http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1112-01.htm U.N. Report Slams Use of Torture to Beat Terror
by Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS - No country can justify torture, the humiliation of prisoners or violation of international conventions in the guise of fighting terrorism, says a U.N. report released here.
The 19-page study, which is likely to go before the current session of the U.N. General Assembly in December, does not identify the United States by name but catalogues the widely publicized torture and humiliation of prisoners and detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. troops waging the so-called ”war on terrorism.”
Bush is thumbing his nose at the international community and all those who respect human rights by nominating Gonzales. You cannot simply up and bolt from the Geneva Conventions and the Anti-Torture Convention. Gonzales is Ashcroft without the edges and the delirium and the baritone. But the policy will remain the same.
Matt Rothschild, editor of 'The Progressive' magazine
The hard line taken by the United Nations comes amidst the controversial appointment of a new U.S. attorney general, who has implicitly defended the use of torture against ''terrorists'' and ''terror suspects''.
On Wednesday, U.S. President George W Bush named White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales as attorney general to succeed John Ashcroft, who announced his resignation last week.
In a now-infamous memo to the White House in January 2002, Gonzales argued that captured members of the former ruling Taliban regime in Afghanistan were not protected under the Geneva Conventions, which stipulate the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs). The United States has signed the Geneva Conventions.
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