Amnesty Wins. Well, okay, it's complicated...

Amnesty International has long engaged in the grunt work of shining bright lights on human rights violators. A week after the Bush administration went ape shit over Amnesty's 2005 Annual Report, the Administration appears to be seriously considering closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, which Amnesty called "the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detenion in violation of international law."

Victory, right? Not so fast. This Administration is the walking embodiment of the concept of "bad faith". Amnesty shined a bright light, and the Administration is almost certainly looking for new dark corners to stick people in.

Rumsfeld says that prisoners will be repatriated to their home countries if the prison is closed. I would add that they are likely to be tortured in their home countries. Look for this fun talking point from the right: "We only tortured some of them, and very few were actually murdered."

Also, there is no reason to think that the secret detention facilities that our government operates across the globe will be closed. Independent bodies like the International Committee of the Red Cross are denied access to these facilities, so there is no verifiable way to know what condition prisoners are held in within them. All we have is the word of George Bush's government.

Go give Amnesty or the ICRC a few bucks so that someone will be watching.