The Bush administration has called for the respect of human rights in Burma, a pretty safe piece of posturing, but it remains silent as Egypt’s dictator, Gen. Hosni Mubarak , unleashes the largest crackdown on public opposition in over a decade. Our moral indignation over the shooting of monks masks the incestuous and growing alliance we have built in the so-called war on terror with some of the world’s most venal dictatorships.
Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 26 years and is grooming his son, Gamal, to succeed him, can torture and “disappear” dissidents-such as the Egyptian journalist Reda Hilal, who vanished four years ago-without American censure because he does the dirty work for us on those we “disappear.” The extraordinary-rendition program, which sees the United States kidnap and detain terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world, fits neatly with the Egyptian regime’s contempt for due process. Those rounded up by American or Egyptian security agents are never granted legal rights. The abductors are often hooded or masked. If the captors are American the suspects are spirited onto a Gulfstream V jet registered to a series of dummy American corporations, such as Bayard Foreign Marketing of Portland, Ore., and whisked to Egypt or perhaps Morocco or Jordan. When these suspects arrive in Cairo they vanish into black holes as swiftly as dissident Egyptians. It is the same dirty and seamless process.
We have nothing to say to Mubarak. He is us. The general intelligence directorate in Lazoughli and in Mulhaq al-Mazra prison in Cairo allegedly holds many of our own detained and “disappeared.” The more savage the torture techniques of the Mubarak regime the faster the prisoners we smuggle into Egypt from Afghanistan and Iraq are broken down. The screams of Egyptians, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans mingle in these prison cells to condemn us all.
We know little about what goes on in the black holes the CIA has set up in Egypt. But snapshots leak out. Ibn-al Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured by U.S. forces in late 2001, was an al-Qaida camp commander. He was taken to a prison in Cairo where he was repeatedly tortured by Egyptian officials. The Egyptian interrogators told the CIA that he had confirmed a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The tidbit, used by then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in his United Nations speech, turned out to be false. Victims usually will say anything to make severe torture stop. Al-Libi was eventually returned to Afghanistan, although he has again disappeared.
Mamduh Habib, an Egyptian-born citizen of Australia, was apprehended in October 2001 in Pakistan, where, his family says, he was touring religious schools. A Pentagon spokesman claimed that Habib spent most of his time in Afghanistan and was “either supporting hostile forces or on the battlefield fighting illegally against the U.S.”
Habib was released a few days after The Washington Post published an article on his case. He said he was first interrogated and brutalized for three weeks in Islamabad. His interrogators spoke English with American accents. He was then bustled into a jumpsuit, his eyes were covered with opaque goggles and he was flown on a small jet to Egypt. There he was held and interrogated for six months, according to Joseph Margulies, a lawyer affiliated with the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago Law School, which is representing Habib,.
Habib claims he was beaten frequently with blunt instruments, including an object that he likened to an “electric prod.” He was told that if he did not confess to belonging to al-Qaida he would be anally raped by specially trained dogs. Habib said he was returned to U.S. custody after his stint in an Egyptian prison and flown to Bagram air base, in Afghanistan, and then to Guantanamo Bay, where he was kept until his release.
Al-Libi and Habib are but two cases. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands more. These accounts of American-sponsored torture in Egyptian prisons are not new. They hardly make news. But the close cooperation between Egyptian and American security officials represents a frightening melding of despotisms, an international cabal of state-sponsored brutality and abuse. It does away with the concept of law and human rights. It mocks international protocols and treaties. It permits the despotic states we support, such as Egypt, to veer away from democratic structures and propagate, with our assistance, a more ruthless tyranny and brutality. It enrages and finally empowers those who oppose us to engage in the same behavior. It is dividing the world into competing spheres of intolerance. In this new world order there is nothing left to appeal to other than the mercy of someone standing over you with an electric prod.
Mubarak has in the past few weeks decided to shut down the last remnants of opposition. He has sent in riot police to arrest dozens of striking labor leaders, rounded up more than a thousand members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition group, and tossed seven journalists into prison. The charges against the journalists range from misquoting Egypt’s justice minister to spreading rumors about the health of Mubarak to defaming his designated heir, Gamal. The detainees, as usual, complain of torture and beatings. And persistent rumors of death squads, bolstered by the “disappearance” of some of the regime’s most outspoken critics, have turned Egypt into a state that has mastered the art of internal and external extraordinary rendition.
