Drudge siren up. Breitbart/AP reports:

Inmates at the US “war on terror” detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba tried to prevent US forces from helping one of four detainees who tried to commit suicide, a spokesman said.

One inmate tried to hang himself and three others took overdoses on Thursday.

All four were being treated and their lives were not in danger, said Commander Robert Durand, a spokesman for Joint Task Force (JTF) Guantanamo, which runs the controversial camp in Cuba.

Durand said in a statement that JTF guards had responded to a disturbance in a medium-security part of the camp late Thursday. “A detainee in Camp 4 was preparing to hang himself,” he said.

He added that when the guard force entered the compound to intervene, some inmates “attempted to prevent them from rescuing the detainee by using fans, light fixtures and other items as improvised weapons. Minimum force was used to quell the disturbance and prevent the suicide.”

The statement also said that, earlier in the day, “three detainees ingested prescription medications that apparently had been hoarded for this purpose.”

JTF Guantanamo did not identify the inmates nor give reasons for the suicide attempts, which came on the day the United States announced that 15 Saudi inmates had been transferred back to their country.

The timing of this incident sure is interesting…coming just as the U.N. urged the US to close Gitmo.

Political Pit Bull has video of news coverage.

Bryan Preston has more on the efforts to shut Guantanamo Bay down.

US Sen Jim DeMint’s statement on the UN report:

Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) made the following statement in response to a United Nations panel report calling for the shutdown of the terrorist detainment center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“Instead of finding new ways to criticize the United States, the United Nations should focus their attention on real human rights abuses. Iran is reportedly trying to revive Nazi tactics of discrimination against Jews and Christians and hundreds of thousands are dying because of genocide in Darfur,” said Senator DeMint. “In the meantime, America will not forget the lessons of September 11th, and will keep captured terrorists from killing more innocent Americans.”

Ditto that.

Murdoc takes on the MSM’s use of outdated photos.

***

Just a cautionary flashback from my column June 3, 2005 as the MSM gears up to go nuts over this lastest outbreak:

The mainstream media and international human rights organizations have relentlessly portrayed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as a depraved torture chamber operated by sadistic American military officials defiling Islam at every turn. It’s the “gulag of our time,” wails Amnesty International. It’s the “anti-Statue of Liberty,” bemoans New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

Have there been abuses? Yes. But here is the rest of the story — the story that the Islamists and their sympathizers don’t want you to hear.

According to recently released FBI documents, which are inaccurately heralded by civil liberties activists and military-bashers as irrefutable evidence of widespread “atrocities” at Gitmo:

A significant number of detainees’ complaints were either exaggerated or fabricated (no surprise given al Qaeda’s explicit instructions to trainees to lie). One detainee who claimed to have been “beaten, spit upon and treated worse than a dog” could not provide a single detail pertaining to mistreatment by U.S. military personnel. Another detainee claimed that guards were physically abusive, but admitted he hadn’t seen it.

Another detainee disputed one of the now-globally infamous claims that American guards had mistreated the Koran. The detainee said that riots resulted from claims that a guard dropped the Koran. In actuality, the detainee said, a detainee dropped the Koran then blamed a guard. Other detainees who complained about abuse of the Koran admitted they had never personally witnessed any such abuse, but one said he had heard that non-Muslim soldiers touched the Koran when searching it for contraband.

In one case, Gitmo interrogators apologized to a detainee for interviewing him prior to the end of Ramadan.

Several detainees indicated they had not experienced any mistreatment. Others complained about lack of privacy, lack of bed sheets, being unwillingly photographed, the guards’ use of profanity, and bad food.

If this is unacceptable, “gulag”-style “torture,” then every inmate in America is a victim of human rights violations. (Oh, never mind, there are civil liberties chicken littles who actually believe that.)

Erik Saar, who served as an army sergeant at Gitmo for six months and co-authored a negative, tell-all book about his experience titled Inside the Wire, inadvertently provides us more firsthand details showing just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam — to a fault, I believe — the officials at the detention facility have been.

Each detainee’s cell has a sink installed low to the ground, “to make it easier for the detainees to wash their feet” before Muslim prayer, Saar reports. Detainees get “two hot halal, or religiously correct, meals” a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims’ call to prayer five times a day.

Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca. Moreover, Gitmo’s library — yes, library — is stocked with Jihadi books. “I was surprised that we’d be making that concession to the religious zealotry of the terrorists,” Saar admits. “[I]t seemed to me that the camp command was helping to facilitate the terrorists’ religious devotion.” Saar notes that one FBI special agent involved in interrogations even grew a beard like the detainees “as a sort of show of respect for their faith.”

Unreality-based liberals would have us believe that America is systematically torturing innocent Muslims out of spite at Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, our own MPs have endured little-publicized abuse at the hands of manipulative, hate-mongering enemy combatants. Detainees have spit on and hurled water, urine and feces on the MPs. Causing disturbances is a source of entertainment for detainees who, as Gen. Richard Myers points out, “would turn right around and try to slit our throats, slit our children’s throats” if released.

The same unreality-based liberals whine about the Bush administration’s failure to gather intelligence and prevent terrorism. Yet, these hysterical critics have no viable alternative to detention and interrogation — and there is no doubt they would be the first to lambaste the White House and Pentagon if a released detainee went on to commit an act of mass terrorism on American soil.

Guantanamo Bay will not be the death of this country. The unseriousness and hypocrisy of the terrorist-abetting Left is a far greater threat.

***

Previous:

Gitmo and the London terror bombings
Gitmo reading list: Harry Potter tops
The gullibility of Gitmo-bashers
The politics of the Gitmo debate
The GOP’s anti-Gitmo squad
W. Stands for Waffle
Gitmo detainees desecrate Koran
The Gitmo round-up
Guantanamo Fog
Letter of the morning: What about Castro’s gulags?
In Defense of Guantanamo Bay
What is it with the Washington Post?
Gitmo’s Emily Latella
Guantanamo Bay: The rest of the story
Once more, into the toilet
Newsweek lied.* People died.
Former Gitmo prisoner: Shot dead.

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