Report: U.S. war on terror "extremely damaging" to human rights

[enough]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=492130

US terror laws 'damage human rights'
By Kim Sengupta
17 February 2004

The United States' "war on terror" has been "extremely damaging" for human rights, and has been used as an excuse by totalitarian regimes to impose oppressive laws, a leading think tank said yesterday.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), traditionally viewed as an establishment body, concluded in a report that issues such as Guantanamo Bay mean that Washington can no longer "assume a high moral position".

Countries such as Pakistan and Uzbekistan have brought in so-called anti-terrorist laws insisting that they are not much different to the Patriot Act enacted by the Bush administration, said the report's author, Professor Rosemary Foot.

snip>

Last month the IISS said it had commissioned a new study to reassess its findings. Yesterday's report, ''Human Rights and Counter-terrorism in America's Asia Policy", examined the effect of US support for human rights in five countries seen as being in the front line against Islamic terrorism - Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and China.

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[snippy]

1. For republicans, the best part about this is that War on Terra

will never end. Bush and Cheney like to say that it will last for generations, but even that is a lie. Someone needs to demand that Bush define "victory" in his biblical war.

[Brian Sweat]

2. This report should be filed under "D" for Duh.