AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL ACCUSES U.S. OF RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

For this alone, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be impeached.

"It is difficult to believe," Mr. Cox said, "that the United States government, which once considered itself as an exemplar of human rights, has sacrificed its most fundamental principle by abusing prisoners as a matter of policy, by 'disappearing' detainees into a network of secret prisons, and by abducting and sending people for interrogation to countries that practice torture, such as Egypt, Syria and Morocco."

An overwhelming repudiation of the Rethuglicans in Congress in the midterm elections and an aggressive Democratic majority immediately enacting sweeping legislation compelling BushCo to reverse its extra-legal policies of torture, rendition and holding prisoners without resource to the courts, might persuade the world that the U.S. is reasserting its formerly recognized moral authority on human rights. But it'll take time and a huge and sustained commitment on the part of a new U.S. government to achieve. Bush and Cheney have destroyed in a matter of a few years the perception of our beloved nation as a beacon of "truth, justice and the American way."

Tags: Bush administration, Amnesty International, military contractors