gulag.

amazing that one small word can be so powerful or evoke such a horrific response. 

i first became familiar with the concept while reading 'one day in the life of ivan denisovich' by alexander solzhenitsyn when i was still in grade school (clearly my recreational reading tastes were a bit precocious as well as extreme).  for a week during the summer between 7th and 8th grade, i shivered in the heat and humidity of late july in da motah city as ivan and i--convict slave laborers--endured the frozen extremes of siberia and the brutally inhumane excesses of a pitiless totalitarian state that had nullified our lives.

why were we there?  for how long would we remain?  there was no way of knowing.  worst of all, no one--least of all our former families and friends-- except those who kept us here and our fellow slaves knew for sure we even existed. 

amnesty international's international report, released on may 25, 2005, characterizes as a gulag the facility at guantanamo, cuba where the us holds some of  those captured in its war on terrorism.   not surprisingly, the current administration refutes that designation.  according to bush, it's an obvious case of disassembly (which he defines as lying).

not surprisingly, there are more than a few ju bloggers who are outraged by the amnesty international report.  

the war on terror is an honorable endeavor being waged against those who hate us and are willing to go to any length to destroy us because--as our president has proclaimed--they hate freedom.

finally  amnesty international has revealed its true agenda  and shown it hates us and our freedom as well.

how could we have been so foolish as to believe that an organization which has, for years, despised  the freedom enjoyed in north korea, china, vietnam, algeria, myanmar,  the maldives, turkey, morroco, today's russia, the former soviet union and its eastern european colonies, chile (under pinochet), argentina, cuba, the sudan and dozens of other bastion of freedom countries wouldn't eventually add us to the list.? 

fortunately we have plenty of examples on which to base our response---thanks to those nations for which this whole thing is old hat.

before we go there, let's clear something up.  guantanamo isn't a network of slave labor camps in the wilds of siberia into which millions of our own citizens disappear, most never to return.  hell, it's not even cold there.

on the other hand, perhaps amnesty international meant it figuratively.  after all, there are 500 people who've been locked up in gitmo for nearly 3 years without ever having been charged with any crime.  as far as they know, it could be another 20 years before they'll have a day in court.  their families have no clue as to their status.  no one except the force that's detaining them knows whether they're well or ill or alive.

nawwww.  that couldn't be it.

ai has a lotta nerve.  after all, didn't the president pledge in his 2nd inaugural address that the us was dedicated to spreading democracy and freedom.  aren't we spending billions and putting our military into harm's way to do just that in iraq?  if you can't trust our government, who can you trust?  

(who better to answer that question than those of you who join heston in announcing that they'll have to pry your gun outta your cold dead hands.  but then again, amnesty international doesn't own any guns huh?)

so anyway we're busy spreading freedom and democracy  not only by deed but by example--certainly there's no better advertisement than good example--and all amnesty international can do is criticize us.

no wonder cheney took offense and won't take ai seriously.  he's a flexible guy and just because he, the president and rumsfeld used to take them seriously enough to cite them multiple times in white house position papers  on hussein's iraq  Link  (In August 2001 Amnesty International released a report entitled Iraq -- Systematic Torture of Political Prisoners, which detailed the systematic and routine use of torture against suspected political opponents and, occasionally, other prisoners. Amnesty International also reports "Detainees have also been threatened with bringing in a female relative, especially the wife or the mother, and raping her in front of the detainee. Some of these threats have been carried out." ) , don't mean he cant change his mind.  or maybe his mind is the same but amnesty international is different. ( i can hear him singing along with joe walsh...'everybody's so different, i'm still the same.' )

fact is, amnesty international provided a good deal of the source material used by bush, cheney and rumsfeld to justify their planned invasion of iraq.  so having ai slam em now must really not bother them a bit because the organization just doesn't have any credibility

not that everything ai had to say about america was bad.  they approved the supreme court ruling that requires a court hearing for prisoners of the 'war on terror'.   big deal huh?

the final straw has to be ai's outrageous demands that the us stop secretly holding prisoners incommunicado (ghost prisoners), permit the international red cross access to all prisoners, ensure due process for all prisoners, implement an independent investigation of all allegations of torture and prosecute all who cause detainees to be brutalized or tortured while in the custody of the us. 

if that sounds familiar, it's probably cuz those damn amnesty international freedom-haters stole it directly from past presidents who demanded the soviet union do the same thing at their gulags.

if all of this pisses you off, you're not alone.

i'm pissed off too.  pissed off really badly that my country has engaged in the type of thing for which we used to condemn rogue states like north korea and the soviet union.   pissed off that my president says he wants to promote democracy and freedom throughout the world while eroding the essentials of democracy and freedom at home. pissed off that such blatant hypocrisy is ignored and--even worse--approved by those who claim to be the most stalwart advocates of the rule of law and our constitution.

one final note: in another thread, one commentor said he was dismayed because amnesty international had diminished the horror of the gulag in its report.  after all, there's no comparison.   this same commentor claims to be a student of history.  not a very good student in my opinion or he'd remember that gulags--like rome--aren't built in a day.  once you lay the first stone, the next one is a little easier.