Amnesty International? Try Travesty International Instead

Here's a newsflash. Amnesty International, that lib/dem/soc/commie group of pantywaists who complain about torture but do nothing to stop it, have declared that the U.S. has made the world more dangerous because of our war against terrorism.

Their grasp of logic even weaker than the Venus de Milo's grasp of a basketball, ain't it?

Amnesty International's latest drift into the realm of fantasy is entombed in their latest release, (http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/index-eng) which states that, shock of shocks, it's All America's Fault. Our war against terrorism, our war against tyranny and despotism, our fight to liberate the oppressed is actually a BAD thing, according to these milksops. Sure, America helped liberate 25 million Iraqis and end the reign of terror of Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party. But what about those poor U.S. protesters who got throw into jail for doing nothing more than expressing their constitutionally guaranteed freedom by blocking traffic and chucking rocks at passing motorists? Have we no sympathy for THEM?

Apparently, their main point is that since the U.S./Coalition war on terrorism is taking up so much space in the newspapers, AI's concerns in Côte d'Ivoire, Colombia, Burundi, Chechnya, and Nepal are getting short shrift. Isn't that the fault of the news media, AI? Enlighten me how this is Dubya's fault.

Oh, yeah, I forgot. Everything is Dubya's fault. Global warming, AIDS, SARS, hemorrhoids, ingrown toenails, terrorism, ending terrorism, high cholesterol, mobile phones going off in theatres--it's all Dubya's responsibility, right?

This from the same group of people who actually BELIEVE that Al Gore helped invent the Internet...

I'm sure the folks at AI believe they're making a difference by just informing the world that bad things are happening. And, yes, telling people about that is an important thing. But do you idiots truly believe that a letter writing campaign will stop terror? Do you honestly believe that protest marches in Seattle will stop the slaughter and cannibalism of pygmy tribes by both government and rebel forces in the Congo? Are you really that naïve?

When Amnesty International starts sending in strike teams to liberate prisons filled with little kids who are jailed because the government doesn't like their parents, THEN I'll believe they've earned the right to complain about America.

And just what do they have to complain about in America to start with? Does America gas whole cities and kill all of the inhabitants because they didn't vote the right way? How many opposition leaders in Congress have been jailed and tortured since Dubya was elected (I didn't say how many SHOULD be, I said how many HAVE)? How many political liabilities in any given presidency have been killed by that administration (excluding Clinton, of course)? Does AI think that America is a despotically ruled country? Check out their report.

You'll find that we've detained 600 people in Guantánamo without access to blasted lawyers. Why? Maybe because they were SHOOTING at our troops in Afghanistan, AI! Maybe because they were part of a terrorist organization. Maybe because they were involved in the world-wide network of evil that America is trying to stamp out. Did that thought ever bridge the synaptic gap in your heads? Didn't think so.

You'll find that we execute prisoners. And that is true enough. We execute some of them who commit heinous crimes. Not enough of them, I sometimes feel, but we do get a few of them out of the gene pool. And they're given a relatively painless death. Heck, they even give their arm an alcohol swab before the lethal injection, for Pete's sake! That's a far cry from dumping them feet-first into a plastics shredder.

You'll find that Dubya has pulled out of the International Criminal Court. This really honks off the AI guys and gals. They believe that the U.S. constitution should be overridden. Luckily, Dubya has a responsibility to ensure that doesn't happen. A responsibility that Slick Willie never seemed to take all that seriously...

And you'll note, please, that they made no mention of the one act of torture currently being done by U.S. troops that DOES deserve attention. They're playing Barney the Dinosaur songs to get detainees to confess and reveal information. And as any parent of small children can tell you, this has to be considered cruel and unusual punishment!

If the folks at Amnesty International want to help end suffering and torture, maybe they should look at the motto of Britain's SAS. ''Deeds, Not Words.'' Stop talking and start acting to end these terrorist and despotic acts.

Nice work, Doc. Thanks for saying what the mainstream journalists should be reporting. Still waiting for the investigations into those who looked the other way for $$$$, raising money by attacking America, parroting Saddam's lies while ignoring the evidence of Saddam's deceit and brutality.

Saddam's Cash
The Weekly Standard ^ | May 5, 2003 | Stephen F. Hayes

Scores of journalists (and NGOs) throughout the Arab world and Europe were on Saddam Hussein's payroll.

