Niklas' blog

I’m basically regurgitating the following, but I’m really, really amazed. This is a sure-fire sign that the US government are really just trying to hold on to whatever straws they can, to have their anti-Genéve Convention torture-base going.

So what has happened?

[Three] men were found unresponsive and not breathing by guards on Saturday morning, said officials.

They were in separate cells in Camp One, the highest security section of the prison.

They hanged themselves with clothing and bed sheets, camp commander Rear Adm Harry Harris said.

That’s horrid. So what does Mr. Harris have to say about it further?

“They are smart. They are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard taking your own life as a way of waging asymmetrical warfare. Stop. What is “assymetrical warfare”? Is that like Bush supporting Zarqawi?

According to this (still disputable) article at answers.com, it is “the potential for an optimal interaction between the respective strengths and weaknessess of two belligerents.”

In my world, it breaks down to this: if you are utterly insane, you are Harry Harris, and you say suicide is an act of assymetrical warfare. Besides, that’s taken from this article courtesy of the BBC.

You think the buck stops there? Shove the buck. Check this, from this BBC-article:

Colleen Graffy [Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy] told the BBC the deaths were part of a strategy and “a tactic to further the jihadi cause”, but taking their own lives was unnecessary.

Unless this was specifically written down in the alleged suicide-notes (that are, of course, not released by the US government), I believe Ms. Graffy is full of smeg.

How about the views of people who work with humanitarian issues?

Ken Roth, head of Human Rights Watch in New York, told the BBC the men had probably been driven by despair.

“These people are despairing because they are being held lawlessly,” he said.

“There’s no end in sight. They’re not being brought before any independent judges. They’re not being charged and convicted for any crime.”

That view was supported by British Muslim Moazzam Begg who spent three years in Guantanamo. He said of the camp’s inmates: “They’re in a worse situation than convicted criminals and it’s an act of desperation.”

White House spokesperson Tony Snow says “it was important to treat the bodies humanely and with cultural sensitivity”. I’m still waiting for that to happen; I am also waiting for Bush to be impeached, for Guántanamo Bay to be closed, for everybody involved in it to be taken to trial before a non-American court and the prisoners to be released if they are kept without reason.

Don’t let the forces of evil get away with this.