Today the State Department released their annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, a "key part of this Administration’s activities to promote human rights and democracy around the world--part of President Bush’s forward strategy of freedom."
The hypocrisy contained in this report is simply staggering. It's one thing for our government to blatantly lie to us and to the world. It's worse for our government to scold other governments for abuses that we regularly practice, and even to go so far as to reprimand countries where we secretly send prisoners for their treatment of those disappeared people.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved in December 2002 a number of severe measures, including the stripping of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and using dogs to frighten them. He later rescinded those tactics and signed off on a shorter list of "exceptional techniques," including 20-hour interrogations, face slapping, stripping detainees to create "a feeling of helplessness and dependence," and using dogs to increase anxiety.
The State Department report also harshly attacked the treatment of prisoners in such countries as Syria and Egypt, where the United States has shipped terrorism suspects under a practice known as "rendition."
For more on the government's not-so-secret rendition program, see this Washington Post article and for a much more in depth look, see this excellend New Yorker piece. The title of the story is "Outsourcing Torture," which is precisely what is going on.
During the flight, Arar said, he heard the pilots and crew identify themselves in radio communications as members of “the Special Removal Unit.” The Americans, he learned, planned to take him next to Syria. Having been told by his parents about the barbaric practices of the police in Syria, Arar begged crew members not to send him there, arguing that he would surely be tortured. His captors did not respond to his request; instead, they invited him to watch a spy thriller that was aired on board.
Ten hours after landing in Jordan, Arar said, he was driven to Syria, where interrogators, after a day of threats, “just began beating on me.” They whipped his hands repeatedly with two-inch-thick electrical cables, and kept him in a windowless underground cell that he likened to a grave. “Not even animals could withstand it,” he said. Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say. “You just give up,” he said. “You become like an animal.”
Paula J. Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, introducing the report
State Department
So scary.