News-Record.com

I 100% agree.

Having recently read About Face (David Hackworth) and Moyer's on America (Bill Moyer), I was struck that both said one of the big mistakes made in the 60's was the circled pentagon (Hackworth) and administrative (Moyer) wagons, with the inner circle being sure they were right and not getting info from outside.

Both were in their respective inner circles, and with the beauty of hindsight, both say it was a serious problem for leadership.

Too bad mistakes are often repeated; too bad talking out like this brands us "unpatriotic".

Ms. Wessling, Amnesty Intl. referred to the Gitmo prison as a "gulag", a fact you conveniently left out of your letter to spin it to your favor. You may know this, but a gulag is in reference to Stalin's prisons where millions were tortured and murdered. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe we have a few hundred prisoners at Gitmo and no mass murders are taking place. So comparing Gitmo to a gulag is indeed absurd.

"The constant drone from the Bush administration of negating anything that doesn't agree with them and their policies is getting old".

What's getting old is the constant bitching and whining by liberals who, for example, use dubious information by Amnesty Intl. as tools for your propaganda. We are in a war if you didn't realize it. In a war you don't turn around and apologize everytime some report comes out from an anti-American group like Amnesty Intl. Sheeeez.

I guess we owe the French, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace an apology for messing up their beaches in Normandy.

"Ms. Wessling, Amnesty Intl. referred to the Gitmo prison as a "gulag", a fact you conveniently left out of your letter to spin it to your favor."

No Dan, she seems to be addressing the facts in the report, not an unforunate use of the word gulag. Focus Dan. This is not FOX news and we will keep you on topic.

"We are in a war if you didn't realize it."

Who made the war Dan? We started the war and we continue the war so we'd better be prepared to back it up with some rather high morals. It seems that torture is a popular tool with all religious fanatics. Will you next defend rape against enemy citizens?

"I guess we owe the French...an apology for messing up their beaches in Normandy."

No, but if you will continue your trip back into time you'll see that we owe the French our freedom. Without their help we wouldn't have won the Revolutionary War.

AI is a far left political group with a political agenda.
Haven't we learned that groups like this are unlikely to speak the truth?
I disregard anything coming from groups that far out on the fringe of either side.

"We are in a war if you didn't realize it."

That only put a context to our actions, it doesn't excuse them.

America has something important over the last few years since 9/11. While "gulag" was clearly over the top by A.I. even Dan had to preface the word murder by mass in his post. We are no longer seen as the formost upholder of human rights in the world: indeed we are increasingly pointed out as an abuser of those rights. I'll agree with anyone who says we are held to a different standard than other countries and A.I. calling our camps a gulag is evidence of this.

As much as people have resented us for being so powerful in their hearts most folks have appreciated the fact that if someone had to be this powerful that it was America. America was the shining city on the hill. No matter what kind of abuse was going on in ones country America always showed what a society could accomplish.

As more stories of citizens held without trial of prisoners sent to countries where they can be tortured, of torture occuring in widely disparate camps that makes it look like some officially sanctioned activity, America is losing what makes it special in the family of nations.

If we continue down this road then Al Quaeda accomplished something quite profound on 09/11/01.

I know the topic is Iraq and prisoner abuse(s) but I would like to tell you all about two American soldiers who served in Vietnam. They related their story at the dinner table and acted like they were talking about the vegatables, very casual and matter of fact.

They told of going into Vietnamese villeges, taking what they wanted, and leaving. What they wanted included trinkets, revenge and sex with the women and children. They told of shooting, in cold blood, anyone who tried to intervene or protest. After all, we were at war.

I was horrified and sick but I still thought they were trying to shock the rest of us and acting like billy badasses. It was only when we began to question them that I realized they were dead serious. They related as how the Vietnamese were not really human beings, how they were scum, how any one of them (including children) would kill them in a heartbeat. They felt completely justified in doing what they wanted because they gave no value to the Vietnamese.

They told in disgusting detail of their sick excursions. That was in the late seventies and I still am bothered by their story.

Now, I'm not saying that is happening today. But, IMO, it is not farfetched for me to believe abuses are occuring in detention camps. Abuses that we know nothing about.

I know we are at war but does that really excuse us for acting like barbarians? It's funny how people will excuse American soldiers for inhumanity but whine foul when American soldiers are treated in a like manner. It is like they give more value to life if it is someone like them, who worships the same God and with whom they can identify.