...."For years, the Iraqi leader has been waging an intensive, sometimes clandestine, and by most accounts highly effective image war in the Arab world," wrote Wall Street Journal reporters Jane Mayer and Geraldine Brooks in an exposé published February 15, 1991. "His strategy has ranged from financing friendly publications and columnists as far away as Paris to doling out gifts as big as new Mercedes-Benzes."

....That campaign continued until days before the regime was deposed. "If they're not bought and paid for, they're at least rented," says a top national security official, who adds that the administration has intelligence implicating big-name journalists throughout the Arab world and Europe.

Saddam Stole Billions From U.N.

U.N. Officials Admit They Were Powerless to Stop Iraqi Leader's Skimming
By Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz

L O N D O N, May 20— United Nations officials looked the other way as Saddam Hussein's regime skimmed $2 billion to $3 billion in bribes and kickbacks from the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program, said U.N. officials who told ABCNEWS they were powerless to stop the massive graft.

THE REAL SCANDAL OF IRAQI RELIEF
New York Post ^ | 5/11/03 | JONATHAN FOREMAN

May 11, 2003 -- BAGHDAD
THEY come from all over the world. Their supposed mission is to help the people of Iraq. Their concerned frowns and even their clothes all proclaim the message: "We're the good, caring people . . . and you're not."
But if actions speak louder than words, then many of the international charitable organizations called NGOs (non-governmental organizations) here are less interested in doing good works than in moral posturing and haranguing the army that won a war most of them opposed.
~~~

Mark Steyn: Come on over the water's lovely
The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 06/01/03 | Mark Steyn
Excerpts:

...vast numbers of bureaucrats are running around Iraq with unlimited budgets in search of a human catastrophe that doesn't exist...

...So that's the most basic thing about post-Saddam Iraq: for all the "anarchy", no one's fleeing.

...I had an illegally acquired firearm but, even in Tikrit, I was relaxed enough to leave it in the glove box.

...the Ba'athist buildings, and they're the sole target of highly focused looting. Everything else is untouched - the poky grocery stores piled high with boxes of soda you could boil a lobster in, the ramshackle auto shops with their mounds of second-hand tyres, all these are open for business, and in the end they're more relevant to the future of Iraq than the legions of unemployed Saddamite bureaucrats in Baghdad or the NGO armies in their brand new, gleaming white Chevy Suburbans and Land Rovers cruising the streets touting for business like drug pushers in search of junkies.

...The winsome young Arab boy with a face as lovely as Halle Berry's and a lot less grumpy brought me a whole roast chicken - stringy but chewy - piled with bread and served with a generous selection of salads. I managed to determine that the Oxfam crowd was holding a meeting with the Red Cross to discuss the deteriorating situation. But just what exactly was "deteriorating"? As my groaning table and the stores along Main Street testified, there was plenty of food in town. Was it the water? I made a point of drinking the stuff everywhere I went in a spirited effort to pick up the dysentery and cholera supposedly running rampant. But I remain a disease-free zone. So what precisely is happening in Rutba that requires an Oxfam/ICRC summit? Well, the problem, as they see it, is that, sure, there's plenty of food available but "the prices are too high". That's why the World Food Programme and the other NGOs need to be brought in, to distribute more rations to more people.
...And perhaps that's why I found rather more hostility towards the WFP, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees et al than towards the military. ... the new imperial class are the NGOs. They shuttle across the globe, mingling with their own kind - other SUV users - and bringing with them the values of the mother country, or the mother bureaucracy. Like many imperialists, they're well-meaning: they see their charges as helpless and dependent, which happy condition has the benefit of justifying an ever-growing aid bureaucracy in perpetuity. It will be very destructive for Iraq if the tentativeness of the American administration in Baghdad allows the ambulance-chasers of the NGOs to sink their fangs into the country.

~~~

Not even a "thank you" from these so-called 'humanitarians' to the troops, to the nations who paid with their lives, blood, sweat, tears, AND $$$$ - in sand, heat, bugs, hard physical work, under fire from regime dead-enders and terrorist-wannabes - and far from their loved ones - to save the Iraqi people.

Put NGO workers to work digging mass graves. At least then they'd be helping

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