“None of the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bear any resemblance to approved policies at any level, in any theater.” [Church Report, 3/10/05]

“Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved interrogation techniques that included ‘removal of clothing’ and ‘inducing stress by use of detainee’s fears (e.g. dogs).’” [USA Today, 6/22/04]

As we approach the two-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, here’s a by-the-numbers look at the dramatic impact the war has had on the U.S. military’s recruitment and readiness:

5: Number of years since the U.S. Army last failed to fill its monthly quota of volunteers sent to boot camp, which it did this month.
10: Number of years since the U.S. Marine Corps last missed its monthly recruitment goal, which it has done twice already this year.
11: Number of years since the U.S. National Guard last missed its annual recruitment goal, which it did in 2004.
27: Percent by which the U.S. Army missed its recruitment targets this month.
30: Percent by which the U.S. National Guard missed its recruitment targets in November and December 2004.
41: Drop in African American enlistments over the last four years, by percent.
1: Number of military reserve components that actually met their recruiting goals for the first four months of the current fiscal year; the other five reserve components did not.
3,900: Number of former soldiers belonging to a pool that can be mobilized only in a national emergency recently called up by the U.S. Army.
25: Increase, by percent, in the number of high school dropouts allowed to enlist in the Army thanks to newly lowered recruitment standards.
33: Increase, by percent, in the number of applicants who received the lowest acceptable scores on a service aptitude test now allowed to enlist in the Army thanks to newly lowered recruitment standards, by percent.

When the State Department released its annual Human Rights Report, there was a pall over the occasion. Our so-called “allies” in the war on terror were some of the countries guilty of the most heinous human rights abuses and were being governed — or under the dictatorial thumb — of leaders simultaneously heralded as “friends” by our President. Interrogation practices faulted in others were torture tactics endemic in our own system, both advocated for and defended by the individual now raised to the role of Attorney General. So, yesterday’s New York Times article confirming the Central Intelligence Agency’s long rumored use of rendition, a process by which suspected terrorists are transferred to foreign countries in order to be questioned, sadly came as little surprise.

But the White House continues to incorporate implicit justifications for such practices at the same time it aims to denounce them. For example, when asked about the NYT piece, White House Counsel Dan Bartlett first couches the statement:

“Well, as you know, Wolf, in the days and weeks and months after 9/11, it was important that we take a hard look at our entire apparatus — militarily, intelligence, diplomatic — to see how we were going to fight and win the war on terror.

Part of this is to make sure that we can deal with known terrorists, who may have information about live operations. And it’s critical that we’re able to them and have information [sic].”

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Today is the 35th anniversary of the the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT, at its most basic, requires states without nuclear weapons to not acquire them, and those states with weapons to commit to eventual disarmament. Article VI of the treaty sensibly calls for a “cessation of the nuclear arms race.” Described as “the cornerstone of global efforts” to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, it has been signed by 188 countries (though North Korea withdrew in 2003) and will undergo a five-year review this May. While the Treaty is in need of a review and some strengthening, a good start would be simply to have the United States comply more fully.

In its 2001 Nuclear Posture Review–the core document for official U.S. nuclear strategy–the Administration emphasizes the importance of coming up with new, more “usable” nuclear weapons such as a nuclear “bunker-buster.” It strongly supports research into this weapon, and is poised to battle Congress over getting funding for nuclear bunker-buster research back into the federal budget. This research makes U.S. calls for strengthened global nonproliferation measures seem hypocritical, and dramatically undermines America’s capacity to exercise essential leadership on combating nuclear threats.

Though officials were “careful not to gloat,” the Washington Times reports that the White House was “heartened by the speed with which President Bush’s foreign policy of introducing liberty to the Middle East appears to be bearing fruit.” Conservative pundits took care of the gloating. “Without the Bush Administration, none of this would be happening,” one wrote. And conservatives can’t restrain their rage that the New York Times only attributed a “healthy share of the credit” to the Bush administration for the recent advances in the Middle East.

