# Hot Blava

The national debate will always seep over into local politics and thus, events on the national stage will find their way into Hot Blava. We hope that Hot Blava will be an interesting mixture of national issues and issues that affect Utah, and particularly Utah County where we live. Mostly, it is great to write about issues you're thinking about as it solidifies your thinking... or exposes your own irrationality. You can decide which is which.

## Thursday, June 16, 2005

### A few bad apples...

Amnesty Irrational by Ned Rice

> Amnesty International is at it again...I refer here to their recent pronouncement that the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons have become "the gulag of our time," which is the sort of hyperbole that only the historically illiterate are capable of.

There has been a lot in the news lately about the abuse at the United States prison at Guantanamo, Cuba. There has also been a lot of hype about how horrible it is, how this proves that we are as bad as the ones we are fighting (some of whom happily blow themselves and senior citizens or police officers or army recuits up). Without getting too wrapped up in accusations that I find absurd to the point of ridiculousness, Ned Rice in this article makes a good point:

> They would have you believe that it was morally wrong-impeachable, even — to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq and perhaps trigger the democratization of an entire subcontinent because some terrorist prisoners may have been improperly (and unjustly — don't get me wrong) treated during the chaos of a shooting war. Which is a bit like saying the United States was on the wrong side of World War II simply because Allied soldiers sometimes roughed up German POWs during questioning, or shot Japanese troops deep behind enemy lines because they had no means of securely detaining them (both of which happened). As anyone familiar with history and warfare knows, Amnesty International's characterization of the U.S. prisons as being a "the gulag of our time" are more than just obscene. They are, as President Bush recently noted, absurd.

Amen.

#### 1 Comments:

At 5:54 PM, June 17, 2005, Bradley said...

  I heard this week in an interview on NPR that the prisoners at Gitmo eat more expensive meals than our own soldiers because of their dietery restrictions. How many many nations throughout history have been so generous with people they believe to be so evil? I mean, these aren't just people we think are "naughty". We think they devoted their lives to trying to destroy us and our nation.

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