Folks, humans are humans and deserve to be treated humanely whether we are at war or not. We are all equally human in God's eyes. To excuse inhumanity because "we are at war" or "they are more inhumane" is not morally right no matter how you justify it.

Yes Mr. Jukes, those groups on the far outside of either side of issues due tend to slant their research to the interest of the group. That would include our present administration. If there was ever an extreme to one side it would be the Bush/Cheney contigent. Can you really blame them? Who likes to be wrong? I don't. I'm sure the other responders here don't. The hardest thing to do is admit your own wrong-doing and apologize. If any one of you has ever been married for some amount of time you'd realize that.
I agree that the term "gulag" is inappropriate. To compare the slaughter of millions to those being held in Gitmo is a major stretch. But are abuses being performed there? One need only look at the recent cases involving Iraqi prisoner abuse to make the asumption that it is possible. The difference would be that the boys at Gitmo wouldn't be as stupid as some National Guard/Reservists to take pictures. If I were still in the military and there, I wouldn't be able to get the mental picture of three thousand people, EMTs, Firefighters, and Police Officers burning and falling to their deaths. Nor could I forget my brethern in the sands of Iraq being homocide bombed. Would I do something to mess with the detainees? To use the popular vernacular of the day, damn skippy! Would I resort to the Stalanist agenda of murder? No way!
One last point in response to Dan asking if we should apologize for messing up the beach at Normandy. No, we shouldn't. We didn't mess it up on D-day. We cleaned it up. The Nazis messed it up with all the barriers and barbed wires. I'm certain the French thanked us for that with the memorials there. As for the other "clubs," I don't think they existed then. But I could be wrong and for that I would apologize. Damn, that was hard!

Henry:

What I find fascinating is AI "has a long and illustrious legacy. Amnesty International in the past has been an equal opportunity critic, if you will, bringing spotlight on abuses by many dictatorial and authoritarian regimes, including Cuba, Vietnam, China, North Korea, Iraq, etc., etc.: (according to DAVID RIVKIN, partner in the Washington office of Baker & Hostetler LLP, Visiting Fellow at the Nixon Center, Contributing Editor of the National Review magazine)

... and according to WILLIAM SCHULTZ (Director of AI): "... it's quite interesting that the Vice President doesn't take Amnesty seriously. The President calls us absurd. But, you know, when Amnesty International took on Saddam Hussein 20 years ago, when Donald Rumsfeld was courting him, and even in the run up to the Iraq war, when Amnesty International was regularly quoted by Mr. Rumsfeld and other officials about Saddam Hussein's brutality, under those circumstances, this president, this administration didn't think we were absurd at all. When we criticize Cuba, when we criticize North Korea, when we criticize China, as we have repeatedly, this administration applauds Amnesty International. But when we criticize the United States, we are suddenly absurd."

... so it seems everyone plays both sides as they see fit ... huh?

For those of you who misunderstood my post, here is an important statement from it:

"In a war you don't turn around and apologize everytime some report comes out from an anti-American group like Amnesty Intl."

I did not say we should abuse prisoners Yvonne & al. What I said is we don't have the President making instant apologies everytime some group, particularly a left wing anti-American group like Amnesty Intl., makes an accusation with terms like gulag.

Dan, I don't want Bush to apologize for Anything.

I simply want him to be tried for war crimes, found guilty, and sent to prison where he and his cronies belong.

Dan,

To use a Vietnam era quote we are in a war for "hearts and minds" of moderate and young Arabs. These tactics are losing it for us. AI overstepped with gulag, though I suspect they just wanted to get our attention (and I guess they did) but we are quite happy to quote them when it suits our purposes. They aren't an anti-American group, though I think this time they used a double standard on us. Perhaps they expect the country that is traditionally the leading protector of human rights, to actually lead in the protection of human rights and not away from it.

Marshall, Couldn't agree with you more. It's hard to win hearts & minds however, when you have AI calling Gitmo a gulag and Newsweek printing false stories about Koran flushing. Left wing groups and media will do whatever possible to paint the situation negative because they hate Bush, pure & simple.

I don't deny prisoner abuse exists and for the record I do NOT support it. But it ain't a gulag my friend. I would rather be in Gitmo anyday than in a terrorist prison getting my head lopped off and videotaped for broadcast on the Internet.

