6-01-05, 2:30 pm

In a desperate effort to stop a plummeting approval rating, President Bush yesterday dismissed an Amnesty International human rights report that criticized the administration’s treatment of US-held prisoners of war.

In the foreword to the report written by the Secretary-General of AI, Irene Khan described the US detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba as 'the gulag of our times.' Khan pointed to the US administration’s role in weakening 'the absolute ban on torture' as the primary and most significant source of the year’s setbacks on human rights.

Khan denounced torture practices and policies that were revealed by the photos taken at Abu Ghraib.

Other practices initiated by the Bush administration known as 'rendering' and holding 'ghost detainees' earned Khan’s ire. Rendering is the practice of illegally handing suspects over to the intelligence services in other countries that are known to practice torture.

'Ghost detainees' are those prisoners held by US forces without acknowledging their existence. This practice is also known as 'disappearing,' a common practice under dictators like Augusto Pinochet of Chile who is suspected of disappearing thousands of Chileans after the coup that brought him to power in 1973.

Khan also urged an open and thorough investigation into torture at US-detention facilities. She decried the fact that despite the world’s outrage at mounting evidence of widespread abuse in US-prisons, 'neither the US administration nor the US Congress has called for a full and independent investigation.'

In fact, the Bush administration 'has sought to justify the use of coercive interrogation techniques.' It developed a policy that argued that it did not have to abide by the Geneva Conventions and implemented a practice of military tribunals that 'have made a mockery of justice and due process.'

In 2002, the US administration developed a policy on interrogation methods that clearly violated the terms of various international conventions against torture that absolutely and unconditionally ban torture.

This policy was rationalized in a Justice Department memo sent to now-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who, in a statement to the Senate during his confirmation hearings, said that he agreed with the arguments in that memo. The Pentagon also developed a similar rationale and even created a list of acceptable interrogation methods that fell outside the realm of international law. The memo was approved and signed by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.

As a result, military intelligence operatives, according to statements described as credible by the military court that quietly examined some suspects and witnesses at Abu Ghraib, are known to have used treatment that can only be characterized as torture and illegal by international standards.

Since the Abu Ghraib revelations, thosuands of documents from FBI, Pentagon, and other official sources have been released through Freedom of Information Act requests that show widespread abuses by military officials in US prisons in Afganistan, Iraq, and Cuba. Further, testimony given by released former suspects held in these facilities points to massive atrocities.

This evidence of widespread abuse has been collected by human rights organizations and has been mainly ignored by Bush administration officials.

Since the Abu Ghraib statements were taken only a handful of low-level military personnel have been tried for the Abu Ghraib abuses. No military intelligence officials, higher-ranking commanders or Pentagon officials have been openly investigated or prosecuted.

Despite evidence to the contrary, secret and internal military 'investigations' exonerated top officials, as expected.

Ironically, the notorious Gonzales memo cited an older AI report to bolster its argument. This was done, however, in a manner that distorts the meaning and aims of the AI reports. The authors’ of the Gonzales memo used an AI statement that criticized the global failure to prevent torture adequately as a basis for claiming that torture conventions are no longer viable.

The State Department annually releases human rights reports that rely on AI’s work for their facts and claims.

It seems that the Bush administration only likes AI when it says what the administration already agrees with. The administration isn’t concerned about the truth, or it would be leading the effort to investigate openly and thoroughly the mounting evidence eof abuse and mistreatment.

Absurd is the claim that the Bush administration leads the world in protecting human rights. Even worse, it appears that the Bush administration only respects the concept of human rights when it is politically useful for them to do so.

Absurd is the claim that anything other than administration’s flouting of international conventions and law, its war in Iraq based on manipulated and misleading information, its support for repressive regimes, and its consistent double standards on foreign policy has prompted or reinvigorated a renewed anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East and much of the rest of the world.

Bush should stop pretending widespread abuse did not happen. The aloof attitude he has adopted exacerbates global animosity.

But, I suppose, asking Bush to investigate torture is like asking oil companies write regulations on pollution. Oh wait…. He did that too, didn’t he?

Torture will be Bush’s legacy.

Khan also cited the failure of the international community to stop atrocities in the Sudan, to implement the core values enshrined in the Declaration of Human Rights, and to prevent desperate global poverty that fosters disease and hunger.



--Joel Wendland can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.