Wednesday, June 01, 2005

How to destroy the credibility of something entirely credible, part1

So Amnetsy International recently came out with a 200+ page report detailing the abuses of prisoners in American detention camps. In it, Amnesty referred to the prison camps (especially Gauntanamo Bay) as the new-century "gulags," comparing them to the prisons where political dissidents in the Soviet Union where allegedly disappeared to. The point is, the allegation was always that the Soviets used the Gulag to imprison those who they disliked, for as long as they wanted and without any charges. George Bush has taken great offense to this. As he is quick to point out, our prisons hwere we send people that we dislike for as long as we want without charging them with anything are to prevent terrorism, thus making them ok. So he came out and call the Amnesty allegations "absurd."

Here again, I will predict the future.

You see, when Bush was calling the thrice-checked report absurd, he focused on the fact that Guantanamo was called a gulag, not so much on the fact that we have both video and pictorial evidence of prisoners being beaten to death. What is going to happen now is yet another show of republican brilliance. Bush and the entire wingnut media will focus entirely on the word "gualg" instead of the quite-correct charges of abuse. Then we will have big debates in the media as Bill O' Reilly yells at his guest for agreeing with the use of the term gulag. In the end, Amnesty will finally back down and retract the word gulag, and Bush will triumphantly come out and say "See! Our rape and tortoure chambers are not gulags!" and everyone will forget the fact that the 200+ page report was entirely true.

Gosh, it's kind of depressing, isn't it?

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