We've heard much nonsense about the Gitmo Gulag from Amnesty International and others eager to tar the Bush administration with anything which they can transform into a scandal. Babalu Blog has a piece in which he describes what's going on as regular practice in those prisons on the Cuban island controlled by the Left-wing icon Fidel Castro. It should be read by anyone who thinks what Americans have done to suspected terrorists on Gitmo is unconscionable.
This is not to say that because conditions are worse elsewhere whatever offenses Americans commit are thereby excused. It is to say, though, that our prisoners are treated with incredible mildness compared to what prisoners in the real Gulag of the Soviet Union experienced up until the 1980s and what Castro is doing to people even today. It is to say, too, that many of those who are so vocal in their criticism of the United States' relatively benign treatment of their detainees are people who for decades have been tolerant of, sympathetic toward, or even adulatory of both the Soviets and Castro.
The cries of outrage we hear over Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, except those of a very small minority of Christian pacifists, are not really about abuse of prisoners. That is only the pretext. Alleged abuses are merely an opportunity which his opponents have seized upon to discredit George Bush. If these people really cared about horrific treatment of prisoners they would have been screaming for Castro's resignation for the last forty years, but so far from raising their voices against this tyrant's cruelties, they've spent their energies denying them instead and apologizing for the man himself. Their indignation and demands should not be granted any credibility now.