The actual question at hand — Does the war in Iraq have anything to do with recent regional political developments? — is similar to the false “debate” about whether the world is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power. Considered in a vacuum, everyone answers yes. The actually debatable questions were A) Were our goals in Iraq achieved honestly/ethically/legally/effectively? and B) Were the costs (including opportunity costs) of our strategy as low as they could have been? Regarding Iraq, the answers to all five questions were easy — emphatically, no.

Unfortunately, the same answers likely apply to the links between Iraqand Middle East democracy. Remember, it wasn’t our $200 billion effort in Iraq that infused Arabs with a “favorable view of American freedom and democracy,” or opposition to their own authoritarian governments. Arabs held those sentiments before the Iraq war, particularly in those places where reforms are now taking place, like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria/Lebanon.

Yesterday, the Pakistani government solidly dismissed legislation “which sought to strengthen the law against the practice of ‘honour killing.’” There is nothing that is honorable about so-called honor killings, in which “a man can kill a woman, claiming that she brought dishonour to the family, and still expect to be pardoned by her relatives.” If the pardon is granted, the murderer becomes immune to any actions by the state; the victims of these crimes against humanity are disproportionately women who want to marry of their own free will. Though the Pakistani Law Minister claims there “is no need for further amendments in the country’s penal code,” last year’s supposed amendments left gaping loopholes when it came to dealing with a law that human rights organizations state “has been grossly misused and has contributed directly to an alarming increase in the practice.”

When hobnobbing with his “friend” President Musharraf of Pakistan, President Bush praised the Pakistani leader for a “clear vision of the need for people of goodwill and hope to prevail over those who are willing to inflict death in order to achieve an ideology that is — the predominance of an ideology that is just…dark in its view.” The statement is bold and the intent is there but it would be more convincing if President Bush had an equally harsh indictment for the continued practice of “honor killings” that take the lives of more than a thousand Pakistani women every year. Though even his own State Department acknowledges the horrific human rights abuses committed in Pakistan, President Bush continues to turn a blind eye to what is going on instead of demanding decency in the countries with which we ally ourselves.

Canada’s decision on Thursday to opt out of missile defense was met with a sharp U.S. response.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice abruptly announced she was cancelling her planned trip to Canada next month, and U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci hysterically warned that by not signing on to the continental missile shield, Canada was “in effect giving up its sovereignty and would be ‘outside the room’ when the United States made a decision on whether shoot down an incoming missile.” Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin snapped back, “This is our airspace, we’re a sovereign nation and you don’t intrude on a sovereign nation’s airspace without seeking permission.”

Clearly, heads of state have a responsibility to discuss and debate policy differences. But does Canada really deserve such a caustic response given the clear — sometimes overwhelming — Canadian opposition to involvement in the missile shield as evidenced by virtually every public opinion poll? For such vocal proponents of democracy, the White House sure can get bent out of shape when a government takes the same position as the majority of its electorate.

The administration talks a lot about its principled policy of democracy promotion.

Let’s look at the situation in Egypt. Ayman Nour is “one of only about three dozen opposition members in the 444-seat [Egyptian] Parliament.” Nour was “calling for changes in the Constitution that might allow, among other things, a direct challenge to President Hosni Mubarak if he runs for a fifth term to extend his 24-year rule” — certainly a step forward for Democracy in the region.

In Egypt, members of the parliament are generally immune from prosecution. On January 29, Nour “was called before Parliament and stripped of immunity on 30 minutes’ notice, with no chance to mount a defense.” Here is what happened next:

Nour was thrown into jail, in a textbook example of the way Washington’s Arab allies thwart hopes to expand freedom…They dragged him down the street, then put him in a police van in the middle of Cairo’s busiest square, apparently as an example to the public….Nour is now locked up for at least 45 days of interrogation, and has been refused bail. The charges? Alleged forgery of affidavits used to win legalization last year for his El Ghad (Tomorrow) Party. Fifty such papers were necessary. Nour received thousands, which have been in government hands for months.

What is the administration doing in response? Pressing forward with $1.795 billion in direct aid to the Egyptian Government.

Following the ouster of Haiti’s president one year ago this week, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke of “bring[ing] democracy, prosperity and hope to the people of Haiti” through a combination of a new U.S.-backed government and a fresh infusion of global aid. Months later, freedom is clearly not on the march in the “hurricane of violence” known as Haiti:

U.S.-backed gov’t? Weak, not credible: “Almost a year after the abrupt departure of former President Aristide, the political, security and social-economic situation in Haiti remains in crisis. The transitional government is weak and fighting to maintain credibility, and there are no clear signs of either political reconciliation or economic reconstruction.” (International Crisis Group, 2/8/05)

Promised aid? Still waiting: “The situation in Haiti has gone from bad to worse since former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted from that desperate country this year. … Little of the $1.3 billion in foreign aid promised by the United States and other international donors in July has been delivered.” (Dan Erikson and Adam Minso, Baltimore Sun, 11/24/04)

Freedom on the march? Not quite: “After ten months under an interim government backed by the United States, Canada, and France and buttressed by a United Nations force, Haiti’s people churn inside a hurricane of violence. Gunfire crackles, once bustling streets are abandoned to cadavers, and whole neighborhoods are cut off from the outside world. Nightmarish fear now accompanies Haiti’s poorest in their struggle to survive in destitution. … There has been no investment in dialogue to end the violence.” (Center for the Study of Human Rights, University of Miami School of Law, 2/8/05)

Four years after President Bush reinstated the Global Gag Rule, a policy that severely restricts funding for any non-governmental organization that performs abortions or advocates for a woman’s right to choose, the administration is back on the attack against allowing reproductive rights to be available to all women. The United States delegation to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women is demanding that the platform “make clear that abortion is not a fundamental right.” The same delegate, Ellen Sauerbrey, then proceeded to blame NGOs, the groups actually doing the tough work on the ground, for “trying to distort the issue.” But, in fact, she and other conservative activists have long stood as a barricade to the quest for basic human rights:

• At a U.N. Commission on the Status of Women meeting in 2003, the United States joined with Iran, Egypt, Sudan, and other countries notorious for human rights abuses to raise objections against a platform that was committed “to strengthen legislation to end domestic violence and sexual exploitation and trafficking of women [as well as] educate governments on how to promote and protect women’s human rights.” This block was the “first-ever diplomatic failure” in the meeting body’s history.

• In 2004, Janice Crouse, one of the acting U.S. delegates to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, wrote, “Radical feminists typically use the phrase made famous by now-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-New York) at the United Nations’ Beijing Women’s Conference in the mid-1990s, when she said: ‘Women’s rights are human rights.’ That mantra carries the special agenda of the radical feminists — abortion, lesbianism and quotas.”
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America was notably absent from the State Department’s annual report on Human Rights. Here’s what Assistant Secretary of State Michael Kozak had to say when asked yesterday about our government’s controversial program of “extraordinary renditions”:

“There’s also our obligations under the Convention Against Torture, which is, I think the basic obligation there is you can’t turn someone over…if the likelihood, if it’s more probable than not that he will be tortured, then you can’t turn him over. I think that’s the exact legal standard. And we take that seriously.”

This would be a troubling statement – from the administration that has made “promoting human rights” the “bedrock” of its foreign policy – even if it were true (for instance, it means that if the Bush administration concludes there’s a 49 percent chance a prisoner will be abused, it sees no problem sending him away). But it’s not true. The Bush administration does not “take seriously” the standard laid out in the Convention Against Torture.

The Convention Kozak sites prohibits extradition to a State “where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

Several reports indicate the Bush administration, based on a top-secret memo drafted at the request of new Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, has shipped prisoners off to Syria and Egypt, both of which appear in the State Department’s Human Rights report released this week.

So, are there “substantial grounds for believing” those countries might abuse detainees? You decide:

Egypt: “[In 2003 and 2004], torture and abuse of detainees by police, security personnel, and prison guards remained common and persistent. According to the U.N. Committee Against Torture, a systematic pattern of torture by the security forces exists, and police torture resulted in deaths during the year…there were numerous, credible reports that security forces tortured and mistreated detainees.”

Syria: “During the year…The torture of political detainees was a common occurrence…torture methods included administering electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; forcing objects into the rectum; beating, sometimes while the victim was suspended from the ceiling; hyperextending the spine; bending the detainees into the frame of a wheel and whipping exposed body parts; and using a backward-bending chair to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the victim’s spine.”