“The International Committee of the Red Cross’ officials are able to visit prisoners at Guantánamo under the kind of arrangement the committee has made with governments for decades. In exchange for exclusive access to the prison camp and meetings with detainees, the committee has agreed to keep its findings confidential. The findings are shared only with the government that is detaining people.” (NYTimes)

In other words, the inspections mean nothing.  If anything they allow the government to use inspections as an excuse against criticism.  Think about it, someone questions the treatment of prisoners (or detainees) and the government can snap back with empty promises like; “We take everything the Red Cross gives us and study it very carefully to look for ways to do our job better.” (Add, you as an American citizen won’t see what we do or what The Red Cross wants us to do, respectively.)

If that’s not enough of a cop-out for you look at how the Bush administration sees it:

“The legal team in a memorandum concluded that Mr. Bush was not bound by either the international Convention Against Torture or a federal antitorture statute because he had the authority to protect the nation from terrorism.” (NYTimes)

Of course, none of this really matters when the president’s new attorney general can find loop holes in the Geneva Convention torture statutes anyway.

“Alberto R. Gonzales commissioned a memo from the Justice Department in the summer of 2002 that asserted the president’s right to order the torture of detainees and redefined torture itself so that pain short of organ failure, death or permanent psychological damage did not qualify.” (Washington Post)

Ahh, it all comes back to this country voting on morals…

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