From Abu Ghraib to Guantánamo

The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) informed the Pentagon of prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison five months before the horrific pictures appeared in the American media, validating the ICRC's charges.

Instead of thanking the ICRC for its prescience, the right-wing media lambasted the humanitarian organization's motives and findings in the wake of the prison scandal.

After calling the photos "no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation" Rush Limbaugh wondered whether the interrogations--in which prisoners were stripped naked and threatened with attack dogs--were supervised by the ICRC.

"The ICRC [is] not taken seriously enough because it no longer merits its reputation for neutrality," wrote Lee Casey and David Rifkin in the Washington Times, despite the Geneva-based organization's three Nobel Peace Prizes and 141-year history.

Now, a confidential report by the ICRC--first described by the New York Times last week--says the American military is submitting foreign detainees at Guantánamo Bay to psychological and physical abuses that are "tantamount to torture." Instead of refuting the significant new findings, the conservative media has intensified its smear campaign.

"The Int'l Red Cross Hates America," Limbaugh intoned on November 30. "Pentagon, analysts hit anti-US bias at Red Cross," read a recent Washington Times headline. "There is an attitude that 'al Qaeda had a moral equivalence to the United States,'" an unnamed Pentagon advisor said. The ICRC has "become an ideological organization unable to distinguish between good and bad," the Wall Street Journal editorial page wrote. "Why exactly does the the US contribute $200 million a year to this left-wing interest group?" asked the National Review's Kate O'Beirne. The New York Post accused the independent American Red Cross of guilt by name association, calling for a funding boycott of both organizations.

The ICRC is just the latest recepient of the Right's vicious animosity toward international institutions. "To call the ICRC cautious is an understatement," says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, of the group's commitment to neutrality. "For the ICRC to say 'tantamount to torture' means the charges are very serious.... But instead of dealing with the message, they [the right-wing media] attack the messenger."

As they continue hurling wild accusations and whitewashing torture, the blame-the-ICRC-first-crowd should go back and read a WSJ op-ed on Abu Ghraib penned by someone who actually knows something about torture: Senator John McCain.

"It is critical to realize that the Red Cross and the Geneva Conventions do not endanger American soldiers, they protect them," McCain wrote. "Our soldiers enter battle with the knowledge that should they be taken prisoner, there are laws intended to protect them and impartial international observers to inquire after them.... We distinguish ourselves from our enemies by our treatment of our enemies. Were we to abandon the principles of wartime conduct to which we have freely committed ourselves, we would lose the moral standing that has made America unique in the world."

The right-wing noise machine has no one to blame for America's moral free-fall but themselves.

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