Red Cross Rationalizing

Gitmo

By Bear
A recent leak, followed by an official statement from the ICRC, claimed that prisoners held at Gitmo are in conditions "tantamount to torture."

From the ICRC website:
The ICRC believes that the uncertainty about their fate has been a contributing factor to the mental and emotional health problems among the detainees at Guantanamo Bay observed by its delegates and reported by other sources.

Calling these conditions torture does two things:
It feeds the anti-american propaganda machines such as Al-Jazeera and Arab dictatorships. Just like the Abu Graib stories, this release will enrage the "Arab street" and give credibility to their hatred.
It cheapens the real meaning of the word torture. The fact that this story trumps the actual torture chambers found in Fallujah shows the extent to which this has happened.

Scrappleface has an article that perfectly illustrates the difference between the conditions at Gitmo and real war crimes.
"We've found numerous incidents of Al Qaeda captives who were released," said an unnamed Red Cross source in the Times report. "And for that we applaud Al Qaeda. However, in a footnote to the report, we mention that a disturbing number of these detainees are released without their heads, which we believe may be a violation of the Geneva conventions." The source emphasized that "both sides in the war on terror have transgressed." "Whether it's the apparent videotaped beheading of an innocent civilian contractor, or psychological manipulation of an enemy combattant who may have knowledge of planned attacks on the U.S. citizens--it's all reprehensible," she said. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "Sure, we play head games with terrorists to get them to divulge information that will save lives. We can do that at Guantanamo because our detainees have heads. A recent internal study shows that the ratio of detainees to detainee-heads at Gitmo is one-to-one."