Self-proclaimed humanist Bush!!!!

[color=sky blue]From the Center For American Progress[/color]

• HUMAN RIGHTS
  Not Walking the Walk
  
  In an article published Monday in the New Yorker President Bush tells writer Ken Auletta that "no President has ever done more for human rights than I have.” But the President's comments, besides being a product of historical amnesia, are belied by his Administration's dismal record on human rights. Time and again, the President and his underlings have shown willingness to trample human rights and civil liberties in the name of fighting the “War on Terrorism.”
  
  FACILITATING ABUSE OF CAPTIVES: The Administration's attitude on human rights was perhaps best expressed by an Administration official who said of detainees:_ “We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." Uncooperative detainees were "turned over – 'rendered,' in official parlance – to foreign intelligence services whose practice of torture has been documented by the U.S. government and human rights organizations," including Jordan, Syria, Morocco and Egypt. An official who supervised the transfer of detainees to other nations said, "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job."
  
  FLOUTING HUMAN RIGHTS IN GUANTANAMO: Sunday marked the second anniversary of the U.S. detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Human Rights Watch reports that, during that time, "the Bush Administration has attempted to turn the forty-eight square miles of its naval base at Guantanamo Bay into territory beyond the reach of any law and outside the jurisdiction of any court." Further, "[i]n its treatment of the detainees at Guantanamo, it has been unwilling to fully apply international humanitarian law...[and] has flouted international human rights standards" as required by the Geneva Convention. This follows reports that some captives in Afghanistan who refused to cooperate with U.S. interrogations were sometimes "held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights."
  
  DISPENSING WITH DUE PROCESS: The President's father, George H. W. Bush, took a much different approach to captives after the first Gulf War. The first Bush Administration held 1,196 tribunals, required by the Geneva Convention, to determine the status of detainees. The tribunals founds that 886 detainees were displaced civilians that should be treated as refugees, with virtually all others afforded the protections of Prisoner of War (POW) status. The George W. Bush Administration, in contrast, has failed to hold a single tribunal to determine the status of detainees and given POW status to only one detainee - Saddam Hussein.
  
  HOSTILITY TO ASYLUM SEEKERS: The Administration has taken steps that make the United States a far less hospitable place for those seeking asylum from oppressive governments as “victims of religious, political, and other forms of persecution." Specifically, the Department of Homeland Security has subjected "asylum seekers to extended periods of detention based on their nationality – and [has deprived] these asylum seekers of the chance to have a meaningful review of the need for detention in their individual cases." According to the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights, since December 2001, the Bush Administration has gone beyond previous Administrations and engaged in the "summary return of interdicted Haitians...and application of expedited removal procedures...that result in most Haitians having to present their asylum cases without benefit of counsel."
  
  NO APOLOGIES FOR BRUTALITY: In December 2003, Department of Justice Inspector General Glenn A. Fine issued a report that revealed serious human rights abuses of individuals rounded up in the post-9/11 dragnet. Inspector General Fine found convincing evidence that "Bureau of Prisons officers slammed inmates against walls, pressed their heads against walls, bent their hands and wrists into painful positions, lifted them off the floor by the restraints used to bind them, stepped on their leg chains so as to trip them and left detainees in their cells in restraints for hours at a time." Guards also "verbally abused them and used strip searches and restraints as punishments." While a later report shows some improvement, when questioned about the situation, John Ashcroft said he had "no apologies," adding, "we must be vigilant."
  
  INTERNATIONAL BACKLASH: The Administration's poor human rights record has not gone unnoticed in the international community. In 2001, for the first time, the United States was dropped from the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Instead of taking the opportunity to reexamine our human rights record, conservatives in Congress lashed out and threatened "to halt the back payments" to the U.N. unless the United States' position was restored. Joanna Welscher of Human Rights watch said that "the United States often failed to support important human rights initiatives at the commission, or found itself voting alone, on the wrong side of important issues." Sill, Welscher did note that "punishing the United States and rewarding Sudan is clearly absurd."

