From: "Walter Lippmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 14:41:22 +1100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [CubaNews] Worldwide outcry says US abuses POWs Worldwide outcry says U.S. ABUSES POWs Another reason to hate this war By Deirdre Griswold The cruel, illegal and unprecedented treatment of prisoners captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and flown halfway around the world to "Camp X-Ray" in Guantanamo, Cuba, should be a matter of grave concern to anyone worrying about where U.S. society is going. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld doesn't see anything wrong with what his Pentagon is doing. He said so in a lengthy, rambling briefing on Jan. 22 intended as damage control after the International Committee of the Red Cross criticized the conditions at the camp, and after a group of lawyers, including former U.S. Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark, filed a petition in Los Angeles challenging the detentions. Rumsfeld won't even admit that the prisoners are prisoners and therefore subject to certain international norms of conduct. He calls them "unlawful combatants," which is supposed to allow the Pentagon to do anything they want with these men. Anyone who ever served in the military knows that you are told only to give your "name, rank and serial number" if taken prisoner. The 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war protects them from brutal treatment, torture and forced interrogation. Rumsfeld says the hell with all that. On Jan. 11, the day the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo, the U.S. government announced officially that it was refusing to abide by the Geneva Convention. What has shocked most of the world--prompting media denunciations from even the staunchest allies of U.S. imperialism in Europe--seems to have created barely a ripple in the moneyed media here. All the news commentary is designed to explain to the public why it is reasonable and necessary that hundreds of men from the Middle East be shackled, hooded, blindfolded, drugged, their arms and sometimes mouths immobilized with tape, to be herded into military planes and transported in this condition for a 27- hour flight. On arrival at the base that the Pentagon has arrogantly imposed on Cuban soil, they are dragged into exposed, 6-by-8- foot chain-link cages that would be condemned by dog owners if their pets were confined there for any length of time. But race and class hatred have so poisoned a large part of the populace in the United States that plenty of apologists can be found for this repugnant treatment of Arab and Asian people. Isn't what is happening an extension of the brutal and racist prison conditions inside the U.S. itself? According to the United Nations, this country imprisons more people than any other in the world--some 2 million. Executions have become routine here even as most other industrialized countries have done away with capital punishment. The popular culture takes for granted that prisoners are tortured, raped, set up for beatings, driven mad by sensory deprivation, and even murdered while in the custody of the state. U.S. "justice" throws poor people, especially those of color, behind bars while it protects the quality of life of the rich. Yet even this proven system of injustice is not tough enough for Rumsfeld and the brass. They want their prisoners kept off U.S. territory and outside the reach of the Geneva Convention so they can have no recourse to either constitutional rights or international protection. Why is the Bush administration so anxious to keep these prisoners, supposedly members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, from being able to communicate with the world in any way? Is it really to stop terrorism? Or might there be other reasons? How many of them might indict the government and armed forces of the U.S. for their deliberate bombings of Afghan villages, hospitals, food warehouses, journalists, surrendering troops, and even elders headed for Kabul? How many might know the details of what dirty deals preceded the military assault, when U.S. oil giant Unocal and government officials were trying to get the Taliban to agree to a pipeline through Afghanistan? How many who came to Afghanistan from other Arab countries hold secrets of CIA operations back when the U.S. was backing the "mujahadeen," not only against the progressive Afghan government of the 1980s, but in Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya and other places targeted for fratricidal war by the devious strategists in the U.S. foreign policy establishment? Just as the Enron corporation is now scrambling to shred its compromising documents, the Pentagon and CIA are trying to erase not just the hard drives but also the memories of those it has used and abused. It mustn't be forgotten that President George W. Bush's main excuse for the war was to "get" Osama bin Laden, the supposed mastermind of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. This dominated the news for months, but now bin Laden is almost forgotten and the menacing eye of the Pentagon has moved to other targets. In the meanwhile, no evidence has been presented anywhere to prove anything, except a sensationalized videotape with a muffled soundtrack that is scoffed at by Arabic-speaking people. The Pentagon, however, has thoughtfully provided the U.S. media with a " justifying its assault upon yet another poor nation. No wonder they are doing everything possible to deny the prisoners of war not only humane conditions but any contact with the world or chance to have their day in court. - END - ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Jan. 31, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. 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