The image war over US detainees

[leftchick]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0606/p01s01-usfp.html


WASHINGTON – The Bush administration appears to have opened a whole new front in its war on terror: a forceful, full-scale defense of the morality of its detention-camp policies.

First came harsh criticism of Newsweek magazine for its since-retracted charge of Koran abuse at the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. More recently top officials have pushed back - hard - against Amnesty International's use of "gulag" to describe Guantánamo's conditions.

The intensity and coordination of administration remarks on this issue may reflect a belated recognition of the stakes involved. Rightly or not, to much of the world the abuse of prisoners in US custody may now be emblematic of American foreign policy as a whole.


Problems at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere "raise profoundly the US valuation on justice," says George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

[dogday]

1. The thing is I have not seen them do one thing to improve this

image. Our image and character grow weaker every day....

[leftchick]

2. Because they don't give a fuck

They don't care what anyone, let alone the rest of the world thinks!

:grr:

[no_to_war_economy]

12. our message to Muslims has been very consistent

[saigon68]

13. They secretly dream of killing the Brown man

They need violence to obtain arousal

[daleo]

6. They can't change the image without changing the reality

And they don't want to do that. The most we will get is some p.r. campaigns and cheerleading in the corporate media. But the outside world won't buy it.

[Inland]

3. US image isn't just, we don't piss on Korans. It's justice and liberty.

Our bushites don't understand that America isn't just NOT PISSING ON PEOPLE, NOT KILLING THEM, NOT TORTURING THEM.

The undenied facts are{

Thousands are being held permanently without trial. Image THAT.

Dozens are being rendered to other countries that OUR government say use torture regularly. Image THAT.

Hundreds are being released from Gitmo after years, when the government declares there is no reason to believe they are terrorists. Image THAT.

Our gov. thinks that if it can win on whether a Koran got flushed, it's won the image war. Yes, if our image is the same as, say, Syria's.

[Supersedeas]

9. Spin the Piss, Paint the Corpse, and Shred the Memos--now ain't * pretty

and ethical

[cornermouse]

4. Its only immoral if the Madison Avenue PR firms can't spin

it well enough. :sarcasm: That's new morality for ya.

[SpiralHawk]

5. Hey, Bill Bennett probably supports the Bush-Republican Torture Gulags

And he's the Most Moral Republican of all isn't he? That's good enough for...

Oh, shit, excuse me, I forgot about his massive gambling problem.

Never mind.

[daleo]

7. The term "Gulag" hurts them, because objectively it has those features

The Soviet Gulag Archipelago (I actually did read the book, decades ago) was characterized by political prisoners being held for indefinite periods in an out of the way region without due process. Often, the only evidence against them was that they were denounced by neighbors or that they came from persecuted populations or had acquaintances that had already been rounded up. The use of torture was routine, and people died while in captivity from ill treatment.

That description fits the current American Gulag Archipelago quite well, I think.

[bemildred]

8. "detainees" == "political prisoners".

"detention camps" == "political prisons"
"justice" == "political repression"
"news" == "propaganda"
"CS Monitor" == "state propaganda organ"

Any questions?

[getmeouttahere]

10. If they cared....

they wouldn't nominate John Bolton for the U.N.

The rest of the world sees right through BushCo!

[cthrumatrix]

11. they only care about "getting caught" ............ just like Nixon