The few lonely Egyptian voices and institutions that dared to speak out against the mounting repression have been silenced, including the Association for Human Rights and Legal Aid, which was shut down by the government last month. The government also recently arrested two political activists-Mohammed al-Dereini and Ahmed Mohammed Sobh, both members of Egypt’s tiny Shiite minority-after the men publicized testimonies from prisoners detailing torture in the Egyptian prison system. Egypt’s most prominent dissident, the sociologist Saad Edin Ibrahim, is in exile, too frightened to go home and repeat his own brutal experience in an Egyptian prison.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights has confirmed more than 500 cases of police abuse since 1993, including 167 deaths-three of which took place this year-that the group “strongly suspects were the result of torture and mistreatment.” There are now 80,000 political prisoners held in Egyptian prisons. The annual budget for internal security was $1.5 billion in 2006, more than the entire national budget for health care, and the security police forces comprise 1.4 million members, nearly four times the number of the Egyptian army.
The United States has subsidized Egypt’s armed forces with over $38 billion in aid. Egypt receives about $2 billion annually-$1.3 billion in foreign military financing and about $815 million in economic and support fund assistance-making it the second largest regular recipient of conventional U.S. military and economic aid, after Israel.
We have nothing left to say to the Mubarak regime. The torture practiced in Egypt is the torture we employ for our own ends. The cries that rise up from these fetid cells in Egypt condemn not only the Mubarak dictatorship but the moral rot that has beset the American state.
We are losing the war in Iraq. We are an isolated and reviled nation. We are pitiless to others weaker than ourselves. We have lost sight of our democratic ideals. Thucydides wrote of Athens’ expanding empire and how this empire led it to become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. The tyranny Athens imposed on others, it finally imposed on itself. If we do not confront our hubris and the lies we tell to justify the killing and mask the destruction carried out in our name in Iraq, if we do not grasp the moral corrosiveness of empire and occupation, if we continue to allow force and violence to be our primary form of communication, if we do not remove from power our flag-waving, cross-bearing versions of the Taliban, the despotism we empower abroad will become the despotism we soon experience at home.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.“
©2007 TruthDig.com
People in the US either don’t know about what’s going on and/or don’t care.
This falls directly back on the MSM. Why we do not have several breaking news stories about how our government is systematically picking up people rushing them off to far away lands, and then torturing them, I will never know. Forcing false statements out of them, just so they can say “See he was a terrorist, we are lucky we caught him”.
The problem is they have to create terrorist. They have to perpetuate this lie some how. We have to have something to be afraid of. We are picking a fight essentially.
The media has failed us in the most detrimental way possible. And for some reason they think they will be spared when the iron fist comes crashing down?
They are the life line of our nation. If they put things out there plain and clear for us to see, it couldn’t be disputed. They are allowing the Government to continue to cover our eyes and destroy our minds.
For some reason, they just don’t love this country. MSM must hate America to continue to let it be raped by its own Government. The things that have come to light from this administration are so appalling. A lot of times you have to remind your self what country you are even in. From the poison in our food, to the vile molestation and utter violation of the constitution, Our Government has failed on so many levels it almost seems bet to just shake them all loose and erase them like the proverbial Etch - a - sketch and then just start over.
The government is literally getting away with murder and not a soul can do anything about it. We have indeed dropped the ball as a people. And our generation will be remembered as the ones who allowed America to be transformed into an unrecognizable Fascist state.
1984 Will be our present life sooner than we know it.
~Future~
The worrisome part is that Egypt (along with Israel) gets the lion’s share of US foreign aid. For all the money we send to Egypt, does it reflect American values?
Depends on what you define as our values. If the values are authoritarianism, militarism, torture, and censorship then yes — Egypt is reasonable example of American values.
If American values are freedom, self-determination, humn rights, and democracy, then we’re failing both at home and abroad.
If we’re just giving them money and couldn’t care less about the shape/fabric of their country, then I guess we’ve got a deeper problem with American values. Trilaterial commission, Bilderbergs, or someone driving the show — and it is their values that are really being reflected here: the value of Empire, geo-political engineering to the advantage of the few, and disadvantage of the many.
