Blaming the Messenger ('Publicans attack Red Cross)

[struggle4progress]

Ari Berman
Tue Jun 21, 5:18 PM ET

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned the Bush Administration about prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, secret detainees in Afghanistan and the now-confirmed allegations of Koran desecration at Guantanamo Bay. So naturally, Republicans are ignoring the findings and blaming the messenger.

A new report by Senate Republicans lumps the 140-year-old, three-time Nobel Peace Prize recipient into the "anti-American" category and calls on the Bush Administration to reassess its funding support. "The ICRC is no longer an impartial and trustworthy guardian," writes the Senate Republican Policy Committee. "It has become yet another clamoring interest group" that has "lost its way" by adopting positions that are in "direct opposition to the advancement of US interests." The report warns, with no hint of irony, that ICRC actions threaten to "sap its credibility."

Senate Republicans thus duly prescribe the full UN-treatment: a comprehensive review by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to determine whether the annual US contribution ($1.5 billion since 1990) is advancing American interests and a GAO audit of the ICRC's core and non-core activities. The crimes committed by the ICRC, in Republican eyes, include such ghastly activities as upholding the Geneva Convention and lobbying for the Chemical Weapons Convention and the treaty against landmines. How the group's actions in Iraq or Afghanistan violate the ICRC's founding principles of neutrality and impartiality is anyone's guess. "The paper's purpose appears to be to discredit the ICRC by putting forward false allegations and unsubstantiated accusations," ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger said last week.

"In fact," writes University of Virginia law professor Rosa Brooks, "the real issue underlying the attack is that the ICRC has quietly but firmly pushed back against the Bush Administration's 'anything goes' detention and interrogation policies." Confidential criticisms of ghost detainees, open-ended detentions and the rendition of suspected terrorists to countries employing torture are hardly unique to the ICRC. Anyone outside of Donald Rumsfeld's office, including White House officials who've defended the organization against the Senate report, know that ICRC monitoring helps the American military far more than it hurts. <snip>

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20050621/cm_thenation/133709/nc:742

[teach1st]

1. Good article

I can't get the link to work, either. For some reason, the URL has a colon in it, which seems to screw up the formating.

[struggle4progress]

4. Fixed link. Apologies: forgot to turn off emoticons. eom

[Erika]

2. To the GOP, it's ALWAYS someone else's fault.

Remember Bush and his cabinet don't make mistakes. Then they smear anyone who disagrees with their policy. They are completely out of touch with realty.

Yet another reason this country is in a "funk" or
"bad mood".

[jeff30997]

3. The Red Cross,Amnesty International,Mother Theresa...

They are all freedom haters terrorists.

[silverweb]

5. Here's the key.

The new standard... the new meme... the key phrase that we will hear over and over again to justify more vicious slanders, accusations, suppression, and attacks against anyone who disagrees with this administration for any reason whatsoever:

"It has become yet another clamoring interest group" that has "lost its way" by adopting positions that are in "direct opposition to the advancement of U.S. interests."

So now, to be branded a "traitor," all anyone has to do is question the meaning, morality, methods, or legitimacy of "U.S. interests" anywhere in the world, or oppose total U.S. global domination in any way.

Forget personal freedom, political/religious liberty, justice, and human rights. We all know that "U.S. interests" under the current bastard regime really mean "corporatism" in the form of our mighty military/industrial phalanx, to be followed by our great corporate rapists of resources and humanity.

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
-Benito Mussolini

Have I said today how much I hate these rotten bastards?
I want my country back!
(Apologies to Mike and Howard for borrowing their lines.)

:grr: