Written 1952, from the classic WWII POW movie
Stalag 17, :
SCHULTZ:
And gentlemen! You will not complain
to the Geneva Man. Because I have
orders from the Kommandant to report
everyone who complains.
From Congressman Ed Case, born 1952, after touring GITMO:
"GTMO is being operated well and operated in a way that is necessary for the safety and security of our country," said Case (D-Hawaii) yesterday in a conference call from Washington, D.C.
Case was part of a 16-member U.S. House delegation that toured the facility during the weekend.
He said he had observed the grounds of five different camps, witnessed interrogations behind a one-way mirror and talked to doctors at the hospital.
Interrogations were "nowhere close to abusive," Case said.
OK, so Ed was born the same year that the screenplay for Stalag 17 was written. Maybe he was too young to have seen the movie. Gags about fooling naive Red Cross inspectors were a staple in films and TV shows about POW camps while we were growing up. Ed was exactly the right age to have watched "Hogan's Heroes" while he was growing up, so he has no excuse to feign ignorance about the ease in which "inspections" of POW facilities are faked by the prison officials.
Ed invested a lot of time into developing an image as a "man of integrity," so why did he discard it so easily to become an apologist for GITMO?
Case continued:
Based on his observations, Case said Guantanamo Bay "does not match the statements by Amnesty International and of some of the attorneys for some of the detainees."
"Detainees are being treated in a humane way," he said, noting they are well fed, provided with good health care and have access to legal assistance.
Ed, of course, speaks no Arabic or Pashtun or Farsi, and never interviewed any of the prisoners without being accompanied by prison guards.
Compare Ed's "investigation of conditions" with this statement from a former GITMO interogator, talking about abuse:
...how could it [systemmatic abuse] have been kept largely under wraps for three years, especially when congressmen and senators often inspected the camp? Well, Saar said it may be in part because those inspections were rigged to fool the visiting VIPs.
"Interrogations were set up so the VIPs could come and witness an interrogation, and in fact the interrogation would be a mock interrogation, basically," says Saar.
"They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative. They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information that they reviewed on whatever date they had previously interrogated the detainee," says Saar. "And they would sit across a table and talk as though you and I are talking, and this was a fictitious world that they would create for these VIP visits, because in fact, it's not what generally took place in Guantanamo Bay."
"They staged the interrogations?" asks Pelley.
"Yes," says Saar. "They staged the interrogations."
Source: CBS News on GITMO
The International Committee of Red Cross/Red Crescent Society representatives were not allowed free access to the prisoners and therefore refused to participate in a mock inspection of the camp. By talking with attorney's for detainees, ex-detainees, former GITMO employees and cross-checking the facts, they were able to issue a report sharply critical of conditions at GITMO.
Ed Case, OTOH, was able to come to solid conclusions, because he watched an interogation through a one-way mirror! He then became an "expert witness", trotted out to the media by the Bush administration to re-assure the public that they should not be disturbed by baseless allegations of torture and abuse in America's gulag.
Once again, we are forced to chose: is Ed Case incredibly naive? Or does he cynically pretend to believe whatever best serves his political ambitions? Is there some way he could not have known that he was serving as a "useful idiot" for the Bushies in the Pentagon?
This is a pattern in Ed's Congressional career. Use his "Democrat" badge to shield the Bush administration from criticism.
MORE EXAMPLES OF ED'S "INTEGRITY" IN FUTURE POSTS!