WHAT WE'VE LOST BECAUSE OF FREDO & THE GOP

CREDIBILITY

One example:

Bush astounds activists, supports human rights
By William Douglas McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tuesday, September 25, 2007

UNITED NATIONS — President Bush implored the United Nations on Tuesday to recommit itself to restoring human decency by liberating oppressed people and ending famine and disease.

Bush didn't mention the U.S. prisons in Afghanistan or at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. practice of holding detainees for years without legal charges or access to lawyers, or the CIA's "rendition" kidnappings of suspects abroad, all issues of concern to human rights activists around the world.

"At first read, it's little more than an exercise in hypocrisy. His words about human rights ring hollow because his credibility is nonexistent," said Curt Goering, the deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA. "The gap between the rhetoric and the actual record is stunning. I can't help but believe many people in the audience were thinking, 'What was this man thinking?' "

"I believe the president should be championing human rights at the U.N., but he's lost his authority and credibility as a world leader because of his policies on rendition and Guantanamo," said Tom Malinowski, the advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "His remarks would be more effective if the U.S. was practicing what it's preaching."