Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Why Does Amnesty International Hate America?



George Bush finds Amnesty International's recent report absurd:

A human rights group's report about conditions at the U.S. military's prison at Guantanamo Bay is "absurd," President Bush told reporters TuesdayThe Amnesty International report, released last week, said prisoners at the U.S. Navy base had been mistreated and called for the prison to be shut down. The president, addressing a news conference at the White House, said the Amnesty document was an "absurd report." "It's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world," Bush said of the report, which compared Guantanamo to a Soviet-era gulag. He said the Amnesty allegations were based on interviews with detainees, who hated America and were trained to lie.

It sounds like someone trying to translate something political to a class of five-year olds, doesn't it? But only two years ago Donald Rumsfeld thought highly of the Amnesty International's reports on Iraq:

On March 27, 2003, Rumsfeld said:

We know that it's a repressive regime…Anyone who has read Amnesty International or any of the human rights organizations about how the regime of Saddam Hussein treats his people…

The next day, Rumsfeld even cited his "careful reading" of Amnesty:

…[I]t seems to me a careful reading of Amnesty International or the record of Saddam Hussein, having used chemical weapons on his own people as well as his neighbors, and the viciousness of that regime, which is well known and documented by human rights organizations, ought not to be surprised.

And on April 1, 2003, Rumsfeld said once again:

[I]f you read the various human rights groups and Amnesty International's description of what they know has gone on, it's not a happy picture.

It's all about expediency, of course, but it would be fun to ask the administration why Amnesty International nails it when it comes to Iraq but is totally absurd when it comes to Guantanamo Bay.

Soon Amnesty International will be called part of the international terrorist network, I suppose. Unless it digs up something useful in Iran.