Saudi Gazette: Let the shame be revealed

Last edited Thu Dec 5, 2013, 08:45 AM - Edit history (1)

http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20131205188634

Let the shame be revealed

Countries such as the United States that pride themselves on the rule of law and indeed send their soldiers abroad to fight and die for the principles of freedom and democracy might be expected to guard those principles jealously. President George W Bush, however, didn’t see it that way. He was prepared to trample the values of justice and equal treatment before the law in the cause of his worldwide war on terror.

It was a disproportionate and deeply foolish policy which unleashed a wave of paranoia that, in its ignorance, cast every Muslim as a terrorist. Just how out of balance was his multi-billion dollar overreaction in the name of “Homeland Security” is made clear by a simple statistic - more people have died on US roads since the horror of 9/11 than have perished as a result of Al-Qaeda terrorism. And that includes the now almost daily butcher’s bill from unhappy Iraq, plunged into chaos on the whim of a US president who once probably could not find the place on a map.

And Bush and his bigoted neo-cons did not only drag the reputation of the United States through the mud with the travesty of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay and the odious program of supreme rendition. They also involved other countries whose police and intelligence forces very probably turned a blind eye to the kidnapping of Al-Qaeda suspects on the streets of European cities often in broad daylight.

Once the CIA hit its stride with its supreme rendition campaign, it demonstrated that it had nothing to learn from the Cold War Soviet Union’s KGB when it came to kidnap and torture.