This week, the Bush regime - feeling downright cocky as one of their chickenhawks broke through his life of noncombat and actually got to openly shoot someone and get away with it - took a big leap and grab at the pinnacle of their imperious power, and looked down on the world as its leaders tried to reign them in.
Yesterday Kofi Annan timidly
backed a U.N. report which called for the closure of the torture prison at Guantanamo Bay. The report boldly, naively, lashed out at the Bush regime and declared that he should "without further delay . . . either try the roughly 500 detainees held there or release them."
The U.N. report singled out the DoD for the barbaric interrogation methods its agents have been documented using on the prisoners there, saying they violate the Convention against Torture, "particularly if used simultaneously."
The U.N. report also called on Bush to end the rendition of suspects to countries around the world where there are "substantial grounds for believing" torture might take place.
Torture Secretary Rumsfeld got
angry. By golly, he said, the U.N. chief was "flat wrong". What's more, Annan's never even been to Gitmo, but medical folks have. The Red Cross "stayed there, lived there 24 hours a day." he argued. (No mention of the agreement with the agency to keep their findings secret)
Why, these folks lie, he said. They're dangerous terrorists who would kill us all if we let them go. Would they be gunning for us if we released them? Maybe. But not necessarily because of any predisposition to do us harm. Thing is, the Pentagon just released to their home countries, 127 of the 496 men who they had detained at Gitmo without charges, and without access to counsel or contact with their families or relatives. I'm sure though, these presumably innocent folks were more than happy to provide the Bush regime their bodies and minds as Bush's cover for not producing any instigator of the 9-11 attacks.
Amnesty International, who called for the closure of the Gitmo torture prison a year ago, said the U.N. report "confirms everything that AI has repeatedly said about the detention camp.
Gitmo, AI
echoed, is just the 'tip of the iceberg'. "The U.S. also operates detention facilities at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere in Iraq," they wrote, "and has been implicated in the use of secret detention facilities in other countries, also known as "black sites." There has been nothing but silence and implicit denial by the Bush regime of the existence of the rendition program of which every affected country has extensively documented and taken measures to hold our CIA accountable.
In fact, in a view shared and encouraged by his superiors, Rumsfeld regards all of the attention and exposure of the Pentagon's sanctioned torture to be the problem rather than the offensive and illegal acts themselves. Rumsfeld
bemoaned his own perception that our government isn't as successful a liar as al-Qaeda and other enemies of the state.
Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but our country has not adapted," Rumsfeld said. "While al Qaeda and extremist movements have utilized this forum for many years ... we in the government have barely even begun to compete in reaching their audiences."
It must be quite an embarrassment that after
spending $1.6b over three years for public relations, this administration has not gotten the quality of lies the Commander-in Chief expects he deserves from his military arm in the Pentagon. There was that $300 million Pentagon psych-operation run by the conservative-connected firm, the
Lincoln Group, that schemed to place pro-American messages in foreign media outlets.
I guess that's why he deployed the Army's
brilliant children, gleaming with their imperious spit shine, to Gitmo to run interference for the coming assault of sunlight on the torture island from a chastened world community of human rights observers. It's going to be "a fabulous mission for the soldiers," said a reservist unit commander.
"My job is to get the media to the location, let them talk to subject-matter experts, and then it's up to the reporters to report what they see." she said. Whatever we want them to see, she means. It's not likely reporters who inquire about the torture prison would need the assistance of military
helper to 'report what they see'. But, that's the job of these new propagandists, engaged in the 'long war', where they believe, as one general
described it, that "information is just as critical as firepower"
Tucker showed that she was hitting the ground at Gitmo running as she wondered out loud why none of the five U.N. officials had visited Guantanamo. She forgot to mention that they canceled a visit in Nov. because the Bush regime would'nt allow them to talk to the detainees.
Quit Gitmo? Not only won't they leave but they've started
adding on. Voice of America reports finding on a visit to Gitmo, a building under construction that will be known as Camp Six. "Large cranes, hard-hatted construction workers and piles of building material do not look like part of any facility that is going to be abandoned anytime soon." the report states. Perhaps it's a wing for dissenting reporters who will get the water board treatment while Tucker and the other brilliant children school them on the benefits of absolute power, cosseted by mindless, fawning loyalty to Bush.
"Every once in a while someone pops up and gets some press for saying, 'Oh, let's close Guantanamo Bay.'" said Mr. Rumsfeld. Well, if someone has a better idea, I'd like to hear it."
Would you now, Donny boy? Would you really?
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