America, the "what are you becoming"?

George Bush is the hub of an Axis of Evil centred on Washington

Freedom and democracy? Or torture and murder? What does the United States of America stand for today? After Abu Ghraib, shocking revelations reach us of Taleban bodies being burnt and placed facing Mecca and Saddam Hussein being subjected to torture.

The United States of America of George W. Bush makes a mockery of his country's culture, history and Constitution. Far from being the land of the free, the land where dreams come true, George Bush's Washington is the Great American Nightmare. With its foreign policy dictated by a clique of conservative corporate elitists, the procedure followed by Washington today is one of bullying, belligerence, deception, deceit, lies, mass murder, criminal negligence, criminal and wanton destruction of civilian structures with military hardware, war crimes and increasingly, torture.

At first came the notion that the sporadic acts of torture were isolated incidents from an apparently undisciplined rabble, which calls itself an army. But with the Pentagon having given the blueprint for the concentration camp at Guantanamo and with the hierarchy knowing fully what went on at Abu Ghraib, Donald Rumsfeld's comments that such incidents are shocking and will be investigated fall flat. In short, he is as much a barefaced, callous liar as his president, George Bush.

Desecration of bodies

On Wednesday 19th October came revelations by an Australian photojournalist, Stephen DuPont, whose footage taken while touring with a US Army patrol was shown on the Australian Special Broadcasting Service's programme, Dateline.

The footage is shocking and immediately conjures up images from Belsen or Treblinka or Dachau.

Two Taleban fighters are apparently doused with petrol and burnt, with their arms and legs splayed out, facing Mecca. Then two psyops specialists from the US army broadcast a message showing the charred bodies with the wording: "Attention Taleban, you are cowardly dogs."

Saddam Hussein tortured

In Iraq, where Abu Ghraib is a monument to the Bush regime's illegal act of butchery which has sent the only stable nation in the region into chaos and which has added a 100,000 death toll to the 500,000 caused by sanctions, in which civilian infra-structures were targeted by military forces armed to the teeth so that rebuilding contracts could be handed out, we now have evidence that Saddam Hussein has been tortured.

Sleep deprivation is a method of torture approved of by the Pentagon and it has been applied to the former President of Iraq to exhaust him during his trial. At the beginning of the opening session of the "court" giving him a "fair" trial, Saddam Hussein declared that he had been kept awake since 02.00 but that he was ready to take on the kangaroo court.

CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart was also quoted, by Reuters, as having confirmed that Saddam Hussein is being subjected to sleep deprivation. "Fair" trial? Under torture? Maybe by George Bush's standards.

Now Amnesty International is fighting to get a decision taken in London in 2004 that information received through acts of torture abroad is admissible.

What is happening in the USA and UK? Where are the morals, where are the standards, where is the respect for international law, for the UN Charter, for international conventions and agreements? The Axis of Evil is centred however on Washington and gravitates around the evil regime of mass murderers and war criminals, with George Bush at the center of the web.

Dutch Justice triumphs over torture

Netherlands won't extradite terror suspect to U.S. No expectation of human rights, fair trial in America

by Anthony Deutsch, Associated Press

Oct. 12, 2005

THE HAGUE, Netherlands

-- A Dutch court on Wednesday blocked the extradition of a Dutch terror suspect to the United States, saying his legal rights in U.S. custody could not be guaranteed. The man, who is of Egyptian descent and was identified only by his initials M. A., is wanted on charges of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud, apparently to help the al Qaeda terrorist network. He has been in custody in the Netherlands for around eight months. The ruling by the Hague District Court said the suspect's "fundamental right" of unlimited access to a defense lawyer and immediate access to a judge may be compromised in the United States. Last month, the court sought guarantees from U.S. prosecutors that the detainee would be afforded those basic rights if he were extradited. In Wednesday's ruling, it rejected a U.S. submission that "the United States views such a request as unwarranted and unnecessary." The ruling is a setback for efforts by the two countries to strengthen trans-Atlantic cooperation in the fight against terrorism. The Dutch Justice Ministry, which had already approved the extradition, said it was studying the decision and could not comment in detail. "We are considering ways to advance the case. We don't rule out an appeal," said spokesman Arnaud Strijbis. The court also ordered the government to pay the defendant about $1,300 to cover his legal fees. The defendant's lawyer, Bart Nooitgedagt, called the decision a major victory for his client. He said he would seek the suspect's release, although he still could face prosecution by Dutch authorities for the alleged crimes. "This ruling is unique in Dutch legal history. Never before has a judge ruled that an extradition to the United States could not take place because the rights of a defendant could not be guaranteed," Nooitgedagt said. Nooitgedagt said U.S. prosecutors sought to question his client in relation to the so-called Detroit sleeper-cell case from 2003 against four North African immigrants, the first U.S. prosecution of an alleged terror cell detected after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The case fell apart over prosecutorial misconduct and earlier this year the chief prosecutor resigned and a federal judged apologized to the defendants. U.S. authorities sought to prosecute the Dutch suspect on charges of telecommunications fraud related to the Detroit case, but Nooitgedagt feared they would use interrogations tactics banned under international law.