GENEVA - Washington's "war on terror" after the Sept. 11 attacks has eroded human rights worldwide, creating lingering cynicism that the United Nations must now combat, international law experts said on Monday.
Mary Robinson, who was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, said the United States caused harm with some of the ways it responded.
WASHINGTON - Even as Americans struggle with two wars and an economy in tatters, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds majorities in favor of investigating some of the thorniest unfinished business from the Bush administration: Whether its tactics in the "war on terror" broke the law.
BBC - March 11, 2004:
Powerful
explosions have torn through three Madrid train stations during the
morning rush hour, with latest reports speaking of 173 people killed.
Near simultaneous blasts hit Atocha station in the centre of the Spanish capital and two smaller stations.
Guardian - March 15, 2004 (4 days later):
It's a sore temptation to hunt down Osama bin Laden - one of the most consistent campaign promises made by President Obama - and yet there are strong arguments against it. U.S. forces would have to penetrate deep into provincial Pakistan and perhaps even conduct house-to-house searches. Such incursions would destabilize Pakistan's already shaky regime and inflame the extremist element. More troops would have to be committed to the Afghanistan war zone, with no positive outcome in sight.
WASHINGTON - The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.
But even while dismantling these discredited programs, President Barack Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool intact.
Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.
Torture victim Maher Arar says he was shocked when he learned earlier this month that Pentagon war crimes prosecutors had linked him to a terrorist safe house in Afghanistan through an interrogation of Omar Khadr in Guantanamo Bay.
"It was shocking," Arar said last night before a panel discussion about media coverage of his case was held at the University of Toronto's Victoria College. "For a week at least, I have been in deep depression mode and it's not easy, believe me it's not easy," Arar said.
Last week, shortly after being inaugurated, President Barack Obama ended the "global war on terror" (GWOT). Or so The Washington Post reported.
The new president countermanded the Bush administration's extralegal
approaches by mandating the closure of Guantánamo within a year,
outlawing the use of torture in interrogations, and putting the CIA out
of the secret prisons business.
Somewhere deep inside the authoritarian minds of the ultra right-wingers, the fear, helplessness and paranoia that have always been so evident have reached the boiling point. For them, Obama's election and, perhaps even more so, the sight of him standing on the Capitol steps and taking the oath of office, have brought home a grim truth. They have tried to deny it for many years now, but America is not what they think it is.
The latest fear-mongering campaign in the U.S. -- this one devoted to scaring Americans that they will be slaughtered if Guantanamo is closed and Terrorism suspects are brought into the U.S.
KABUL - Barack Obama's pledges to step up pressure on militant safe havens in Pakistan and to boost troop numbers in Afghanistan have raised hopes in government for a new tack in the war against extremists.
But many ordinary Afghans do not expect to see real change from the incoming Democratic administration after seven years of US intervention in which a Taliban-led insurgency has only grown.
