Neo-con ChimpyMcBushHitlerBurton Stooges @ 'The Guardian'

[Aristophanes]

In jest my friends, in jest. Before I get too many angry comments about YET ANOTHER anti-Bush topic. This isn't pro or anti-Bush, but certainly depicts Guantanamo in a different light than the torture-camps it is compared to.

From the Guardian:

The Guardian

Excerpt

On January 29, Asadullah and two other juvenile prisoners were returned home to Afghanistan. The three boys are not sure of their ages. But, according to the estimate of the Red Cross, Asadullah is the youngest, aged 12 at the time of his arrest. The second youngest, Naqibullah, was arrested with him, aged perhaps 13, while the third boy, Mohammed Ismail, was a child at the time of his separate arrest, but probably isn't now.

Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah's. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family's mud-fortress home.

The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. "Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don't have anything against them," he said. "If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America."

And then there's this:

Then there's this, from an OSCE official: "'At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons,' said Alain Grignard, the deputy head of Brussels' federal police anti-terrorism unit. Grignard, who is also a professor of Islam at the University of Liege, served as an expert to a group of lawmakers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on a visit to Guantanamo Bay last week."

That's from March of this year. Didn't get much attention, though. Maybe by March of 2008. Meanwhile, perhaps human rights activists will turn their attention from Guantanamo to places where it might actually do some good:

European politicians and human rights groups have repeatedly rapped the U.S. military for its treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. But this torrent of criticism was undermined last month by a report on French prisons by the Council of Europe, the pan-European human rights organization. The author of the report, human rights commissioner Alvaro Gil Robles, said France had the shabbiest prisons of any country he had visited, with the exception of Moldova.

But what's to gain from that?

[the_mango55]

Good info.



but what is up with the title?

[Sétanta]

I am thinking this is just propaganda, although I must say I prefer it to the other crap Guantanamo gets from the media. This is probably closer to the truth but by no means is it how all prisoners are treated unfortunatly.

And the title is slightly strange.

[Tom Paine]

I am thinking this is just propaganda, although I must say I prefer it to the other crap Guantanamo gets from the media. This is probably closer to the truth but by no means is it how all prisoners are treated unfortunatly.

If its the Guardian its highly unlikely to be propaganda. However would like to point out that no-one has been allowed to inspect Gitmo, certainly not UN representatives, who were going to be allowed to look but not talk to any prisoners and would be on a very specific schedule. So...

[solid]

Now I've never been in Guantanamo and I don't know many stories about it, but the place has a bad reputation because prisoner abuse. But I agree that the whole Guantanamo thing is blown extremely out of proportion, but thats not the point: the reason the Guantanamo incident became so big is because of USA attitude, saying they are spreading freedom and democracy, but abusing prisoners none the less. (Who may or may not be involved with terrorism) I don't think the abuse is so bad or big but the fact that there is abuse is enough.

Also this story doesn't impress me, in fact I find it very normal: the fact that three boys aged 12, 13 and unknown years old were treated decently is something to be proud of? It would be a disgrace if they were not treated properly.

You say this is not pro-Bush and it isn't, but it is an attempt to make Guantanamo look like less a bad place.


PS: forgive me if it's sounds kinda incoherent, it's 4.45 AM here and I just can't make myself turn the PC off =(

[Fenris]

All prisonners are most probably not treated in equal manner. At 12 years old, he was probably very well treated. But if a full-grown prisoner happens to be too "proud", I have no doubt he gets to understand that he is not the boss around. Which is good, it's just that there were a few exaggeration in the punishments I guess.

[vizi]

Take the bad press about Guantanemo and take this (good press) Look to the median and then you have what it is probably like.

Also, since this is about Guantanemo I should tell you that a good friend was stationed at Guantanemo and he told me that as much bad press about the conditions there was nothing like what he had to deal with. He told me that almost everyday the prisoners would spit on him and throw their feces at him. He said he hated that place and he hated the prisoners because they didn't even behave like humans.

How many people have even heard 1st hand accounts of Guantanemo?

[Nationalist_Cause]

I work with a black immigrant from Cuba. He hates Castro and the standard of living there. We always talk about how much better the money is here than in Cuba, especially since he was unemployed there. The guy (his name is Roberto actually) washes dishes where I work for $10.00 an hour. Not exactly great pay by our standards, but 1 million times better than unemployment in Cuba.

[Fenris]

I work with a black immigrant from Cuba. He hates Castro and the standard of living there. We always talk about how much better the money is here than in Cuba, especially since he was unemployed there. The guy (his name is Roberto actually) washes dishes where I work for $10.00 an hour. Not exactly great pay by our standards, but 1 million times better than unemployment in Cuba.

Good, and how is this relevant to the topic?

[HopliteGlory]

$10.00 an hour!!! For dishes?!?! From my neck of the woods one would be lucky to get ten cents above min wage(maybe 5.50). Sorry if I continued off the topic.

[crazyj]

Good post.

@ brokenfingers
One of the staff sgts at the USMC recruiting center *when I was trying to reenlist* had been at Guantanemo, and related the same stories. He hated the place because the prisoners abused every single legal protection to do things as you described, and much worse.

Strange that some people find ANY abuse as somehow nvalidating our goal of bringing freedom and democracy to others, and see no contradiction when other countries which espouse the same goals have, in fact, much more systemic abuse in their own prisons.