p_p_man
The 'Euro' European
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2001
- Posts
- 24,253
it sure knows how to draw the worst type of publicity to itself.
So in the year it's had since taking office to sort out the "problems" the Clinton years created, it has managed to alienate such large sections of the world community your own President is no longer able to travel abroad and be assured of a warm welcome by the people wherever he goes or with any guarantees of his personal safety.
Some boss eh? Imprisoned in his own country.
This debacle of the prisoners on Cuba is just the latest in a growing line of debacles. We've all seen the photographs by now of sensory deprived men shuffling along in manacles and being housed in single units open to the elements with corrugated metal roofs.
And these are men who it has not yet been proved have forfeited their right to protection under the Geneva Convention. As America loses the morale high ground, dragging the UK with it by association, we are all waiting for the report of the International Red Cross on the conditions the prisoners live under.
More appropriately the US Government should pre-empt any report, good or bad that the Red Cross produces, call the prisoners by their proper status of Prisoners of War and start treating them in a more humane fashion.
By putting them on Cuba the Bush government hoped it would keep them away from unwanted attention. Fat chance of that when the whole world can see the photographs being published worldwide as we speak.
At the moment there's a three man Parliamentary visit being made from the UK to interview the British prisoners.
On top of which, as the following news item shows, America's staunchest ally in this "war" is becoming concerned over Bush's blatent diregard as to how a "civilised" country should act in these cirumstances:
"British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement that 'prisoners, regardless of their technical status, should be treated humanely and in accordance with customary international law.
'We have always made that clear and the Americans have said they share this view...As for the photographs of detainees published today, I have asked our officials in Guantanamo Bay to establish with the U.S. the circumstances in which these photographs were taken.''
And the UK is only one country. These same sentiments are being repeated around the globe.
And the excuses the administration is giving to explain the way the prisoners are guarded are becoming a joke in themselves. So far they range from the prisoners being the most dangerous of men; that they constantly threaten their guards, that one guard was bitten on the arm and that they may spread TB.
All these excuses achieve, as the photographs of blindfolded, deafened and shackled men are led stumbling around a small compound are published, is give the impression that the troops doing the guarding are the most cowardly, terrified men on the face of the earth. Not a good impression to give.
The US is rapidly building up future trouble for itself, not only because of the way the "war" itself was conducted, but now this.
Then I suppose we'll see the usual group of angst driven souls wringing their hands on Literotica wondering why their country can attract such hatred and distrust.
So in the year it's had since taking office to sort out the "problems" the Clinton years created, it has managed to alienate such large sections of the world community your own President is no longer able to travel abroad and be assured of a warm welcome by the people wherever he goes or with any guarantees of his personal safety.
Some boss eh? Imprisoned in his own country.
This debacle of the prisoners on Cuba is just the latest in a growing line of debacles. We've all seen the photographs by now of sensory deprived men shuffling along in manacles and being housed in single units open to the elements with corrugated metal roofs.
And these are men who it has not yet been proved have forfeited their right to protection under the Geneva Convention. As America loses the morale high ground, dragging the UK with it by association, we are all waiting for the report of the International Red Cross on the conditions the prisoners live under.
More appropriately the US Government should pre-empt any report, good or bad that the Red Cross produces, call the prisoners by their proper status of Prisoners of War and start treating them in a more humane fashion.
By putting them on Cuba the Bush government hoped it would keep them away from unwanted attention. Fat chance of that when the whole world can see the photographs being published worldwide as we speak.
At the moment there's a three man Parliamentary visit being made from the UK to interview the British prisoners.
On top of which, as the following news item shows, America's staunchest ally in this "war" is becoming concerned over Bush's blatent diregard as to how a "civilised" country should act in these cirumstances:
"British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement that 'prisoners, regardless of their technical status, should be treated humanely and in accordance with customary international law.
'We have always made that clear and the Americans have said they share this view...As for the photographs of detainees published today, I have asked our officials in Guantanamo Bay to establish with the U.S. the circumstances in which these photographs were taken.''
And the UK is only one country. These same sentiments are being repeated around the globe.
And the excuses the administration is giving to explain the way the prisoners are guarded are becoming a joke in themselves. So far they range from the prisoners being the most dangerous of men; that they constantly threaten their guards, that one guard was bitten on the arm and that they may spread TB.
All these excuses achieve, as the photographs of blindfolded, deafened and shackled men are led stumbling around a small compound are published, is give the impression that the troops doing the guarding are the most cowardly, terrified men on the face of the earth. Not a good impression to give.
The US is rapidly building up future trouble for itself, not only because of the way the "war" itself was conducted, but now this.
Then I suppose we'll see the usual group of angst driven souls wringing their hands on Literotica wondering why their country can attract such hatred and distrust.
