Amnesty International USA: Annual Report

Annual Report

More Opinion Roundup

Robert Scheer Los Angeles Times June 7

"Of course, in the world outside the Beltway, what is really reprehensible is the detention of hundreds of people for years without granting them prisoner-of-war status or charging them with a crime. What is reprehensible is letting dogs attack naked prisoners, shipping others out to be tortured by totalitarian regimes and covering up the deaths of prisoners during interrogations.

But for the aggrieved leaders of the world's only superpower, pointed criticism from a citizen-run nonprofit apparently is more shocking than the abuse of prisoners they deem guilty until proved otherwise.

How dare the White House and Pentagon, which have for three years rationalized torture and fought off the courts' attempts to grant the detainees some basic right of appeal, blame Amnesty International, rather than themselves, for besmirching the U.S. human rights record."

Matthew Rothschild The Progressive June 7

"I'm sick of the attacks on Amnesty International, one of the noblest and most effective organizations in the world.

For the last four decades, it has bravely exposed the most horrific acts of repressive governments across the globe. And it has successfully campaigned to free many political prisoners.

For its work, day in and day out, it deserves our thanks.

And I applaud it now for having the courage to blow the whistle on the Bush Administration."

Waco Tribune Herald, TX June 7

"The charges of prisoner abuse and that some of the about 540 prisoners have no ties to terrorism recently resulted in a scathing report by the human rights organization Amnesty International.

There is a ready model for this issue -- the appointment of another blue-ribbon commission modeled on the 9/11 commission that would study the classification of the Guantánamo prisoners and their treatment and make recommendations to correct any problems.

Our nation demands it."

President Carter June 6

"The U.S. now suffers terrible embarrassment and a blow to our reputation as a champion of human rights because of what has actually happened in the prisons of Afghanistan and Iraq and Guantánamo Bay. I think we should close down Guantánamo as quickly as possible. It's a great embarrassment to us."

The Oregonian June 6

"While our leaders make speeches about spreading freedom, we are hypocritically denying prisoners at Guantánamo Bay basic human rights. President Bush and Vice President Cheney condemn Amnesty International, but the rest of the world condemns America."

The Des Moines Register June 5

"The Amnesty report provides evidence that the Abu Ghraib atrocities, which came to light a year ago, were just the tip of the iceberg, and that torture, rather than being aberrant behavior, is accepted at a high level.

...What have we sunk to? Is this the face of America we want the world to know, not of a liberator but of a tormentor? Of a democracy that rewrites its laws to cover up its abuses?

Are we content to replace Saddam Hussein's human—rights violations with our own?

Americans must not accept this. Tell your congressman it's time for an independent investigation and a special prosecutor to look into these atrocities, and find out where the buck stops."

Thomas Friedman New York Times June 5

"Now that the Bush administration has made clear how offended it is at Amnesty International's word choice in characterizing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp “the gulag of our times,” we hope it will soon get around to dealing with the substantive problems that the Amnesty report is only the latest to identify. What Guantánamo exemplifies — harsh, indefinite detention without formal charges or legal recourse — may or may not bring to mind the Soviet Union's sprawling network of Stalinist penal colonies. It certainly has nothing in common with any American notions of justice or the rule of law.

...What makes Amnesty's gulag metaphor apt is that Guantánamo is merely one of a chain of shadowy detention camps that also includes Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the military prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and other, secret locations run by the intelligence agencies. Each has produced its own stories of abuse, torture and criminal homicide. These are not isolated incidents, but part of a tightly linked global detention system with no accountability in law. Prisoners have been transferred from camp to camp. So have commanding officers. And perhaps not coincidentally, so have specific methods of mistreatment."

Senator Joseph Biden ABC June 5

"Back in January, I introduced a bill saying we should have an independent commission to go take a look at this, not only Guantánamo, but Abu Ghraib, the rest of the prison system, make a recommendation to the United States Congress, and let's deal with this openly. Because this has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world. And it is unnecessary to be in that position. We should have an independent U.S. commission take a look at it, make recommendations to the Congress."

Eugene Robinson Washington Post June 3

"The United States, land of the free, has swept thousands of people off the streets and held some of them for as long as three years, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo Bay and other secret prisons officials won't tell us about. At Abu Ghraib, prisoners were tortured -- and please don't quibble about the word, because in the age of digital cameras and e-mail we've been able to see the torture for ourselves.
We also know the administration has turned other prisoners over to less fastidious regimes, where they could be tortured without our getting splattered by the blood.
Look at the big picture: This is a wholesale trashing of our own ideals, an abandonment of the rule of law. It's already a huge scandal in the rest of the world, undoubtedly creating more enemies of the United States than it has taken out of circulation. And it was the White House that set this policy, not a bunch of poorly trained reservists at Abu Ghraib."

Miami Herald June 3

"Meanwhile, as White House officials wrap themselves in the high ideals that America always has championed, the images and sounds of U.S. soldiers beating, harassing and humiliating detainees at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and other facilities are reviewed on Internet websites by millions of people around the world. No amount of posturing by U.S. officials can change the reality that those images convey, nor the animus that they sow.

