Question - What do most world leaders guilty of allowing torture and denying rule of law to political prisoners say when confronted with the facts of their misdoings by organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Amnesty International? Allow me to refresh your memory with some recent statements:
President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, has denounced lesbians and gays as "sexual perverts","beasts" and "worse than dogs and pigs". Rejecting calls for homosexual human rights, he has said: "we don't believe they have any rights at all".
In Turkey's case it is unlikely that the government will be able to implement the reforms as long as the government describes facts about widespread torture as "false allegations" Dr Genefke says.
Iran's judiciary has threatened Internet journalists with torture and prison if they do not renounce accusations that authorities abused members of the electronic media and dissidents who were rounded up months ago.
Justification for torture in Singapore that did occur - The defense justified their use of torture. They claimed that they were receiving pressure from the Naval H.Q. to get these cases investigated in the shortest possible time, and their objective behind using torture was to speed up their investigation of the spy cases. Therefore, the acts of the accused were within the law as they were merely punishments in the form of maltreatments and torture in order to protect the lives of the inhabitants of occupied territory and maintain complete authority.
A senior Saudi adviser has vehemently denied three British men were tortured into confessing to a car bombing campaign.
The point being, governments accused of torturing or denying prisoners due process of law almost always deny such charges or are silent concerning them. This being the case, why should we be surprised at the Bush administration's stance on Amnesty International and the International Red Cross.
Last week we had King George and the Boys of the Bush in his administration referred to Amnesty International's relating our Gitmo prison to Soviet gulags of the cold war era as "Absurd." But the Repubos in charge don't stop at denying charges such as these, they have to also berate the organization that has the nards to stand up against them as being un-American. Funny how when AI accused others of torture, American politicos jumped on the bandwagon and supported AI to the hilt. Now that the finger of truth is pointed their way, our leaders take the position of the man we deposed in Iraq and deny everything.
Amnesty International's Executive Director, William Schultz, responded immediately saying, "What is absurd is President Bush's attempt to deny the deliberate policies of his administration, which has detained individuals without charge or trial in prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Air Base and other locations. What is absurd and indeed outrageous is the administrations failure to undertake a full, independent investigation."
This week, we have the Repubo Policy Committee in a report written by Dan Fata, who directs national security studies for them, saying that the International Committee of the Red Cross's actions and statements "have run contrary to the interests of the American tax payer."
The Repubos, chaired by Senator John Kyle of Arizona - a man who has voted with the administration 100% of the time, accused the ICRC of no longer being "an impartial and trustworthy guardian." They said, "It has become another clamoring interest group like Amnesty International, a status which can only weaken the ICRC and sap it's credibility." With who I wonder? Certainly not those of us who believe what these two international watch dogs have to say concerning torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
It's getting harder and harder to look the rest of the world in the face and claim any kind of credibility for our actions. First we attack another sovereign nation without cause, even fixing intelligence reports to provide reason for the attack, and then we commit the very same atrocities that we accused them of committing.
