Military Taking a Tougher Line With Detainees

By TIM GOLDEN
Published: December 16, 2006

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Dec. 10 — As the first detainees began moving last week into Guantánamo’s modern, new detention facility, Camp 6, the military guard commander stood beneath the high, concrete walls of the compound, looking out on a fenced-in athletic yard.

The yard, where the detainees were to have played soccer and other sports, had been part of a plan to ease the conditions under which more than 400 men are imprisoned here, nearly all of them without having been charged. But that plan has changed.

“At this point, I just don’t see using that,” the guard commander, Col. Wade F. Dennis, said.

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Gus: Gunatanamo prison is an ugly disgrace in the civilised world. It is way overdue that this Sadism Inc. institution be shut down and the prisoners be dispersed to their respective countries, Hicks included.

Hicks denied mental health assessment

An Australian forensic psychiatrist has been refused access to Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks to assess his mental health.

Professor Paul Mullen from the Victorian Institute for Forensic Mental Health visited Mr Hicks in February last year.

Last week the United States Defence Department cancelled a return visit.

Professor Mullen says there are significant questions that need to be answered about Mr Hicks's state of mind.

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Gus: And while our PM, laughing with Clive James (picture SMH 19/12/06) is full of Christmas hypocrisy, an Australian citizen is abandoned to the gallows of Guantanamo, where after five years of various tortuous tortoore (the US does not do "torture") and complete isolation, the strongest of men would have gone mad... Sadism Australia is presently run by John Howard, with his deputies No-soul Ruddock and Dancing Downer. And we let them do it... Whether Hicks is guilty of whatever or not, his treatment at the hands of the most powerful country in the world shows how uncivilised our species is. Filthy rich in dollars and hubris, we are poorer than the dead, in spirit.

Yes Gus, our political warrior princes are true sickos.

In the obscene tradition of Madelaine Albright, take a look at the bushit first lady’s contribution to society …..

‘First Lady Laura Bush, sitting down for an interview this week with MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell, flexed her muscles and blasted the media for her husband’s abysmal approval ratings on Iraq, claiming that they fail to report any “good news” out of “Baghtopia.”

“For example,” said Mrs. Bush, “there’s a new school being built every 15 seconds, immediately after the old one gets blown to smithereens.”

The former elementary school teacher and librarian also emphasized that due to the high student mortality rate and flight of the middle class, Baghdad has made dramatic strides in reducing class size.

“Iraqi students also spend more hours studying than their American counterparts,” Mrs. Bush hastened to add, “since they go out and play only at risk to their very lives.”

“Indeed, the rise in literacy has been nothing short of miraculous,” the Lady in Red noted, “since 89% of the population can now spell DEATH TO AMERICA.”      

“Besides, sectarian violence builds a strong sense of religious community,” the First Lady maintained.  

Mrs. Bush also pointed out that declining oil production in Iraq helps fight global warming, and the nightly curfews keep Iraqi teenagers away from the dangers of alcohol.

Finally, the First Lady blamed the media not only for the electorate’s dismal view of Iraq, but for its overall disgust with the President:  “If they didn’t insist on covering his every public statement, maybe he wouldn’t seem like such an idiot.”’

First Lady ‘Bushwhacks’ The Fourth Estate

Yes John... As the cricket is described stroke by stroke and leg before wicket by a zillion journalists and media organisations, it seem these tooters have given up on reporting the daily grind in Iraq where on average 100 sectarian murders take place daily, where more than 1000 attacks on US troops are performed weekly, where the pylons supporting electric lines to Baghdad are blown up daily, where people have no or little sewage, where so far the US has lost around seventy men in December, where the situation is generally so dire that it could make us insensitive to it, while we report an emotional dot ball on a sunny day. Time to bring our troops back... The situation is not going to improve with them there despite our Don Quixote of an Australian government blabbing like twits about windmills as if they were the enemy.