Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Is GITMO any better than a North Korean trial?

The following was posted by Mitchell Bard on The Huffington Post:

"North Korea can seize two innocent journalists, put them through a bogus, private, star-chamber trial, and then sentence them to 12 years of hard labor, all without any justification. The United States I grew up in, the United States that fought wars from World War I to the Cold War defending democracy and freedom against repression, could never engage in such conduct like the North Koreans did. And yet, there it is, for all to read, that we took a man and locked him up without a trial for 7 1/2 years, torturing him while in our custody, even though two courts, one in the U.S. and one in Bosnia (one before his detention and one after), found insufficient evidence to charge him with any crime. While we clearly have a more open and democratic society than North Korea does, his experience with us was no better than what the two American journalists are now going through in North Korea. We have to recognize that Bush, Cheney and the rest of the gang did real damage to core American ideals, and that this damage is still being felt, both at home and abroad." Mitchell Bard's full story

Do you feel, like most Americans, that North Korea's treatment of two American Journalists is a crime and that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is a criminal? Is the detention in GITMO without trial of suspected terrorists less criminal? If you are not just as outraged by the abuse of GITMO detainees as you are about the detention of two American journalists then, in my opinion, you have a serious moral deficiency.

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