Hello,’ they lied: Can we all say: "Impeachment?"

’Hello,’ they lied
Filed under: Constructive Criticism - MrBogle @ 7:41 pm

Remember the good old days when, if our government made a mistake, it readily admitted it? Naaah, me neither. I am, however, always awestruck by the way members of this Administration can stare into a TV camera and consistently lie through their teeth. It’s a talent they’ve elevated into an art form of the caliber not seen since "Hogan’s Heroes"- Sergeant Shultz uttered the immortal line: "I know nussing! NUSSING!"

Today, we have a group of Shultzes laying out the groundwork for a new war. Forget Afghan warlords, forget the Taliban, al-Qaida and Iraqi insurgents. Our new enemy is a huge group of radicals: the members of Amnesty International.

Yes, that’s right, those brigands who’ve been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the United Nations Human Rights Award are now in BushCo.’s cross-hairs. Wielding the truth-impaired scatter gun? Our country’s version of the Marx Brothers: Meyers, Cheney, Junior and Rummy.

The truth hit the fan last week when Amnesty’s Annual Report concluded that the U.S.’s "detainee" camp at Guantanamo (aka: Gitmo) amounted to nothing short of "the gulag of our time."

First out of the self-righteous gate was Joint Chiefs of Stuff Chairman, Gen. Richard "Rochester" Myers, who called the report "absolutely irresponsible." He was then given a doggy treat and sent back home to polish his stars.

Next up was Vice-President Dick Cheney, who opined, via the Larry King Show, "Frankly, I was offended by it. For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly don?t take them seriously."

Fortunately, not many people take Cheney seriously. His relationship with the truth resembles the lovey-dovey connection made by George and Martha in "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

During the same interview, he stated that the Iraqi insurgency was in its death throes, Osama bin Laden was "on the run" and that we’ve dealt a major blow to al-Qaida. Today, 39 people were massacred by insurgents in Iraq and three more Americans were reported dead within the last twenty-four hours. Not bad for a group in the midst of a death rattle.

Cheney went on to state that the detainees at Gitmo "have been well treated, treated humanely and decently."

And, then, he tossed out a new ball for the press and public to play with. "Occasionally, there are allegations of mistreatment," he admitted. "But if you trace those back, in nearly every case, it turns out to come from somebody who had been inside and released to their home country and now are peddling lies about how they were treated."

That screwball would be picked up by Dubya the following day, who said that these freed detainees had instructions to lie about their treatment and make up tales of abuse because they "hate America." He also said the charges made by Amnesty International were "absurd."

Amazingly enough, he pronounced the word "absurd" correctly.

Looks like a nerve has been hit, here, eh? Recalling the old adage, "where there’s smoke, there’s fire"? In this case, there may not be a fire but the political equivalent of a supernova.

Members of the Bush brigade realize that, eventually, the whole set of FuManchu interrogation tactics, sanctioned by Rumsfeld and his minions, will blow up in their faces. They know it. The world (outside of America) knows it.

The glitch in the Gitmo system is that the U.S. doesn’t consider any of the detainees prisoners of war, which means they’re not protected by the rules of the Geneva Convention (banning POWs from indefinite imprisonment and brutal interrogations, etc.). Because the detainees do not belong to a conventional army or serve a recognized government, they’re classified as "enemy combatants," a term pulled out of some bureaucrat’s ass one day which translates, in interrogation terms, to "on your mark, get set, Gitmo!"

Amnesty International, as well as other human rights groups, have been blocked access to current detainees in Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, etc.

So, AI, had to do their sleuthing while being stone-walled. Its report is based on, not only interviews with ex-prisoners and their families, but on sources like the Pentagon’s own Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations and court-martial testimony.

What our Washington zanies, whilst attacking AI in full blow-hard fashion, are hiding is that even their OWN investigators are finding less than Geneva-like rules and regulations in place.

For instance, over the past three years, 234 detainees have been freed from Gitmo, but 67 were released on the condition that they be held by their home governments, including Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where torture is permitted.

According to "Time" magazine, one investigation, soon to be released by Air Force Lieutenant General Randall Schmidt, was spurred by eyewitness accounts from FBI agents at Gitmo, from mid-2002 to mid-2004.

Among the reports? FBI agents saw detainees shackled in fetal position for 24 hours without food or water. One prisoner had his head duct-taped. Another prisoner, after being chained all night in a dark room, tore his hair out. Oops.

The U.S. has reluctantly admitted that 30 prisoners have died in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2002 to November 2004 but no deaths have been reported at Gitmo, although their have been 34 suicide attempts and several hundred acts of "self-injurious manipulative behavior," whatever the hell that Orwell speak amounts to. (Me? I’m thinking attempted suicide.)

Brigadier General Jay W. Hood has found five instances of Koran abuse, although he insists that none involved the Tidy Bowl Man.

