Normally I’d link to the following article, but given how much I want to rip it to pieces I think that a full text is only fair.
The following is from the RTE news website:
Guantanamo deaths a ‘good PR move’ - US
11 June 2006 21:22
A senior American official has described the suicides of three detainees at the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as a ‘good public relations move to draw attention’.
Colleen Graffy said the deaths were part of a strategy and ‘a tactic to further the jihadi cause’, but taking their own lives was unnecessary.
The deaths were described ‘not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare’ by US Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the camp.
The US military is continuing to investigate the deaths of the three men.
Two of the men were identified as Saudi. One was Yemeni. They are the first prisoners to die at the camp since it was opened four and a half years ago.
Since then there have been a total of 41 suicide attempts and a rolling hunger strike with 18 at the camp currently refusing rations.
Three weeks ago prisoners attacked camp guards with pieces of furniture in one of the most serious incidents to have occurred there.
Around 460 men remain at the camp with just 10 charged with crimes under a military tribunal system.
The case of one inmate, who is seeking to have his trial carried out in open court, is currently being considered by the US Supreme Court.
Where to start - where, oh where, to start.
It’s incredible the extent to which - in a worrying number of situations - you assume a situation is as bad as can be, and then somehow it gets worse. It/They/We hit an all new low. This is a prime example.
Let’s ignore, for the moment at least, the “George W. Bush is the worst thing that ever happened to planet earth” debate. And the argument that he is in fact profoundly, incredibly stupid. All that aside. This is a whole. New. Low.
The above news story goes beyond the issue of torture, the issue of rendition - the supposedly ‘current’ issue of Irish involvement in rerndition flights. It mentions, but goes way beyond, the fact that 18 prisoners at Guantanamo are on hunger strike. It goes past the abu ghraib photos. This goes beyond the various other levels of humililation and dehumanisation that the arab world has been subjected to for the last five years (if not infinitely longer).
Because the US “authorities” - the same people who mere days ago celebrated an act of murder as though they might declare a national holiday, because THAT’s so noble - have decided their spin on this incident is that they killed themselves as a PR stunt. That they killed themselves as a further act of war. That this is on some level a kind of justification for the continued detention of hundreds of prisoners in a way that goes against almost every basic human right, whatever about international law.
Here are the words that leave me speechless. One more time…
The deaths were described ‘not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare’
Unbefrickinglievable…
