Criminal Complaints

National Review ^ | 1/14/2005 | Denis Boyles

[dervish]

Denis Boyles is a must read to follow the ongoing hypocrisy of our "allies" in Europe. He is also wicked funny.

[dervish]

Criminal Complaints

I noticed that the sun rose again this morning, which means that New York-based Human Rights Watch, where people like Bianca Jagger and George Soros rub elbows and pass judgment on George W. Bush and other lesser souls, is once again denouncing the U.S. Reports the BBC, HRW has found the U.S. guilty of a "betrayal of human rights principles in the name of combating terrorism."

HRW says the US can no longer claim the moral high ground and lead by example.

It cites coercive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib jail as particularly damaging.

The group, the largest US-based rights organisation, says the actions of the US in such detention centres have undermined Washington's credibility as a proponent of human rights and a leader of the war against terror.
"Its embrace of coercive interrogation [is] part of a broader betrayal of human rights principles in the name of combating terrorism," HRW says.

Of course, these complaints have been made many times before: For HRW, a morning without an anti-American pronouncement is like a day without whine. But they're being made again now because Abu Ghraib is in the news and Human Rights Watch wants to raise money. (Of course, the Abu Ghraib trials are big news not only in the U.S. but also throughout Europe, and especially in France — here's a chunk of Le Monde coverage.)

Is there any substance to HRW's complaints? Well, yes — you should not make terrorists stay up late listening to Ratt and you should not make Iraqi convicts get naked and then laugh at them. If you're an American soldier doing these kinds of things, you'll be punished, even as others also try to punish your fellow soldiers and your country.
But if HRW was sincerely interested in any "betrayal of human rights principles" it wouldn't be doing its gratuitous Yank-bash-for-cash thing for the millionth time. It would be over in Turtle Bay whipping Kofi Annan and the U.N., because wherever there are blue helmets, there's hell to pay. No place is this more true than in the U.N.'s biggest "humanitarian" mission, MUNOC, the fiasco in eastern Congo, where, as yet another BBC report notes, "UN peacekeepers working in DR Congo sexually abused girls as young as 13." Regular readers of this space will know the Bunia story by now: Crazed militias burn villages. U.N. sets up refugee camps. Militiamen rape girls in the camps while U.N. peacekeepers doze. U.N. peacekeepers do the same thing, but leave a tip. The U.N. investigates, wrings hands, issues statements expressing outrage. A year passes. Nothing changes.

As I said, this story has been covered here before, but every time I write about it, I get a pile of e-mails from people who think I'm making it up or something. Maybe I'm fixed on this because I have three young daughters whom I would never trust to the care of the U.N., and especially not to the supervision of Jean-Marie Guéhenno of France who was appointed by Kofi Annan as under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations and charged with running MUNOC. M. Guéhenno is very French in his sorrow, as the BBC suggests: "The rules of the UN are crystal clear," he told a reporter. "Any sex with under-18 years is against the UN rule and whenever we find that, this is just something that needs to be punished."

(snip)


http://www.nationalreview.com/europress/boyles200501141026.asp

[G.Mason]

"HRW says the US can no longer claim the moral high ground and lead by example."

" It cites coercive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib jail as particularly damaging."

Those "prisoners" were not in any military uniform.

They are not covered by the Geneva Convention.

They should have been shot.

Any combatant not in uniforn should be executed on the spot.

End of story.