After being repudiated by pillars of the GOP legal establishment over a video that calls Justice Department lawyers who represented Guantanamo detainees the
“„On the evening of Jan. 26, 2006, military guards at Guantanamo Bay made an alarming discovery during a routine cell check. Lying on the bed of a Saudi detainee was an 18-page color brochure. The cover consisted of the now famous photograph of newly-arrived detainees dressed in orange jumpsuits—masked, bound and kneeling on the ground at Camp X-Ray—just four months after 9/11. Written entirely in Arabic, it also included pictures of what appeared to be detainee operations in Iraq. Major General Jay W. Hood, then the commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, concurred with the guards that this represented a serious breach of security.
“„Maj. Gen. Hood asked his Islamic cultural adviser to translate. The cover read: “Cruel. Inhuman. Degrades Us All: Stop Torture and Ill-Treatment in the ‘War on Terror.’” It was published by Amnesty International in the United Kingdom and portrayed America and its allies as waging a campaign of torture against Muslims around the globe.
“„Whipping up public fears in the interests of short-term political gains is a dangerous business. If governments abandon the rule of law and use methods of terror such as torture or ill-treatment, then won’t groups fighting governments feel justified using methods of terror themselves? If whole communities are antagonized and alienated by security forces using terror, aren’t those communities more likely to respond by supporting the use of violence? Millions of people around the world believe that the “war on terror” is a war on Muslims, despite repeated denials by the US administration. These denials are undermined whenever it emerges that Muslim prisoners have been degraded and humiliated. In communities around the world, news of such abuses politicizes the uncommitted and reinforces hostility to those leading the “war on terror”.