>I would like to suggest that Americans are no different from other
>people in this respect;
That's true, except that Americans have more influence on the American government. But we saw the same thing here over E Timor for instance. For 20 years the facts of the brutality of the Indonesian occupation of E Timor were apparent, but there was little public reaction. The Australian government continued to abet the murderers and the Australian people continued to consent to this. Then, when the murder was suddenly televised, when noses were rubbed in it, the whole mood changed dramatically.
Suddenly it was no longer even conceivable that the Australian government could continue to support the occupation, in fact the pressure to reverse policy and even intervene was irresistible.
>By the way, is it absolutely certain that Australians are not
>involved? If I remember correctly, they are part of the "coalition."
It seems unlikely Australian forces are involved in the prisons, though I wouldn't be too surprised to learn they had got up to some such business early on in the war. Australian SAS forces operated in western Iraq and they would either have had to take prisoners or execute prisoners pre-emptively. Exactly what went on there is a story that hasn't been told.
But the Australian government is up to the same sort of thing in outback detention centres and Nauru, where many people are held prisoner in ghastly conditions for the thought-crime of attempting to claim refugee status. This is a sort of mini-Guantanamo bay gulag, because the Nauru government is only a pretend government, that is entirely corrupt, bankrupt and lacking in support. The entire nation of Nauru is a prison, with the locals employed as guards by Australia. No-one can enter the prison without a visa, which of course is impossible to get unless the Australian government approves, but the Australian government is totally unaccountable for anything that goes on there (its a "sovereign" country) and it denies responsibility with a straight face.
At least the US has military justice, of some sort, at Guantanamo. The captives of the Australian government on Nauru are held by a puppet government of a force that pretends it is not even responsible for what is done. No-one here seems to care, there is no television coverage.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas