Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Full Court Press
First Cheney and now Bush push back against allegations that our tactics in the war on terror violate human rights. Specifically, both of our dear leaders reject the notion that our little gulag down in Cuba is a problem. Today Bush stood in the Rose Garden and called allegations that we're violating human rights, "'absurd'" and characterized those making the claims as "people who hate America." Thinking that if he repeated the absurd claim more than once it would stick Bush said, "It's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world." Just to show how divorced from reality Bush is, he went on to say this about the conviction of Russian oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky
First Cheney and now Bush push back against allegations that our tactics in the war on terror violate human rights. Specifically, both of our dear leaders reject the notion that our little gulag down in Cuba is a problem. Today Bush stood in the Rose Garden and called allegations that we're violating human rights, "'absurd'" and characterized those making the claims as "people who hate America." Thinking that if he repeated the absurd claim more than once it would stick Bush said, "It's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world." Just to show how divorced from reality Bush is, he went on to say this about the conviction of Russian oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Here, you're innocent until proven guilty and it appeared to us, at least people in my administration, that it looked like he had been ajudged guilty prior to having a fair trial.Apparently the irony of what he'd just said was lost on Bush and those writing his remarks. I'm still trying to figure out how Bush can in the same event criticize organizations for calling our detaining hundreds of people without a trial and without access to anything that remotely resembles due process a violation of human rights and then criticize another government for arresting and putting on trial a Russian oil tycoon, no matter how "unfair" that trial was. Just another day in the twilight zone that is the Bush administration.