fighting as if he really wanted to hurt us. … We all saved each other’s lives in my opinion,” he wrote.

The documents, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by AP, are far from a comprehensive look at Guantanamo and do not provide full details about each incident.[/quote]

Now, what this shows that the original article did not, is that the guards are hitting back, which, depending on the circumstances, may be wrong…however, they are being called on it and properly punished.

[quote]One soldier told military investigators he punched a detainee’s face because the man spit at him and hit him as he tried to put him in restraints at the prison hospital in October 2004.

“My instincts took over after the hitting and spitting,” said the soldier. Documents show authorities recommended that the punishment include reduction in rank to E-4, loss of a month’s pay and extra duty for 45 days, though the outcome is unclear.[/quote]

A statement of the obvious, but well laid out. In dealing with murders, terrs and organized criminal groups intent on
foisting A 14th century cult of death upon the world, one can not trust them to play fair.
One might lose ones…head. And have the video shown world-wide.

[quote]GITMO COCKTAIL
By RALPH PETERS

June 16, 2005 – THE demands to shut down our Guantanamo lock-up for terrorists have nothing to do with human rights.
They’re about punishing America for our power and success.

From our ailing domestic left to overseas America haters, no one really cares about the fate of Mustapha the Murderer
or Ahmed the Assassin. The lies told about Gitmo are meant to undercut U.S. foreign policy and embarrass America.

The Gitmo controversy is about many things, from jealousy of the United States and outrage that we refuse to fail,
to residual anger that we won the Cold War and exploded the left’s great fantasy of a dictatorship of the intellectuals.
But the one thing the protests aren’t about is human rights.

Except, of course, as a means to slam the United States.

Torture? Who and when? Koran abuse? I’d rather be a Koran in Gitmo than a Bible in Saudi Arabia. Illegal detentions?
Suggest a better way to handle hardcore terrorists. Maltreatment? Spare me. The food the prisoners receive is better
than what I had to eat in the Army.

Another thing: Would it be more humane to incarcerate the declared enemies of civilization in northern Alaska, rather
than on a Caribbean beach?

Has the Bush administration made mistakes regarding Guantanamo? You bet. The biggest one was attempting to placate the
critics. By launching a new investigation every time a terrorist had a toothache, our government played into the hands
of its enemies.

The truth is that the terrorists and their defenders have something in common. It’s not courage, which is one quality
violent fanatics don’t lack. It’s that neither can be appeased.

Any concession only increases their appetites. The Clinton administration’s reluctance to respond to terrorist strikes
encouraged al Qaeda. If the Bush administration closed the Guantanamo facility, any alternative holding center would be
attacked just as rabidly and dishonestly.

If we put our captives up at the Four Seasons, we’d be condemned because somebody smelled bacon at breakfast.

You can’t negotiate with terrorists. And you cannot reason with ideologues

I have lots of loathing for leftwing tomfoolery, but just as much for that on the right. This article is unmitigated crap. The talking-points-strawmen are spewed forth one after another, but only an addle-brained rightwing nutsack would find them convincing.

Ralph Peters could have spared himself all of the frothing at the mouth, because he’s really only saying one thing:

My country right or wrong.

And just for you Princess, the Gitmo menus:

[quote]Rice Pilaf Again?!
Richmond Times-Dispatch, Jul 1, 2005

We have in hand, courtesy of the Senate Republican Caucus via the folks at powerlineblog.com, a menu for the meals fed to detainees at Guantnamo Bay – that “gulag of our time,” in the words of Amnesty International and others of that ilk.

Prisoners of the Soviets’ Gulag Archipelago ate a few hundred calories a day, if they were lucky, mostly thin soup made of fishheads and the like. At Gitmo, detainees are given – well, let’s see . . . .

For breakfast: Pancakes, syrup, orange juice, fruit, milk, margarine, and coffee or tea. Or a whole-wheat bagel, oatmeal, juice, fruit, scrambled eggs, milk, margarine, and coffee or tea. Or whole-wheat bread, Raisin Bran, orange juice, fruit, milk, a “veggie patty,” margarine, and coffee or tea.

For lunch: Whole-wheat pita, long-grain brown rice, canned peaches, steamed asparagus, northern beans, margarine, and tea or drink-ade. Or whole-wheat bread, tossed green rice, fresh fruit, wax beans, a seasoned beef patty, margarine, and tea or drink-ade. Or a whole-wheat bread slice, garlic mashed potatoes, canned pears, seasoned peas, kidney beans, margarine, and tea or drink-ade.

For dinner: Noodles Jefferson, a whole-wheat bread slice, fresh fruit, green beans, carrot sticks, baked chicken breast in broth, margarine, and tea or drink-ade. Or rice pilaf, whole-wheat pita, fresh fruit, steamed cauliflower, a veggie patty, margarine, and tea or drink-ade. Or whole-wheat bread, long-grain brown rice, fresh fruit, steamed carrots, broccoli or celery, lemon baked fish, margarine, and tea or drink-ade.

Other menu items include pineapple, okra, a beef patty with onions, succotash, black-eyed peas, Lyonnaise rice, spicy baked fish, bayou chicken breast, acorn squash, honey-glazed chicken, chickpeas, spinach, tandoori chicken, and mustard dill baked fish.

The daily caloric intake from the meals ranges from 2,500 to 2,900. Of course, the menus above represent just one 12-day cycle. Some detainees – prisoners of the terror war – have been held for years now, and even the most creative Army cooks can come up with only so many permutations of the available fare. Plus, all that margarine must be rough on the arteries.

So it’s no wonder Senator Dick Durbin compared Gitmo with the gulag, Nazi death camps, and the killing fields of Cambodia. Rice pilaf again?

The horror.
Times-Dispatch Online[/quote]

Just to throw in my 2 cents worth, the prisoners ARE held there in violation of Human Rights, whereby they are ment to face trial, with lawyers, judges, prosecutors and the like. The cells are smaller than international legal requirements, too (apparently, I’m not 100% on this). There were Australian and British prisoners there, and they were denied access to their embassy officials for a couple of years (agaisnt diplomatic convention), which wouldn’t have made their own governments and the American govt look to good in the eyes of the Aust’ and Brit’ public.

I’d also like to bring to everyone’s attention the documentary “Power of Nightmares”. This programme presents a lot of evidence that suggests the British and American governments acted quite unethically in their lead up to this whole fiasco that we now call the ‘post sept 11 era’. How does this relate? There wasn’t much of a war in Afganistan, and so one would doubt if in fact they (most, not all of the ‘GITMO’ prisoners) are actually prisoners of war, but cattle herders who were mistaken as ‘Al Quaeda’

Radical conservatives persist in comparing their behaviour to that of Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, China, Syria, North Korea as if that proves anything meaningful – or dwelling on minor details such as the quality of the food while ignoring the real issues of locking someone up indefinitely without charges or trial.

The pathetic – and dangerous – thing about them is they apparently believe their fear mongering, red herring arguments and immoral relativism is persuading anyone of anything other than their own deficiencies.

Cool…a new oxymoron. :unamused: