"A safe, humane and professional detention operation"

That's how the US describes its Carribean gulag at Guantanamo Bay. The Red Cross, however, begs to differ:

Repeated abuses allegedly suffered by three British prisoners at the hands of US interrogators and guards in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba could amount to war crimes, the Red Cross said yesterday.

The organisation, which maintains a rigidly neutral stance in public, took the unusual step of voicing its concerns in uncompromising language after the former detainees, known as the Tipton Three, revealed that they had been beaten, shackled, photographed naked and in one incident questioned at gunpoint while in US custody.

Once upon a time they were the people who criticised other nations over human rights; now they've sunk to the torturer's level. It's a far bigger victory for terrorism than destroying any number of skycrapers - and the Americans have done it to themselves.