Bush admin to UN: our torture is none of your business

Louise Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice and highly respected former head of the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, is now the UN human rights' chief. Arbour recently criticized the US government for its ambiguous (at best) position on torture.

Well, its position on torture by its own representatives is ambiguous; it often condemns torture by other countries, such as the former Saddam dictatorship in Iraq.

Arbour noted that the "absolute ban on torture, a cornerstone of the international human rights edifice, is under attack." This confusion has been amplified by the Newspeak that's passed for the administration's position of the day on torture.

The administration's designated UN loudmouth John Bolton got his panties into a twist following Arbour's reasonable comments.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton criticized the statements, the [Washington] Post reported, saying Arbour had no proof of the allegations other "than what she reads in the newspapers."

I agree. Commenting on newspaper reports is not the best way to handle the situation. Instead, surely Bolton would concur that a proper UN Security Council or International Criminal Court investigation would be a better option, eh?

"I think it is inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we're engaged in in the war on terror," Bolton sniffed.

And this exemplifies better than anything else why the Bush administration's moral credibility has completely vanished.

Questioning dubious human rights practices is EXACTLY what the UN human rights' chief should be doing.

Early this year, the Bush administration launched a full scale attack on the UN Human Rights Commission for not being forceful enough. Yet when it IS forceful, the administration tells it to shut up, in much the same way as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

Why would Arbour criticize the US when there are a million other bad things going on that deserve her attention."The UN only picks on America," bellow the uninformed and the willfully ignorant. But as usual, it's usually the uninformed and the willfully ignorant who bellow the loudest. They're wrong... but you probably already knew that.

When critics called the UN Human Rights Commission toothless, Arbour (and myself, for that matter) agreed. She, like Secretary General Kofi Annan, want a smaller Human Rights Council with more strength and authority to replace the bloated Human Rights Commission that's held hostage by repressive regimes like Libya and Zimbabwe. As a former judge and prosecutor, she realizes the Human Rights Commission is too dysfunctional, too sclerotic and has no authority and ought to be restructured..

It's obvious that the Bush administration doesn't want a restructured human rights body, especially one that might be independent enough to criticize... the Bush administration. A serious watchdog must criticize all human rights abuses, not just those committed by regimes hostile to the US government. But the far right doesn't want a watchdog; it wants a scapegoat.

Bravo to Ms. Arbour. Her intrevention was very important in upholding the principles of international human rights' standards and values. Standards that the United States has not only voluntarily accepted, but were crucial in formulating. If the United States can't invoke 'terrorism' in order to justify human rights' abuses, then dictators won't be able to either.