Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review June 7, 2002 / 27 Sivan, 5762

Diana West

Diana West
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports

Spa Gitmo

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | After six weeks at Guantanamo Bay, the man couldn't take it any more. So, he talked; he told the Times of London everything he knew about what Camp X-Ray has come to.

What he described isn't pretty -- not if you're interested in winning the war on terrorism. According to a former interpreter named William Tierney, the newspaper reports, the interrogation center at Guantanamo Bay has become "a politically correct regime that puts prisoners' complaints ahead of intelligence gathering." Washington, it seems, is less afraid of Al Qaeda and the next attack than the human-rights lobby and the next report.

So goodbye Gitmo, hello "Eggshell City" -- the ultra-sensitive, politically correct (dare we say Clinton-esque?) center for suspected terrorists, where only the guards suffer in silence, and a marine can get himself transferred for being too tough. So writes the Times in a revealing account based on the experiences of Tierney, a Gulf War veteran and Arabic speaker who spent six weeks interpreting at the camp and who, the newspaper notes, "decided to speak out after losing his job in a long-running dispute with the Pentagon."

Remember the shackles, the razor wire and the global-baloo over the inhumanity of it all?

"Suspected terrorists are allowed to treat their captors with derision," the newspaper reports, "lying, chanting the Koran in unison, mocking and threatening guards and throwing water at them. Americans are under orders not to react roughly." After these Al Qaeda training-camp alumni groused about their leg irons, stretcher-like trolleys were provided to run them back and forth between interrogations -- at least until the media speculated that prisoners were being wheeled because they had suffered beatings. Now, the detainees roll around the Cuban camp on golf carts.

Meanwhile, it turns out the prisoners just loved those wire cages -- the ones that caused such a ruckus -- because they could easily communicate with one another from them, and also keep an eye on who was being interrogated. (They have since been moved into Camp Delta, a new indoor prison.) And remember the fuss over K-rations?

"Numerous people there said they hadn't eaten this well in years," Tierney told the newspaper. As a visiting general reportedly put it to a group of these fighters suspected of holding the key to future attacks, "We don't want anyone to say we're mistreating you."

No. But "anyone" does say so just the same. Just last week, Amnesty International castigated the United States over the Guantanamo detainees, declaring in its annual report that the detainees' treatment "appears to have prompted some governments to believe that the inhumane treatment of prisoners is now acceptable." If Tierney's experience is typical, it's tough to see man's inhumanity to man on display in Eggshell City. "Prisoners were being treated so carefully, for fear of accusations of torture, that no serious pressure was being put on them to cooperate," the newspaper reports. Tierney says he doesn't believe in resorting to torture. "But we can't have it both ways," he explains. "We can't obtain the information we need without offending anyone."

But how to do it when self-defense means never being offensive?

Enjoy this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

Up

06/04/02: Can rock gods save the queen?
05/31/02: Hillary's war
05/29/02: Have you forgotten we're at war?
05/24/02: An antiquated luxury of the past
05/21/02: From terrorists to tourists
05/19/02: Hate U.
05/07/02: Western self-loathing numbs us to violence
05/03/02: Pioneering television
05/01/02: Western self-loathing numbs us to violence
04/29/02: It's the misconduct, stupid
04/24/02: Medal of diss-honor
04/17/02: Holy sanctuary or terrorist shield?
04/12/02: Egyptian clerics solicit martyrs for murder
04/09/02: Defining terrorism down
04/05/02: The Wilder life
04/02/02: Acting, equality and the Academy
03/31/02: Speeding to conclusions
03/25/02: Hard to remove blood (libel) stains
03/21/02: The tale of Nixon's tapes --- again
03/19/02: The Big Lie lives on
03/15/02: The tunnel vision of '9/11'
03/13/02: The American Auschwitz?
03/08/02: Hating the indoctrination of hate
03/05/02: Clinton and Enron: Old friends
03/01/02: Pickering doesn't polarize, the process does
02/26/02: Destiny's prefabricated child
02/22/02: The White House heist
02/20/02: Making the grade
02/11/02: Studying student visas
02/06/02: Understanding arrogance
02/04/02: The professor's war
01/29/02: Disconnected dialogue
01/23/02: Anti-Indiscrimination
01/18/02: How much is enough?
01/15/02: Oh brothers, where art thou?
01/10/02: Air on the side of caution
01/04/02: Blacks seeing red at Harvard
01/02/02: Clinton's campaign continues
12/26/01: A tale of two exhibitions
12/24/01: Taliban Idyll
12/19/01: Right is right
12/17/01: Hillary strikes out
12/13/01: Lost files, lost presidency
12/10/01: Revolutionaries never grow up
12/05/01: Immigration reform talk is not just for 'haters' anymore
12/03/01: A new symbol of justice
11/30/01: Beyond morality
11/26/01: Can't keep a good man down
11/20/01: Tough talk at the United Nations
11/19/01: Hollywood's other battle
11/14/01: What's the matter with Sara Jane?
11/09/01: A beef with bin Laden's Beef Noodles
11/07/01: Facing up to the FBI's past mistakes
11/02/01: A school that teaches patriots to shutup
10/30/01: The gap between Islam and peace
10/26/01: The ties that bind (and gag)
10/24/01: This war is more than Afghanistan
10/22/01: The fatuous fatwa
10/19/01: Left out
10/16/01: Whose definition of terrorism?
10/11/01: Post-stress disorder
10/08/01: How the West has won
10/01/01: Good, bad or ... diplomacy
09/28/01: Drawing a line in stone
09/21/01: Prejudice or prudence?
09/14/01: When our dead will finally rest in hallowed ground
09/07/01: We want our #$%^&*() audience back!
08/24/01: The transformation from Green Mountain State to Green Activist State is all but complete
08/17/01: Enlightenment at Yale
08/10/01: From oppressors to victims, a metamorphosis
08/03/01: Opening the dormitory door: College romance in the New Century
08/01/01: How-To Hackdom: The dubious art of writing books about writing books
07/20/01: Hemming about Hemmings
07/13/01: Justice has not been served in the Loiuma police brutality case
06/22/01: When PC parades are too 'mainstream'
06/22/01: When "viewpoint discrimination" in our schools was not nearly so gnarly a notion
06/15/01: Lieberman flaunts mantle of perpetual aggrievement
06/07/01: Is graciousness the culprit?
06/01/01: The bright side of the Jeffords defection
05/29/01: Campus liberals should be more careful
05/18/01: 'Honest Bill' Clinton and other Ratheresian Logic
05/11/01: Dodging balls, Bugs, and 'brilliance'
05/04/01: Foot in mouth disease and little lost Tories
04/20/01:The last classic Clinton cover-up
04/20/01: D-Day, Schmee-Day
04/06/01: For heaven's sake, a little decency!
03/30/01: The sweet sound of slamming doors and clucking feminists
03/23/01: America's magazines and the 'ick-factor'
03/09/01: Felony neglect
03/02/01: Who's sorry now?
02/23/01: 'Ecumenical niceness' and other latter-day American gifts to the world
02/16/01: Elton and Eminem: Royal dirge-icist meets violent fantasist
02/12/01: If only ...

© 2001, Diana West