freedetainees.org

Posted by Tony Rhodin for The Tony Rhodin Blog

“The USA must close Guantanamo detention camp and secret detention centres, prosecute the detainees under fair trial standards or release them, and unequivocally reject the use of torture and ill-treatment.” — Amnesty International’s Report 2008: State of the World’s Human Rights.

Has anyone forgotten that it was just 10 years ago that the holier than thou among our politicians were impeaching a president for lying about girlfriends during a time of budget surpluses and relative international calm?How did we go from that overreaction to allowing George Bush and Dick Cheney to serve out their terms while ruining America’s reputation in the world and in the process ravaging many innocent lives? Absolute power, they say, corrupts absolutely. No better way to sum up this destructive duo who led thousands of American service personnel to their deaths in a perverse quest for revenge and personal profit in Iraq, while there still was a war to be won in Afghanistan.

The cloak of patriotism trumped all, while true patriots were silenced.

Now a new book from a Bush insider says the administration was far more interested in propaganda than leveling with Americans about the Iraq war. Surprised? The Nixon administration ended with lots of folks going to jail. How can the Bush administration end any other way? Because the entire justice system has become politicized and the politicians who might do something about it are more interested in the next election rather than doing their jobs.

We once — despite our personal immoralities — held the moral high ground. As recently as Sept. 12, 2001. But it always matters what you do once it’s your turn to respond to injustice.

Now we are lumped with China and Myanmar among the world’s human rights abusers. And where in the past this association may have been purely political, now it is impurely factual.

They say empires end without grace. Welcome to 2008 in America.