In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Get Your War On's Uzbekikitty wants to remind us that the US still is making some nasty friends:
Uzbekistan: Muslim Dissidents Jailed and Tortured
Government Pursues Religious Persecution in the Name of Counterterrorism
(Tashkent, March 30, 2004)—The Uzbek government has arrested and tortured thousands of nonviolent Muslim dissidents who practice their faith outside state-controlled religion, Human Rights Watch said today in a report on this campaign of religious persecution.
The 319-page report, "Creating Enemies of the State: Religious Persecution in Uzbekistan," details the arrest and torture of detainees in an ongoing campaign that has resulted in the incarceration of an estimated 7,000 Muslim dissidents. The government's targets are independent Muslims who practice their faith outside state-run mosques and madrassas or beyond the strict controls set out by the government's laws on religion.
"The Uzbek government is conducting a merciless campaign against peaceful Muslim dissidents," said Rachel Denber, acting executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division. "The scale and brutality of the operations against independent Muslims make it clear that these are part of a concerted and tightly-orchestrated campaign of religious persecution."
Just last month, a 62-year-old woman, Fatima Mukhadirova, was convicted on charges of religious extremism after she had spoken out about the torture and death of her son in custody. Her son, imprisoned for "religious extremism," died in prison in August 2002 after he was apparently submerged in boiling water. Mukhadirova was released following international outcry. But police raids and arrests continue unabated and at least 26 independent Muslims have been convicted since January.
A quick aside here: If someone says you have to break some eggs to make an omlette I will puke. What the hell does that mean?
We can't support bad people or bad policies just because they may help us fight a war against terrorists. That is part of the reason why we're in this war in the first place. Bin Laden is CIA trained and received US funding in the early eighties, and we were fine with that when his enemy was the Soviet Union, but his religious views were just as extreme back then.
Not only was Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam back in the eighties (after he "killed his own people," which by the way I hear is the one of the new reasons we are at war now... but under Reagan we were cool with that?), but in 1959 Saddam too was trained by the CIA.
In both cases we made friends with people we shouldn't have because they were against (somewhat) the Soviet Union. Now we are making friends we shouldn't be making friends with because they are (at least publicly) against terrorism.
To be ignorant of history is to repeat it. Luckily we have a President that could never be considered ignorant of any subject (now if one was to say every subject...).
- rob 2:23 PM - [PermaLink] -
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