This relates to the above post.

• He didn't free the slaves.
  
  He didn't rid the world of Hitler.
  
  He didn't even - like his father - preside over the destruction of the Berlin Wall.
  
  Yet George W. Bush tells New Yorker writerKen Auletta: "No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."
  
  With stunners like that, no wonder he spends so little time with journalists.
  
  The President's eyebrow-raising assertion comes during some Oval Office chitchat after Auletta - writing about the testy relations between the Bush White House and the news media - sits in on an interview with a British newspaper reporter.
  
  In the latest New Yorker, Auletta reports that Bush and his minions have little use for the Fourth Estate.
  
  Political guru Karl Rove claims that the job of journalists is "not necessarily to report the news. It's to get a headline or get a story that will make people pay attention to their magazine, newspaper or television more."
  
  And Chief of Staff Andy Card scoffs: "[The media] don't represent the public any more than other people do. In our democracy, the people who represent the public stood for election."
  
  Card argues that it's not the responsibility of top White House policymakers to provide reporters with facts.
  
  "It's not our job to be sources. The taxpayers don't pay us to leak!" Card tells Auletta. "Our job is not to make your job easy."
  
  Predictably, the reporters who cover Bush aren't happy. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank complains: "My biggest frustration is that this White House has chosen an approach ...to engage us as little as possible." And the New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller grouses: "Too often they treat us with contempt."
  
  Free the White House press corps!

[crawjo]

As a former reporter, I have to agree for the most part with the administration's assessment of the fourth estate. It is all about grabbing people's attention, and little else.

As for the human rights remark, maybe Bush takes justifiable pride in freeing some 23 million people from a tyrant. And, unlike, FDR, he did it without putting an entire race of Americans in internment camps.

[crawjo]

And come to think of it, how did Lincoln free the slaves? How did FDR defeat Hitler? Was it through negotiations?

Nope. It was through bloody, brutal warfare. But I thought, as those demonstrators, said, "War is not the answer?"

?

Originally posted by crawjo
As for the human rights remark, maybe Bush takes justifiable pride in freeing some 23 million people from a tyrant. And, unlike, FDR, he did it without putting an entire race of Americans in internment camps.

That may well be the lamest excuse you have yet come up with here, IMO. Take a good look at Iraq today--it will provide you with a well-needed reality check. Yes, the Japanese internment camps were a disgrace we will never live down, but Bush and his Fascist for Christ, Ashcroft are robbing us of many freedoms, and doing so without really having obtained freedom for the Iraqis. There is good reason for the condemnation Bush and his gang are currently facing from the free world.

[crawjo]

Okay Chris, here's a quiz for you, who recently said the following?

"For Iraqis, there was no pro-war or anti-war movement last spring when the United States invaded their country. That, in their view, was a predominantly Western debate. They're used to war; they're used to gunshots. What is new is this tiny seed and taste of freedom. It is a compelling experience to have been in Baghdad just one year ago, where not a single Iraqi expressed to me opinions outside Baathist party lines, and just one year later, when so many express their opinions and so many opinions compete for attention. Where the debate is similar to that in the United States is over the way in which the business of war will administer the opportunity for peace and freedom, and the reasonable expectation of Iraqi self-rule."

Okay, think about it, who said it?















The answer is that noted conservative, Sean Penn.

[crawjo]

"Robbing us of many freedoms." What freedoms would those be? The freedom not to wait in line at the airport?

Or are you referring to the "enemy combatants" debate? Well, my friend, that is a topic for the courts to decide. You see, we have this thing in our country called "checks and balances." It means that laws can't be passed without the approval of Congress, and that laws and executive orders are subject to judicial review. In the meantime, while you're waiting for that to happen, think of all the freedoms you've lost recently.....I mean, it's not like you're allowed to just come on message boards and say the government is run by fascists. Nope, that's not allowed these days....