The US neo-conservative press is enraged at Amnesty International over its criticism of the Guantanamo Bay prison facility and defends the indefensible:
Of course, the men held at Guantanamo Bay are not political dissidents.
They are captured enemy combatants. Under the laws of war, they can be
detained until the conflict, or at least actual hostilities, are
concluded. This has been the practice of the United States, and of
every other major power in Europe and elsewhere, for centuries. It is
not illegal; it is not immoral. In fact, this rule is one of the first
and most important humanitarian advances made in warfare. The right to
detain is the necessary concomitant of the obligation to give quarter
on the battlefield, to actually take prisoners alive.
The Wall Street Journal joins in on the smear campaign, accusing Amnesty International of being a "pro-al-Qaeda " organization:
It’s
old news that Amnesty International is a highly politicized pressure
group, but these latest accusations amount to pro-al Qaeda propaganda.
Future historians will look back on this period of American history and marvel at the complicity of the mainstream US media in destroying the US constitution. For that is what Guantanamo Bay represents: the willful destruction of American constitutional principles. I can only repeat what the liberal commentator Bill Moyers said in a speech a couple of weeks ago.
An unconscious
people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only on partisan
information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made
morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda, is
less inclined to put up a fight, to ask questions and be skeptical.
That kind of orthodoxy can kill a democracy – or worse.
Fortunately, there is a group of Americans who understand what is at stake and are taking action:
WASHINGTON, May 29 – In the last few months, the small commercial
air service to the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has been
carrying people the military authorities had hoped would never be
allowed there: American lawyers.And they have been arriving in increasing numbers, providing more
than a third of about 530 remaining detainees with representation in
federal court. Despite considerable obstacles and expenses, other
lawyers are lining up to challenge the government’s detention of people
the military has called enemy combatants and possible terrorists.
