Okay, so the United States can no longer claim to have the best public education system in the world, at least not with a straight face. As the only highly-developed nation that doesn’t make sure our citizens and children are provided with health insurance, we can’t say we have the “world’s best health care system” anymore, not really. Other nations can now boast a higher rate of advanced degrees in science. Our economy is neither the fastest-growing nor the healthiest, and our massive debt threatens its future. The War on Terror has compelled us to let other, smaller nations be slightly “freer” than us for the moment.

We’ve got some challenges, yes. But we’re not out of the running for any of the above. We can still bail ourselves out by deploying the one weapon which we are still the undisputed masters of:

Spin.

Ther most breathtaking example of the international Spin Gap has got to be the latest round of headlines concerning Amnesty International, Guantanamo Bay, and Gulaggate. To read today’s headlines, such as “Amnesty USA backs off Gitmo as ‘gulag’,” you’d think that this whole flap concerns a bunch of hysterical, exaggerating America-haters and their overreaching desire to Bring Us Down. Amnesty International is trying to change this perception, but they’re too late, outmaneuvered, and outclassed, the poor saps. The details of the story’s Death By Spin is a stunning example of our inarguable mastery of the discipline.

First, bear in mind that the summary on the US from the Amnesty International annual report does not contain the word “gulag.” Nor does an exhaustive specific report released a couple of weeks ago. The phrase “gulag of our times” comes from a speech made two weeks ago that refers to the reports.

That’s where our stunning advantage in spin technology began to assert itself. By the middle of last week, there wasn’t a single member of the Bush administration who wasn’t pushing his or her way towards a microphone in order to denounce Amnesty International for their ridiculous, unfounded, absurd, unfair “gulag” statement. They likened Gitmo to a gulag! Do they even know what went on at those gulags? What kind of gulag gulag says that we gulag our gulag with the gulag gulag still at gulag? Our technicians stuffed the foreign and domestic press’ ears so full of gulag that it became the story, the lead that consigned the actual report to the background.

And that was only the bait, Phase One. The poor Amnesty International idiots didn’t know what hit ‘em.

Even though the Pentagon chose this inoppportune moment to admit that yes, there was some Koran desecration going on at Gitmo, even though Amnesty’s report contained a thousand damning details and reasonable objections, our brave and brilliant spinologists kept the “gulag” thing on the front burner. And Amnesty took the bait:

“Well, maybe not a gulag…”

A-ha! So those Amnesty hippies admit that their criticism was over-the-top! And now they’re backing off! They said “gulag” and they now admit that it isn’t a gulag! So which is it, Amnesty? “Gulag” or “not gulag?” How can we believe anything you say now!?

Heh. Idiots. You’d think that they’d have learned something from Newsweek, so soon after “The Case of The Koran in the Toilet that Might Not Have Been Actually Flushed,” which became about poor reporting and liberal bias rather than the actual desecration that we now know took place. You’d think they’d wise up and upgrade their 80’s era PR technologies. You’d think.

You’d be wrong. Amnesty International is in the same boat with al Qaeda, Iraq, the UN, France, Iran, Germany, North Korea, Russia, and the Democrats. They’re all the same. Despite the fact that Amnesty is an organization explicitly devoted to absolutely nothing but promoting and protecting freedom, they hate us for our freedom. And they’ll say and do anything to bring us down.

Suckers.