Bush says Amnesty's criticism is 'absurd'

He lashes out at report on detainee treatment
By Finlay Lewis
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

June 1, 2005

Associated Press
President Bush has pledged to hold at least one major news conference a month during his second term.
WASHINGTON

President Bush said yesterday that it is "absurd" to compare the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay to the gulags run by the former Soviet Union.

The president's brusque dismissal of last week's critical report by Amnesty International came during a Rose Garden news conference in which Bush sought to counter speculation that he is losing his political clout.

Referring to Amnesty International's comparison of Guantanamo to a Soviet concentration camp, Bush declared, "It's just an absurd allegation." He said the government has investigated every complaint of abuse stemming from the arrest of thousands of detainees captured since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. [...]

The Amnesty International report accused the U.S. government of thumbing its nose "at the rule of law and human rights" by its treatment of detainees. It spotlighted what many foreign policy experts say is a major problem in the administration's efforts to repair America's tattered image in Muslim countries.

In addition to castigating the administration for its treatment of Guantanamo Bay prisoners, the report also focused on conditions at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison and the "renditions" of suspects to countries that routinely use torture.

Referring to the report, Bush said, "It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on . . . allegations by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to . . . not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report." [...]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20050601-9999-1n1bush.html

Absurd ay? Lets find out.

Gulag

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Gulag (Russian: ГУЛАГ ^listen, an abbreviation for Главное Управление Исправительно— Трудовых Лагерей, "Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey", "The Chief Directorate [or Administration] of Corrective Labour Camps")was the branch of the Soviet internal police and security service that operated the penal system of forced labour camps and associated detention and transit camps and prisons. While these camps housed criminals of all types, the Gulag system has become primarily known as a place for political prisoners and as a mechanism for repressing political opposition to the Soviet state. Though it imprisoned millions, the name became familiar in the West only with the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1973 The Gulag Archipelago, which likened the scattered camps to a chain of islands. [...]

People in Camp X-Ray are for certain, political prisoners, arrested immorally so the bill fits in this respect.

In addition to the most common category of camps that practiced hard physical labour and prisons of various sorts, other forms also existed.

A unique form of Gulag camps called sharashka (шарашка, the goofing-off place) were in fact secret research laboratories, where the arrested and convicted scientists, some of them prominent, were anonymously developing new technologies, and also conducting basic research.
Psikhushka (психушка, the nut house), the forced medical treatment in psychiatric imprisonment was used, in lieu of camps, to isolate and break down political prisoners. This practice became much more common after the official dismantling of the Gulag system. See Vladimir Bukovsky, Pyotr Grigorenko.
Special camps or zones for children (Gulag jargon: "малолетки", maloletki, underaged), for disabled (in Spassk), and for mothers ("мамки", mamki) with babies. These categories were considered as not producing any useful outcome and often subjected to more abuse.
Camps for "wifes of traitors of Motherland" (there was a special category of repressed: "Traitor of Motherland Family Member" (ЧСИР, член семьи изменника Родины)).
Under the supervision of Lavrenty Beria who headed both NKVD and the Soviet Atom bomb program until his demise in 1953, thousands of zeks were used to mine uranium ore and prepare test facilities on Novaya Zemlya, Vaygach Island, Semipalatinsk, among other sites. Reports even state that Gulag prisoners were used in early nuclear tests (the first was conducted in Semipalatinsk in 1949) in decontaminating radioactive areas and nuclear submarines. [...]

Forced medical treatment to break down prisoners. That happens in 'Gitmo'. Check.

In the early days of Gulag the locations for the camps were chosen primarily for the ease of isolation of prisoners. Remote monasteries in particular were frequently reused as sites for new camps. The site on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea is one of the earliest and also most noteworthy, taking root soon after the Revolution in 1918. The colloquial name for the islands, "Solovki", entered the vernacular as a synonym for the labour camp in general. It was being presented to the world as an example of the new Soviet way of "re-education of class enemies" and reintegrating them through labour into the Soviet society. Initially the inmates, the significant part being Russian intelligentsia, enjoyed relative freedom (within the natural confinement of the islands). Local newspapers and magazines were edited and even some scientific research was carried out (e.g., a local botanical garden was maintained, unfortunately lost completely). Eventually it turned into an ordinary Gulag camp; in fact some historians maintain that Solovki was a pilot camp of this type. See Solovki for more detail. [...]

Camp X-Ray is on an island. It is remote from the continental usa. Just like the original Gulags.

Not all camps were fortified; in fact some in Siberia were marked only by posts. Escape was deterred by the harsh elements, as well as tracking dogs that were assigned to each camp. While during the 1920s and 1930s native tribes often aided escapees, many of the tribes were also victimized by escaped thieves. Tantalized by large rewards as well, they began aiding authorities in the capture of Gulag inmates. Camp guards were also given stern incentive to keep their inmates in line at all costs; if a prisoner escaped under a guard's watch, the guard would often be stripped of his uniform and become a Gulag inmate himself.

In some cases, teams of inmates were dropped to a new territory with a limited supply of resources and left to initiate a new camp or die. Sometimes it took a few attempts before the next wave of colonists could survive the elements. [...]

I put that last part in for the 'wow' factor.

It seems that there are more similarities than differences between the Camp X-Ray system and the Russian Gulag system. The USSR perfected its enemy removal system and put all its undesireables into it, and went to the logical conclusion of making those prisoners work. This is no doubt what the americans have on the agenda for future Camp X-Ray type installations. We know that they already have concentration camps set up inside the usa, we know that they are trying to set up an internal passport with the RealID act (no flying in the usa without showing your government ID, just like the Soviet era Russians had to put up with) - seeing as they are not afraid to use all the terrible methods of the worst countries in history, we can expect them to rollout the entire feature set of the Gulag system. They have so far not rejected any of the worst elements of those systems, and have even gone so far as to hire one of the managers that used to run 'security' in East Germany.

No. In this case, Amnesty is 100% correct to use the word 'Gulag' to describe Camp X-Ray.

Gulag

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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