THE DEFENDERS OF OUR RIGHTS STRIKE AGAIN - AT 10:52 A.M. ET:  Is there no end to the laughter provided by "human rights" groups?  These self-appointed protectors of The Rights of Man always, for some strange reason, wind up supporting dictators and totalitarians, all in the name of decency.  Now they're on their high horses again, refusing to visit Guantanamo Bay until their demands are met, even though Gitmo is being run by their dream president.  Fox News, that key member of the axis of evil, reports:

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Three human rights groups said Friday they will spurn an invitation to tour the Guantanamo Bay prison next month because it doesn't include an opportunity to speak with prisoners.

We're sure the prisoners would be entirely honest, and report precisely on their experiences.

Amnesty International USA, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch all said the recent Defense Department invitation falls short of the full access to the prison at the U.S. base in Cuba that they jointly requested in a January letter to President Barack Obama.

My heart breaks - especially since all three organizations have already come to conclusions about the camp.  Nothing like neutral observers.

"What is needed and is still being denied .... is full access to the detention camps, including detainees, so that we may independently review and report on the conditions of confinement there," said Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program.

Ah, old Jamil.  Another culturally sensitive type.  In fact, Gitmo is probably one of the best run facilities of its type in the world.  The Red Cross regularly inspects.  So do members of Congress.  This is no Devil's Island. 

A fourth group invited on the tour, Human Rights First, raised similar objections but hasn't yet decided how to respond to the invitation, which came in an Oct. 8 letter from Philip E. Carter, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy.

The four regularly send observers to the proceedings of the war crimes tribunals at Guantanamo but have sought to inspect the prison camps and meet with prisoners, hoping to provide the Obama administration with an outside assessment of conditions.

We hope they let us know the next time they're given full access to a Taliban detention camp.  We hear they have hot tubs and widescreen TV.

They were seeking far more than the standard short and superficial tours offered to journalists, lawmakers and other visitors to the U.S. base in Cuba. Instead, they wanted a role more like that of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which interviews prisoners but issues confidential reports to the government.

Maybe they'll demand movie rights as well, and the right to produce a Gitmo talk show.

Gitmo got a bad name because of the inventions of the political left and its amen corner in the press, and the unimaginative information policies of the Bush administration. 

So-called "human rights groups" tend to parrot the left-wing line.  They might devote more attention to the world's dictatorships.

October 24, 2009