State Department highlights own Human RIghts failings

[ChairmanAgnostic]

"The US State Department issued its annual report detailing human rights shortcomings around the world yesterday - and for the first time referred to its own failings in that field.

As usual, the study focuses on foreign countries, highlighting a familiar list of transgressors, headed by North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, and Burma as well as China, where harassment and harsh treatment of people seen as threats to the government increased in 2005.

But after massive international criticism of the prison at Guantanamo Bay and other secret CIA-run detention centres, and the US practice of "extraordinary rendition" of terror suspects, the State Department has had little choice but to turn the spotlight - however briefly - closer to home."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article350100.ece


I wonder how long before we start blaming Cuba for the torture at Gitmo.

China's reaction to this "brief" review of our own torture policies, has been very powerful. Its sarcasm about the"self-appointed guardian of human rights" was barely hidden when it discussed Abu Grhaib, renditions and Gitmo.

Face it. We have lost all credibility across the globe.

[rman]

1. Decades of propping up dictators in support of US interests

US human rights policy has always been and still is a farce.