We Don't Know for Sure….
Transcript of the Chris Wallace interview with William Schulz here.
SCHULZ: …So we don’t know for sure what all is happening at Guantanamo, and our whole point is that the United States ought to allow independent human rights organizations to investigate just as Sudan, Pakistan, and many other environments around the world…
WALLACE: But in fact hasn’t the International Red Cross — sir, hasn’t the International Red Cross been allowed to go to a number of these facilities?
SCHULZ: They — yes, they have. And, indeed, the CIA tried to prevent them from finding out about certain so-called ghost detainees. Furthermore, they…
WALLACE: Wait, Mr. Schulz, excuse me, you’re switching subjects. I asked you whether the ICRC has been allowed access to every place from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay. And the answer is yes, correct?
SCHULZ: Oh, Chris, I have no idea whether the Red Cross has been given access to the secret detention facilities that the U.S. is maintaining. Have they been given access to the Syrian prisons and the prisons where the United States is rendering prisoners? I have absolutely no idea and I suggest you don’t either. I think we don’t know.
Talk about secret prisons, that they don’t know if they actually exist or where they are, because they’re …. secret…
and then…
WALLACE: But Mr. Schulz, and we do have to wrap this up. I mean, you’re hardly just a bystander here. You’re the one, who in your presentations, specifically called Rumsfeld and Attorney General Gonzales high-level torture architects.
And I’d like to finish, if I might, by quoting The Washington Post, which has hardly been a supporter of President Bush’s and the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners. This is what they had to say in a recent editorial. And let’s put it up on the screen, if we may. “Turning a report on prisoner detention into another excuse for Bush-bashing or America-bashing undermines Amnesty’s legitimate criticisms of U.S. policies.”
Is it possible, sir, that by excessive rhetoric or by your political links, that you have hurt, not helped, your cause?
SCHULZ: Chris, I don’t think I’d be on this station, on this program today with you if Amnesty hadn’t said what it said and President Bush and his colleagues haven’t responded as they did. If I had come to you two weeks ago and said, “Chris, I’d like to go on Fox with you just to talk about U.S. detention policies at Guantanamo and elsewhere,” I suspect you wouldn’t have given me an invitation.
They had to say this stuff so they could get on TV.
