Does Amnesty International Actually Know Anything?

Executive director of AI William Schulz seems to not know much about the American Gulag system. This article quotes his lack of knowledge from his own statements. Emphasis is mine on all counts.

Schulz recently dubbed Rumsfeld an "apparent high-level architect of torture" in asserting he approved interrogation methods that violated international law.

"It would be fascinating to find out. I have no idea," Schulz told "Fox News Sunday."

Find out? How can you make such a statement and then want to find out if it were true?

Schulz said, "We don't know for sure what all is happening at Guantanamo and our whole point is that the United States ought to allow independent human rights organizations to investigate."

Who would that "independent" organization be? I would state that independent isn't what is needed but a disinterested third party. AI is most obviously not disinterested and has a rather well known record of criticizing the US with limited information.

He also said he had "absolutely no idea" whether the International Red Cross had been given access to all prisoners and said the group feared others were being held at secret facilities or locations.

Again, he hasn't any information. You'd think that if he was coming to an interview on the topic he'd have the information. Didn't they investigate their allegations? You'd think that they would have gotten information from the Red Cross even if it was sufficient to state that the Red Cross didn't know if they had had access to all facilities. Show me a group that could be fair on all aspects of this issue and I'll agree with the investigation. But don't tell me that AI or the Red Cross is that organization.

Schulz noted that it was Amnesty's headquarters in London that issued the annual report on global human rights, which said Guantanamo Bay "has become the gulag of our times."

Asked about the comparison, Schulz said, "Clearly this is not an exact or a literal analogy."

"... But there are some similarities. The United States is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared ... And in some cases, at least, we know that they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed."

Not exact or literal, but certainly inflammatory.

"And whether the Americans like it or not, it does reflect how the more than 2 million Amnesty members in a hundred countries around the world and indeed the vast majority of those countries feel about the United States' detention policy," he said.

Ok I'll say it, Who Cares? AI members are pretty much irrelevant to the US detention policy. The policy isn't in place to please AI members or the countries that they are from, it's there to control known individuals that are sworn enemies of the US who have been taken in combat or as a result of terrorist activities.

Then there is this interesting information, which is completely wrong.

The United States holds about 520 men at Guantanamo, where they are denied rights accorded under international law to prisoners of war. Many have been held without charge for more than three years.

They're not prisoners of war. They still don't fall under the protections because they never were legal combatants as defined in the Geneva Conventions. In stating this the writer obviously is trying to force an issue that is still incorrect (and has been repeatedly discussed).

Lastly, that all star of the senate, Joseph Biden wants to shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay. What a shock.

A leading Democratic U.S. senator on Sunday repeated his call for a full investigation and said the detention center should be closed.

"The end result is, I think we should end up shutting it down, moving those prisoners. Those that we have reason to keep, keep. And those we don't, let go," Sen. Joseph Biden of Delware told ABC's "This Week."

Keep where? Let go to do what? Or has the senator missed that there have been other detainees released that have gone back to combat American forces elsewhere?

Biden added: "More Americans are in jeopardy as a consequence of the perception that exists worldwide with its existence than if there were no (Guantanamo)."

I'd love to see what he bases this statement on. I'm sure he has some hard facts to back his supposition. Does he honestly believe that releasing these detainees will improve that perception? I'd bet that even if you released them all and gave them a million dollars a pop, they'd be back killing US military or civilians in a very short time. I wonder if the Senator is willing to accept the liability of any deaths that occurred due to the release of these detainees. I'd wager he wouldn't.