Tuesday, May 18, 2004

The pot accuses the kettle

The U.S. State Department released its human rights report. What a joke.

For example, the report summarized Saudi Arabia's "poor" human rights record with these words: "Security forces continued to torture and abuse detainees and prisoners, arbitrarily arrest and detain persons and detain them incommunicado."

...The report also criticizes many countries for restricting freedom of the press at a time the Coalition Provisional Authority has taken to task such Arabic-language media outlets as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya for what it said were inflammatory, misleading reports against the U.S. military.
  CNN article

Well, not to mention the fact that we've shot and harrassed reporters in Iraq, refused U.S. entry to reporters from other countries and generally have had a WH stenographic pool in place of reporters for the entire course of the BushCo misadministration, which hopefully is at last turning to proper journalism, but don't get your hopes up.

Lorne Craner, US assistant secretary of state responsible for promoting human rights and democracy admitted that we've screwed up in Iraq beyond just the prison torture, and including the attempt to force a different type of government on them. "We can't implant democracy everywhere," is the quote.  source

"But hey, do what you want....you will anyway," he might as well have said.