Jim, blather blather, heard it before.

By the way, some of you will be very glad to hear this. Gotta go out of town tomorrow until Friday, not much computer access, so I won't be a posting till next week.

Jim, You and I can certainly share common ground on this one. But I'm not holding my breath.

"... and Newsweek printing false stories about Koran flushing."

And now we know that book-abuse did happen (the Pentagon threw it out "with the trash" after 7 pm on Friday night when few read/watch the news). First, we're encouraged to regard a magazine as unpatriotic and the cause of multiple deaths. Then we learn that the mag wasn't *so* far off in its reporting.

Don't you fear a land in which what people write is taken so much out of context to brand them as unpatriotic or America-hating as the single words "toilet" and "gulag" have caused? Aren't you just a little concerned when scientists' written reports are changed to fit an ideology?

What's behind the fear of the truthful written word *in* context that makes the President and Vice President and others dumb them down to single words and then characterize them as un-American?

As a lover of freedom and democracy, I am saddened to see the encroachments that this present administration is undertaking through the Patriot Acts I and II, and through the obvious propagandizing that this President is famous for.

Now, for you Reich-wing Lock-step Neo-Cons, this next bit might be hard to take.

The similarities between Bush's rise to power and Hitler's rise are uncanny. They both used terrorism as a way to push a freedom-limiting initiative, they both used (admittedly) propaganda to push simple words that ignite base desires: Evil, EvilDoers, Killers, then Freedom is on the march, Homeland, etc. These terms serve to divide us from them. Them being anyone who looks remotely like what we think a terrorist would look like.

Hate crimes against Arabs are at an all time high, Religious leaders are being condemning about any other religion or political party than their own.

While we are not anywhere near the tragedy of genocide, we do have 'concentration camps' called gitmo, abu graib, and others.

I wonder if the citizens of Germany in 1939 had any inkling that their country would end up like it did in 1945. I wonder that if they could have known the outcome, would they have kept Hitler from power.

I fear for our country. I am tired of being called an 'America-hater' by the reich-wing media. I love this country and would do anything to defend it. I do not, however, believe that we had any right at all to invade Iraq. It was a Pre-emtive war, and that premise in a free society is wrong.

God Help us all.

Jim,

I'll just say I've always detested the term "Homeland Security". It sounds like something that would come out of Nazi Germany or Stalins Russia.

The Iraq war started under Bush the elder, was stoped when Saddam agreed to UN rules, broke them 16 or 17 times, stole oil money meant for medicine for the people of Iraq,war was continued, Saddam was captured and the country was given back to the people. Thank GOD for a president with some backbone after 8 years of pantsdropping.

How many UN resolutions has Israel ignored?? How many times has the USA either abstained or vetoed UN resolutions in favor of Israel. If we are gonna use the UN resolution argument, let's do include all the other nations that have ignored and are currently ignoring UN resolutions.
We are not supposed to be the world police force.
We went into Iraq because we wanted to secure and ally ourselves with another big oil government. Just wait, in ten years the oil will be flowing from Iraq to your SUV's at a fraction of the cost we will pay for the Saudi crude.
I don't think gas can ever get cheap enough to justify the massive loss of life this war has created.
Face it, if we were really interested in going after the terrorists, we'd invade the country in which most of the 9/11 hijackers came from. Saudi Arabia. But since Bush's daddy is in business with the Royal family (Carlyle Group) and lots of the administration are oil people, that will never happen.
Bush pimped our country out for money. The blood is on his hands and he should answer for his crimes.

"Just wait, in ten years the oil will be flowing from Iraq to your SUV's at a fraction of the cost we will pay for the Saudi crude"

God, I hope so.

I swear...if you peace hippies are so damn unhappy then move to France or something. They will fit into your agendas perfectly because they never want to fight anyone, will lay down at the sound of a soldier farting at them, and believe in global economies and screwing over everyone except for themselves. GEEZ!!!

I am going to quote my co-worker on this one, "If you don't like the country you are living in and the government running it....then get your a** out."

Tater, Why should we turn tail and run? Why should we turn our country over to a bunch of war mongering, lying politicians? This nation is not a dictatorship (yet) and we all have the freedom to protest aganist something we feel is wrong. So go live in France or somewhere if you don't like people exercising their right to speak out.