Matt Frei on last night's BBC Ten O'Clock News:

"in the tropical island of Cuba lies the detention camp that is seen by many around the world as America's gulag"

Typical Matt Frei - light on facts, heavy on spin. Who are your "many around the world" Matt? Do you mean many BBC reporters around the world? Many Guardian readers around the world, many lefties around the world or what?

And what does it matter what these so-called 'many' think, when their alleged comparison is so fundamentally flawed? Unless of course you're spinning us a line rather than giving us unvarnished facts in an impartial manner?

Do you Matt, have any idea what the Gulags were like? How many millions of people were detained in the Gulags? Over how many decades? How many died in the Gulags? Answers, for you Matt, according to Wikipedia, 18-20 million detained over four decades, with 1,606,748 deaths, not including "the more than 800,000 executions of 'counterrevolutionaries' during the period of the 'Great Terror', since they were mostly conducted outside the camp system" or the 390,000 plus peasants who died in labour camps.

Compare that with Guantanamo - a few hundred detainees, duration so far three to four years, health and welfare generally taken care of, with just a few deaths, none due to execution.

Do you know what you're talking about Matt? It's time for you to read some Solzhenitsyn before you go shooting your mouth off again. Sure, Guantanamo is an aberration in need of urgent resolution, but your unsubstantiated comparison of Guantanamo with the Soviet Gulags, based on nothing more than what you think 'many people around the world' (how conveniently anonymous) allegedly think is nothing but far-fetched, over the top, biased hyperbole. Plus ca change.