"Atrocities in Guantanamo and other Fruit Loops tales" (Margaret Wente, The Globe and Mail, 2002/01/22) "I had a nightmare that I was flying on an airplane with both a terrorist and Liberal MP John Godfrey. The terrorist tried to ignite the fuse in his shoe bomb and blow the plane to smithereens. As the other passengers jumped all over him and strapped him down with belts and ties, Mr. Godfrey leaped to his feet and started shouting, "Remember the Geneva Convention!" ... There are a lot of people who are out to catch the Americans committing war crimes. They keep at it in the teeth of all the evidence. "Torture!" screamed the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, over a picture of some Taliban fighters in shackles. ... So far, there's not a shred of evidence that the Americans have mistreated anyone, unless you call forced shaving mistreatment."
"The West's security rests safely in American hands" (Bruce Anderson, Independent, 2002/01/21) "Yet some British newspapers, which normally know better, have been using the word "torture'' to describe the Americans' treatment of these Afghan irreconcilables. In order to remind themselves as to the meaning of the word torture, the editorial staffs ought to examine the pictures taken in the dungeons where the Taliban used to deal with its prisoners. Whips, bludgeons, flesh-tearing pincers; that was torture, and it was not administered during the brisk exigencies of a disciplined air flight. It was administered over months, and it caused hideous suffering. ... The treatment of the prisoners on Guantanamo is of a piece with the rest of the Bush administration's behaviour since 11 September. It is based on tough-minded, unillusioned realism."
"Captive Britons have 'no complaints'" (BBC News, 2002/01/21) One would think that the Guantanamo Bay prisoners themselves would complain if they were "brutalised, tortured and humiliated" as The Mirror formulated it yesterday: "The three British al-Qaeda suspects being held at Camp X-Ray in Cuba have "no complaints" about their treatment, according to British officials who have seen them. The three are in "good physical health" and are being treated well, they reported. ... The three British nationals in the camp were "able to speak freely and without inhibition," he added. 'There is no sign of any mistreatment.'"
WHITE: But Alif Khan was transported from Afghanistan to Guantanamo. This is his testimony. KHAN: They put cuffs and tape on my hands, taped my eyes and taped my ears. They gagged me. They put chains on my legs and chains around my belly. They injected me. I was unconscious. I don’t know how they transported me. When I arrived in Cuba and they took me off the plane they gave another injection and I came back to consciousness. I did not know how long the plane was flying for. It might have been one day or two days. They put me onto a bed on wheels. I could sense what was going on. They tied me up. They took me off the plane into a vehicle. We go to a big prison and there were cages there. They built it like a zoo.
"X-Ray, From Close Up - The only thing tortured is the anti-American arguments" (Toby Harnden, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/01/30) "The sad thing is that the British media don't care what's really happening. On the left, the story is a way to attack Donald Rumsfeld, who is the new European bogeyman now that it is no longer tenable to portray President Bush as an amiable doofus. ... The central rationale for Camp X-Ray is that proper interrogations need to be carried out and future al Qaeda attacks prevented. Guarding the inmates is dangerous but vital work. My own carping countrymen, who may well be saved from an atrocity in Britain as a result, stand to be among the principal beneficiaries of the exercise. But my advice to Americans would be to expect precious little thanks for it."
"Aftermath of war" (Alistair Cooke, BBC News, 2002/02/04) "And as for the gusher of pious rage that sprang up from the dumb release of that wretched photograph of detainees shackled for a hazardous moment or two, I can only offer the first-hand testimony of a serious and respected British correspondent who's just been done there. He says, frankly, that what he saw for years in the prisons of Northern Ireland made Guantanamo look like a Holiday Inn. He found the men well-fed, with hot Muslim meals apart from various snacks and candy bars. They enjoy hot showers, they write home, they have room to jump around in. Perhaps the Pentagon would make up for its dumb blunder by releasing a new, true photograph of the whole 158 detainees standing alongside the 161 surgeons, doctors, paramedics and nurses assigned to them - 161 for 158 patients, a ration of personal medical care unknown I should think to prisoners anywhere or even I daresay to the English newspaper editors who are so outraged by the barbarity of American treatment."