A number of other countries criticized in the U.S. report expressed a similar view, that the Bush administration has compromised on human rights and has no standing to chastise others. Such responses often follow Washington's annual report, but the reaction has become more intense and more readily voiced since U.S. abuses of Iraqi and other prisoners were publicized around the world last year.
"Unfortunately, [the report] once again gives us reason to say that double standards are a characteristic of the American approach to such an important theme," the Russian Foreign Ministry declared after reviewing the report. "Characteristically off-screen is the ambiguous record of the United States itself."
It's getting difficult to remember the days when America was viewed as a beacon of liberty in the world. Between the way we treat immigrants, refugees seeking aslyum, detainees and our own prison population, it does seem that we've lost our guiding light.
You don't see this yet? Check out UnFogged and his post on the CIA, the sandpit and the prisoners. And Ezra Klein's response to the incident:
What the f*ck has happened to our country? The man we stripped naked, beat the hell out of, and let freeze to death was "probably associated with people who were associated with al Qaeda"? Did we really build this city on a hill so we could throw innocents off the ramparts?
Read Digby on this too.
The damage they have done to this country's sense of itself as a moral force for good, however, cannot be papered over with soaring speeches about freedom and liberty. Leaving that naked prisoner (so many naked prisoners!) to die of the cold that night is just one of the many ways in which these puerile egotists sold this country down the river one simple minded atrocity at a time.
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