The Bush administration is struggling to develop a damage-control strategy to counter the mounting global backlash against the United States after revelations that U.S. military and intelligence personnel abused Iraqi prisoners, according to U.S. officials. The search for a strong response follows a review of international reaction by the State Department's Intelligence and Research Department that revealed devastating fallout and criticism well beyond the Islamic world, from Brazil and Britain to Hong Kong, U.S. officials said. [...] The effort to produce a convincing explanation of what happened at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison comes as the State Department prepares to release its annual report accounting for how the United States supports human rights and democracy around the world. The report is due out Wednesday.
Ah. The anvil of irony is especially heavy today, it would seem.
Only ... if the report is due out Wednesday, then what's this here, then?
On February 25, 2004, Secretary Powell held a special briefing to announce the release of the 2003 Human Rights Reports. Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Lorne W. Craner, also spoke and held a question-and-answer session.
The report entitled "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" is submitted to the Congress by the Department of State in compliance with sections 116(d) and 502B(b) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (FAA), as amended, and section 504 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended. The law provides that the Secretary of State shall transmit to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, by February 25 "a full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights, within the meaning of subsection (A) in countries that receive assistance under this part, and (B) in all other foreign countries which are members of the United Nations and which are not otherwise the subject of a human rights report under this Act." We have also included reports on several countries that do not fall into the categories established by these statutes and that thus are not covered by the congressional requirement.
Surely State doesn't do the report twice in a year? The above linked report was delivered to Congress earlier this year, it seems. Either someone somewhere was mistaken, or someone at State decided to steal a march on the public and put the report up early. (That "February 25, 2004" date does seem to be an actual release date, doesn't it?)
Date of release aside, there seems to be sufficient irony to go around, these days.
The Bush administration's plan to use military tribunals to try some of the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which has faced considerable skepticism, has been receiving some of its sharpest attacks from the military defense lawyers who are participating in the process. Senior government planners once expected that the first of the prisoners to go before a tribunal would plead guilty as part of an agreement to reduce their jail time. But the five military lawyers assigned to defend the first group of prisoners have radically altered that hope, the officials now acknowledge.
The uniformed lawyers have been especially forceful, not only in asserting their clients' innocence but also in denouncing the tribunal system as inherently unfair and rigged. [...] Last month, an audience at Oxford University in England was stunned, witnesses said, when two of the lawyers, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift of the Navy and Maj. Mark Bridges of the Army, said the tribunals were not capable of producing a fair and just result. [...] The day before the Oxford event, Maj. Michael Mori of the Marines, another defense lawyer, said at a London news conference, "The system is not set up to provide even the appearance of a fair trial." [...] Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, who was a judge in the Air Force until being assigned to defend a Sudanese detainee, said she had told audiences of her "great concerns about whether he can receive a fair trial with rules that are written that are twisted against the defense." Like the other defense lawyers, she was critical of rules requiring that motions do not go to the panel of judges "but to the same officer who approved the charges in the first place." [...] Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel of the Navy, one of the lawyers, has complained that the tribunal process lacks the needed checks and balances to be fair. [...] Last month, Commander Swift filed the first lawsuit on behalf of a detainee directly challenging the military tribunal system. It asserts that the Bush administration's plans for his client violate the Constitution, federal law and the nation's obligations under the Geneva Conventions.
To be sure, it's the job of the defense to do all they can for their client. However ... depending on how you define your terms, the defense in this country very rarely attacks the system itself as the problem. They may say that there are problems with the jury selection process, that the prosecution is either malicious or corrupt, that there were problems with how the judge handled the case, that an earlier defense lawyer was incompetent ... but they very rarely say, "This system cannot produce a fair trial." And when your defense lawyers are saying this publicly and repeatedly, when it doesn't particularly matter how they influence public opinion, when there's no jury pool to contaminate, then that would indicate a seriously damaged system. The problem with these tribunals, from the admininistration's point of view, is not that they need to be fair in and of themselves -- the administration couldn't give a rat's ass if the tribunals actually are fair, as long as they get the results they want from them. The administration's problem is that they need to be seen to be fair, so that people here and abroad will have confidence that the administration isn't running a set of kangaroo courts. Since kangaroo courts are pretty much exactly what the administration had in mind, this is going to lead to some problems, and yet more human rights violations charges leveled against us. All richly deserved.
Posted by iain at May 04, 2004 05:31 PM