The U.S. is releasing detainee tribunal transcripts, under the Freedom of Information Act. Before releasing them, however, military officials poured through them, looking for "potentially controversial and embarrassing items," in order to give government honchos a "head’s up," according to a Pentagon memo leaked to "Time."

To quote the learned fictitious FBI agent Fox Mulder: "the truth is out there," and it’s boomeranging back towards D.C..

For instance, according to some of the government documents obtained by the ACLU, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez seems to have perjured himself. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said he "never approved" the use of intensive sleep deprivation, guard dogs and excessive noise in interrogations at Abu Ghraib.

In a memo dated September 14, 2003 and signed by Sanchez all of the above were approved, thus "significantly increasing the fear level in a detainee." Yowza!

So with the truth nipping at its heels like one of the aforementioned guard dogs, what does this Administration do? It trots out Donald Rumsfeld, a "goodness gracious" double-talker whose train of thought derailed several decades ago shortly after leaving the station.

Batting clean-up in a Department of Defense briefing, he railed against Amnesty International’s report saying, in terms of America’s military: "no force in the world has done more to liberate people that they have never met than the men and women of the United States military. Indeed, that’s why the recent allegation that the U.S. military is running a gulag at Guantanamo Bay is so reprehensible. Most would define a gulag as where the Soviet Union kept millions in forced labor concentration camps, or I suppose some might say that - where Saddam Hussein mutilated and murdered untold numbers because they held views unacceptable to his regime. To compare the United States and Guantanamo Bay to such atrocities cannot be excused."

Then, he revved up the smokescreen big time: "Unfortunately, efforts to bring the detainee issue into proper context have been somewhat rare. Two of the country’s largest newspapers, for example, have devoted more than 80 editorials, combined, since March of 2004 to Abu Ghraib and detainee issues, often repeating the same erroneous assertions and recycling the same stories. By comparison, precious little has been written about " by those editorial boards about the beheading of innocent civilians by terrorists, the thousands of bodies found in mass graves in Iraq, the allegations of rape of women and girls by U.N. workers in the Congo."

As reporters in the room felt their brain cells twist and scream, Rummy added: "Yes, there have been instances where detainees have been mistreated while in U.S. custody, sometimes grievously."

At this point, reporters’ eyeballs were zapping wildly out their heads in Roger Rabbit mode. Wotha? Ahh-ooooga!

Rummy saw his opening and went for it: "It’s also important to remember that the people being detained at Guantanamo are, with good reasons, suspected terrorists. Many, if not most, have been systematically trained to lie and to claim torture. At least a dozen of the 200 already released from GITMO have already been caught back on the battlefield, involved in efforts to kidnap and kill Americans."

Oh, yeah. He later said that treating the detainees at Gitmo and other gulags, er, prisons as POWs would have "diminished the value of the Geneva Convention."

(I’m not sure, but I think I saw several reporters’ heads explode, at that point. Too much disinformation in too little time-brain imploding. Argh!)

The highlight of this news conference came when Rummy’s sidekick, General Myers, was asked if announcing the stumblebum "Operation Lightning" pratfall 48 hours before it occurred gave insurgents a chance to flee Baghdad and, thus, represented a tactical mistake.

Intoned Myers: "Gee, I don’t know."

D’oh!

Even Rummy, the Grandmaster of Muddle, seemingly failed to gain traction in the uphill battle to dismiss Amnesty International’s report.

In a subsequent news conference in Japan, AI?s Secretary General Irene Zubaida Khan said: "The administration’s response has been that our report is absurd, that our allegations have no basis, and our answer is very simple: if that is so, open up these detention centers, allow us and others to visit them."

"Transparency is the best antidote to misinformation and incorrect facts," she explained.

And, as we all know, the Bush Administration is really into being transparent - the same way a brick wall is.

Khan continued, explaining the "gulag" label: "What we wanted to do was to send a strong message that - this sort of network of detention centers that has been created as part of this war on terrorism is actually undermining human rights in a dramatic way which can only evoke some of the worst features of human rights scandals of the past.

"I don’t think people have got(ten) off the hook yet."

So, with the facts regarding the U.S.’s illegal treatment of detainees seeping up to the surface and swirling, how did President George W. Bush, leader of the Free World, respond to this potential scandal?

By going out on the road to stump for his Anti-Social Security bomb. In Kentucky, he stated: "I’m spending a lot of time convincing seniors nothing changes, and convincing folks there’s a problem.

"Because once the people realize the problem, then the next question they ask to their elected representative is, "We’ve got a problem...so what are you going to do about it?"

You’ve convinced me, Dubya. Nothing’s changing. There’s a problem. Hey, elected representatives, what are you going to do about it?

Can we all say: "Impeachment?"

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