The Amnesty report has been mentioned by both Cheney and Bush in recent days. The header of the CNN story Acidus memed is somewhat misleading, as one could read it to imply that he said that people who've raised questions about Gitmo "hate America." This isn't actually what he said. CNN is blowing the exchange out of proportion because it started with a Larry King interview that they are trying to market.

] In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people
] detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the
] detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on
] the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in
] detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some
] instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it
] was an absurd report. It just is.

Bush is saying that a lot of the detainees hate America. He is not saying that Amnesty international hates America. However, those who are given to believing such things are likely to believe thats what he said.

The question is what did Amnesty say, and is it truly absurd?

] In the US, almost a year after the Supreme Court decided that
] detainees in Guantanamo should have access to judicial review,
] not one single case from among the 500 or so detained has reached
] the courts because of stonewalling by the Administration.
]
] Under this agenda some people are above the law and others are
] clearly outside it.
]
] Guantanamo has become the gulag our times, entrenching the
] notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law.
]
] If Guantanamo evokes images of Soviet repression, "ghost detainees"
] – or the incommunicado detention of unregistered detainees - bring
] back the practice of "disappearances" so popular with Latin American
] dictators in the past.
]
] According to US official sources there could be over 100 ghost detainees
] held by the US.
]
] In 2004 thousands of people were held by the US in Iraq, hundreds in
] Afghanistan and undisclosed numbers in undisclosed locations.
]
] AI is calling on the US Administration to "close Guantanamo and disclose
] the rest". What we mean by this is: either release the prisoners or charge
] and prosecute them with due process.

Hrm... Absurd? I can see that. The rhetoric in this essay is firey and analogies chosen are bad ones. However, the specific allegations aren't false. By responding to the gulag analogy as if it was an accusation of willful detainee abuse (it isn't), Bush and Cheney avoid addressing the actual matter that Amnesty has raised, which is about accountability and not torture. The administration is making a straw man argument, betting that no on... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]