Foreign Policy in Focus
On February 25, Riggs Bank agreed to pay $9 million into a fund for victims of Augusto Pinochet to settle a case over the bank’s role in hiding the former Chilean dictator’s ill-gotten gains. This latest development in the decades-long fight to hold Pinochet accountable for his crimes stands in stark contrast to the twisted human rights rhetoric--and record--of the U.S. government.
Yes, Saddam Hussein, like his fellow former dictator Pinochet, may face prosecution for human rights violations. But at every turn in the war on Iraq and in the broader war on terrorism, the Bush administration has trampled on human rights laws when they became inconvenient, creating dangerous precedents for the rest of the world.
President George W. Bush boasts of his allegiance to human rights at the same time that he dismisses criticism of the illegality of the Iraq invasion and occupation and of the U.S. involvement in extra-judicial assassinations and illegal detainment of terrorism suspects.
Indeed, in the most chilling statement in his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush claimed that “more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.” Bush’s euphemisms don’t disguise the assault on the basic right of habeas corpus, the legal principle established in the Magna Carta in 1215 that prevents a government from picking up a person and holding him indefinitely without charge--even if he is a terrorism suspect.
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