This is why the United States cannot afford to mistreat a single detainee. Unfortunately, the policy of this administration is to ignore international conventions and make up the rules as it sees fit."

Tom Teepen Cox News Service June 2

"The abuses can no longer be fobbed off as lamentable but discrete breakdowns. There is no avoiding the conclusion that they are policy.

The Justice and Defense departments produced twisted interpretations of international and U.S. law to sanction practices that violated those laws in spirit and letter. The White House is a party to the unconscionable “extraordinary renditions” —— dodgy language that means kidnapping suspects and secretly sending them to countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen that are known to torture prisoners even beyond the considerable lengths to which America is now willing to go.

The America that I grew up in sometimes failed to live up to its best intentions, but it worked at squaring its behavior with its ideals, and when it fell short, it wasn't indifferent. It was chagrined and appalled. And it knew that it had more work to do."

Columbus Dispatch June 2

"The Bush administration has made a hash of the public-relations war, and that is hurting the war against terrorism. The refusal to provide any meaningful information about the Guantánamo prisoners reinforces suspicions of Americans and the world that while the United States preaches democracy and the rule of law on one hand, it practices something different on the other."

Margaret Carlson June 2

" ...I watched President Bush at his news conference respond to a question about an Amnesty International report condemning U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, Guantánamo and elsewhere. Bush called charges of abuse “absurd” allegations by detainees “who hate America.” Bush maintains that only enemies of America would allege such abuse. But if the charges are true, it is the perpetrators and their superiors who show contempt for America and what it represents."

Contra Costa Times, CA June 1

"Bush administration officials' unapologetic defense of military conduct at Guantánamo and other U.S. military prisons -- in the face of mounting evidence of serious problems -- is symptomatic of its increasingly familiar refusal to acknowledge mistakes and take responsibility. This arrogant stonewalling must not be allowed, especially when so much is at stake.

If, as Rumsfeld claims, released detainees are a bunch of liars, the administration has nothing to hide. It should welcome such an inquiry to lay the supposedly false charges to rest, once and for all."

President Bill Clinton NBC June 1

"There are reasons for these international rules. And one of them is that if you go too far in roughing people up, they may in the end wind up telling you what you want to hear. But it may not be true. And if you have the wrong people, then the right people may elude you."

Clarence Page June 1

"Instead of dismissing such charges from internationally respected human-rights organizations, we Americans should take these accusations seriously--while we still have a good reputation to protect.

...no matter how much certain blustery talk-show hosts and other self-described manly men scoff at human-rights concerns for terrorist suspects, the best reason for protecting human rights at Gitmo and elsewhere is precisely because we want to win the war on terrorism."

Senator John McCain CNN May 29

"I think Congress has a responsibility in a mature fashion to continue to hold hearings on this issue to make sure that we're exercising our proper oversight responsibilities and those of us who have traveled in the region cannot overstate the impact that Abu Ghraib and other things that have happened have damaged the image of the United States of America in the Middle East.

I would hope that what we would do is maybe have some hearings in the Armed Services Committee and John Warner, Lindsey Graham and others are interested in this, and do it in a dispassionate manner."

Bob Schieffer CBS News: Bob Schieffer's Take May 29

"I thought about that as yet another tale of torture and abuse came out about the POW camp we are running at Guantánamo Bay.

Columnist Tom Friedman said the prison ought to be shut down because the stories about it are so inflaming the Arab world they're making the war on terrorism more dangerous for our American soldiers to fight.

But as I watched the McCain movie, I wondered if the greater danger is the impact Guantánamo is having on us. Do we want our children to believe this is how we are? Is this the code of honor we are passing on to the next generation?"

Chicago Tribune May 29

" ...It may be difficult to separate fact from fiction in the stories told by prisoners. But FBI agents have reported that a female interrogator grabbed a detainee's genitals and bent back his thumbs, a prisoner was gagged with duct tape and a dog was used to intimidate a detainee who later was thrown into isolation. FBI agents said they saw prisoners chained in uncomfortable positions for up to 24 hours with no food or water, left to urinate and defecate on themselves.

Those are abuses the U.S. cannot tolerate."

Press-Enterprise, CA May 28

"Fresh allegations that U.S. forces abused enemy combatants at the Gitmo detention camp should spur Congress to launch an independent probe of conditions at the naval base in Cuba. A search for the truth is essential.

The annual report on human rights published this week by Amnesty International and the recent release of declassified FBI documents alleging desecration of the Quran at Gitmo lend added urgency to calls for an independent look at the treatment of enemy combatants."

Susanna Rodell Charleston Gazette May 27

"We have gone to war, our leaders say, to bring freedom to oppressed people. We invite the world to judge us with a much higher standard. When we fail, it's big news, and the ensuing anger makes all Americans more vulnerable."

Thomas L. Friedman New York Times May 27

"Shut it down. Just shut it down.

I am talking about the war-on-terrorism P.O.W. camp at Guantánamo Bay. Just shut it down and then plow it under. It has become worse than an embarrassment. I am convinced that more Americans are dying and will die if we keep the Gitmo prison open than if we shut it down. So, please, Mr. President, just shut it down."