The whole situation – the contrivances of the US government’s handling of Afghani prisoners in Cuba – smacks of Old Testament-style eye-for-an-eye retribution. Call me cynical, but there is no way I would ever believe any ‘official’ report pertaining to it.
I watched Newsnight on Friday, where the main story was the US allowing the Red Cross into the camp at Guantanamo Bay, but under the condition that the results of their investigation remain confidential. I mean, that’s a Catch-22 situation for the Red Cross: whatever their recommendations, the military can just shrug them off and they won’t be able to do diddly squat about it. And it’s not like anyone will find out about it, ’cause it’s all confidential! How convenient.
And just a short while ago I watched an interview on Sky News with a ‘terrorism expert’ named Larry Johnson, who was asked about the controversy surrounding the images of the camp that have been released. He first went on some wild tangent talking about things that weren’t even relevant or pertaining to the inquiry (people being held up on hooks, etc, really embelleshing the Wizard of Id imagery). He was stopped in his tracks by the Sky anchor, whose name I seem to have forgotten, and asked specificaly about the masks, the gloves, the earmuffs, the blacked-out goggles. This question was totally dismissed by Johnson, who retorted quite venomously to the effect (for me) that us Europeans are nothing more than namby-pamby bleeding-heart liberals.
Sure, many of the prisoners in Cuba may well be highly dangerous (a defense of sorts for the apparent sensory deprivation techniques being used) but I’m sure that US soldiers were considered highly dangerous to the Viet Cong back in the ’60’s and ’70’s, or to the Japanese back in World War II.