Guantanamo Cushy Life Soon Over

President Barack Obama mops a nasty stain off the American image with his sweeping moves to close the Guantanamo prison, ban torture and upend Bush administration polices on terror suspects.

At the United Nations, torture investigator, Manfred Nowak, warned that inmates eventually freed from Guantanamo should be allowed to sue the United States if they were mistreated.

"Justice also means to look into the past," said Nowak, an Austrian law professor. He contends there are reliable accounts that Guantanamo detainees have been tortured.

Pierre Kraehenbuehl, head of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the organization would closely monitor the Guantanamo closure.

"Indeed the question now will be how it will be closed down and what it will mean for the detainees that are in there," he said.

Obama won kudos from the European Union, which had been highly critical of Guantanamo and the treatment of prisoners.

Amnesty International's Secretary General Irene Khan has called President Barack Obama’s executive order to close the Guantánamo detention facility "a major step forward" and a "welcome sign that the new administration is willing to right the wrongs of the past."

Yes the same Irene Khan, who branded the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay "the Gulag of our times."

So lets look at the horrors that Americans are doing at Guantanamo:

A basketball court, the camp also has a volleyball court and large recreation areas

An arrow in the recreation yard at Guantanamo Bay, points the direction to Mecca, the Islam holy city, so the detainees know which way to face. Every cell and recreation yard has similar arrows.

All detainees are given a copy of the Koran. Surgical masks are provided so they can keep the Koran off the floor and prevent guards from touching it.

Detainees prayer time

The recreation yard in Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay

Living the life at Gitmo

At Guantanamo there are about 520 prisoners, the vast majority, if not all, of whom have been rounded up in anti-terror warfare.

They were non-uniformed terrorists who are not subject to Geneva Convention rules on prisoners.

But even if they did wear uniforms, they would await release at the end of hostilities. They are,provided with medical care and a fine diet that honors their religious codes, and they are allowed to practice their religion.

Now compare the estimated 20-30 million prisoners sent to the string of camps across the Soviet Union.

They obtained no medical care, were served portions of food inadequate for human survival, and were frozen and worked to death by the millions.

Moreover, virtually every man, woman and child sent there was entirely innocent of any crime.

They where sent to places like this

Where they woke up in the mornings

And worked

Worked in freezing fog

And when the day was finished they went to sleep, where many never woke up, because they froze to death in their sleep

Not laying on their backs all day reading religous crap. And being fed with special food, so as not to offend their religious beliefs

So much for our mainstream news media,and left wing politicians, I am certain the average journalist/politician has little idea about how many people Stalin murdered in the Gulag.

So, for the record, here are some comparisons between the Gulag and Guantanamo, courtesy of David Bosco and published in The New Republic:

Individuals detained: Gulag -- 20 million. Guantanamo -- 750 total.
Number of camps: Gulag -- 476 separate camp complexes comprising thousands of individual camps.

Guantanamo -- five small camps on the U.S. military base in Cuba.

Reasons for Imprisonment: Gulag -- Hiding grain; owning too many cows; need for slave labor; being Jewish; being Finnish; being religious; being middle class; having had contact with foreigners; refusing to sleep with the head of Soviet counterintelligence; telling a joke about Stalin.

Guantanamo -- Fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan; being suspected of links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Red Cross Visits: Gulag -- none that Bosco could find. Guantanamo -- regular visits since January 2002.

Deaths as a Result of Poor Treatment: Gulag -- at least two to three million (Bosco understates).

Guantanamo -- no reports of prisoner deaths.

Now lets take a look at what the Germans did