The folks at Amnesty International are practically begging for a one-way ticket to Gitmo. After the human rights group issued a report late last month calling the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "the gulag of our times," top officials raced to condemn Amnesty.
Funny -- these officials had a different view of Amnesty when it was criticizing other countries.
Depends on whose
"This administration eagerly cites Amnesty International research when we criticize Cuba and extensively quoted our criticism of the violations in Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the war," protested William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
But Schulz isn't protesting too much. In the past week, traffic on Amnesty's Web site has gone up sixfold, donations have quintupled and new memberships have doubled (my emphasis).
I made a comment somewhere about the last bit: Amnesty International has been criticized for hyperbole in calling Gitmo a "Gulag", because it's not, of course. It's closer than we would like, but I don't think they use the inmates for slave labor. Yet. Not until they start "concentrating" on American citizens. But I digress. My point was that AI is dumb like a fox and figured out that by way overstating the problem (learned from Bush?) it would draw attention. It did. Good job.
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