Friday, March 10, 2006

Oooh, NOW I'm Convinced !

Because "250 doctors from seven countries" signed a petition urging the United States government to allow Gitmo innmates to die for their cause:

More than 250 doctors from seven countries urged the U.S. government on Friday to abandon force-feeding and the use of restraints on hunger strikers at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
The doctors from Britain, the United States, Ireland, Germany, Australia, Italy and the Netherlands said prisoners at the camp in eastern Cuba have the right to refuse treatment and that physicians must respect their decision.
"We urge the U.S. government to ensure that detainees are assessed by independent physicians and that techniques such as force-feeding and restraint chairs are abandoned," the doctors said in an open letter published in The Lancet medical journal.


Amazingly, Reuters treats this suggestion with respect, as if it is something we should consider. Why? Because 250 freakin' doctors from seven countries signed a petition? Folks, I can dig up at least 250 doctors from seven different countries in my central New Jersey county alone! Should they advise on foreign policy as well?

Incidently, the Lancet Journel is the Weekly World News of medical thought. Remember, they printed one of the most offensive lies of the Iraq war, one that has been gleefully reported as fact within the media and hurled against the Bush administration from the Democratic Left:

Britain’s medical journal Lancet rushed a report to print in the final days leading up to the US election, claiming that there have been 100,000 civilian casualties in Iraq, half of them women and children. Oddly enough, this figure is almost ten times the already inflated estimates...

Al-Reuters knows propoganda when they see it; they know their source, and they are going with it. Then they toss is some America-bashing of their own, free of charge and without rebuttal:

Human rights groups, religious organizations and some governments have criticized the treatment of Guantanamo prisoners and have urged Washington to close the camp.
Only 10 of the nearly 500 terrorism suspects held at the naval base have been formally charged with a crime. Their indefinite detentions and lack of legal rights have been condemned by human rights activists.
Authorities at the camp have been accused of inserting a tube into the nose and down to the stomach of a prisoner on hunger strike and keeping him strapped in a chair for hours at a time, forcing him to defecate and urinate in his clothes.
The prisoner, Mohammed Bawazir, has been held at the base since May 2002. He claims he was tortured when he was force-fed and forced to end his 5-month hunger strike.


Well...maybe I'll toss in some balance, here:

Fearing militants or even their own governments, some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay from China, Saudi Arabia and other nations do not want to go home, according to transcripts of hearings at the U.S. prison in Cuba.
Uzbekistan, Yemen, Algeria and Syria are also among the countries to which detainees do not want to return. The inmates have told military tribunals that they or their families could be tortured or killed if they are sent back.


And from Moscow:

Two former Guantanamo prisoners, extradited to Russia in 2002, have been detained in Moscow on suspicion of preparing a series of terrorist attacks, the Vremya Novostei newspaper reported Tuesday....They are charged with preparing and carrying out a series of terrorist acts in the Central Russian Povolzhye region.
All in all, of the seven Russian Guantanamo prisoners extradited from Cuba in 2004, only two are not in custody.

And these are the people those kind, humanitarian doctors of the Lancet Medical Journel want to unleash upon the world...

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