Would it be possible for the CIA to capture our current administration, ship them off ot Egypt to an undisclosed location, and try a few of our ‘non torture’ methods to get a few answers to things like…”the truth about 9/11.” No, I thought not. Just dreaming….
“…The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone…” Ps 118:22′
“Woe to you. For you are like graves which are not seen, and men walk over them without seeing it” Luke 11:14
Question: would Michael Vick be less of a national disgrace if he pled guilty to torturing humans instead of dogs?
Not regular humans. I mean alleged friends of alleged friends of alleged Islamoterrafascistsss. And maybe a few Mexicans.
1984 is NOW! Our president’s name is not “Bush,” it is O’Brian. And isn’t he pneumatic? Huxley, Zamyatin, Orwell, they were all correct, but the Bushits didn’t take their writings as a warning, they took them as a MAP of how to install themselves in power, and how to stay in power. Bush was known as one of the most cruel, heartless governors of Texas: he executed more people than any previous governor. Do you think he has any reservations whatsoever about exterminating the entire human race, just to get what he wants? Cheney hates his own father with more passion than even the most devoted martyr, whether Christian or Islamic. He set out to destroy everything that his father held dear.
If my facts are off, please forgive me. I’m old, sick, bitter, and completely certain that any day now, the Bushits will proclaim themselves God, Presidents for Life, and demand the world bow down to them.
My guess is that:
half the nation doesn’t care about non-American human life (just profit,) and the other half which is horrified by these atrocities is afraid to speak up for the possible condemnation comming the first half (neocon knee-jerks of: “treason! sedition! non-patriotic! terrorist supporter!”, etc.) Fear of not goosestepping with the party is keeping everybody in 1937 Berlin, Germany. The real truth is that those who don’t swear allegience to honor and support the constitution and it’s bill of rights are the actual traitors wheather they be gov leaders or citizens. But rednecks of the red states are cult following fox news and rush-the-druggie no matter where it leads.
Human life used to be worth a lot more to us. It’s clear that with the breakdown of public systems to ensure our food, water and environment are protected, we just don’t care if our families suffer or else we trust the government to always do the right thing for us.
Life is so good on little pacific islands. Natural indiginous fruits and vegatables not gene-spliced, no U.S. beef, fresh air, a laid back acceptance of poverty, a complete disinterest in what time of day it is, friendly people, focus on family, community, small family owned businesses….. I am truely happy when I am out here. But it can’t last if the poles melt…..
The late-great USA is little more than a police state at this juncture. And an environmental mess. The constant flow of chemicals and antibiotics creeping unseen into your body should make you shutter.
But hey, there’s a sale on at Wal mart! What else could you want?
Congress must immediately repeal the legal immunity it has granted to those who commit egregious crimes in the name of the war on terror, ratify the International Criminal Court statute, and turn Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, Gates, Goss, Hayden, Mueller, Freeh, Wolfowitz, Libby, Feith and the rest over for prosecution.
The USA has a lot of gall commenting on the human rights abuses of other nations. Our chief contribution to human rights has been to support the most evil tendencies and factions available in any nation world we have had influence.
The USA goverment & big parts of administration are hijacked by Bush and the neo cons. (Yes, I state the obvious).
The USA are now ranking (since a long time) at the same level of the lack of respect of human rights as China, Russia, Egypte, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Israel and many others. However the US are worst as they organise it outside of the territory of the United States.
Credibility of the US goverment fits on the size of a stamp.
Would be interesting to see if there will be in the United States of America any time soon again a goverment standing up for the people and not for the interest groups (arms, petrol, big business, finance).
MISSION FOR FROM BEING
Threatening to have a man anally raped by a specially trained dog? This is what America has been reduced to under the GOP? What a bunch of sick, freaks.
When George Bush was a teenager, didn’t he insert fircrackers into the rectums of frogs for fun and profit? “Great” minds run in the same circles, apparently.
What most USAns haven’t figured out is that the US military (+ CIA, and whatever) has been very busy training people selected as enemies by its political masters. Those who survive these training camps (Iraq & Afghanistan) are called civilians and lack technical skill, but in terms of bravery (and often motivation) make US “Special Forces” look like a bunch of pussies*.
* A word well understood in the US military, and totally appropriate in this context.