PDA

View Full Version : Bush not worried about anything in DC



LoungeMachine
06-01-2005, 12:00 AM
Bush calls human rights group report `absurd allegation'

BY MARK SILVA

Chicago Tribune


WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Making a forceful defense of America's handling of terrorism detainees, President Bush on Tuesday dismissed the claim of a human rights group that the United States is operating a network of gulag-style prisons as "an absurd allegation."

Bush rejected Amnesty International's contention in its recent annual report of human rights abuses worldwide and suggested instead that allegations about American mistreatment of detainees are coming from the detainees themselves, "people who hate America.

"The United States is a country that ... promotes freedom around the world," Bush said at a news conference in the Rose Garden, issuing a vehement rejection of the comparison of American camps with the infamous gulags of the former Soviet Union.

"When there's accusations made about certain actions by our people, they're fully investigated in a transparent way. It's just an absurd allegation."

The president's news conference, his fifth such solo appearance before the news media in the first five months of his second term, comes amidst widening criticism of U.S. handling of combatants in the war on terror and other suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at American military bases and prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Human rights advocates rejected Bush's attack on their methods.

"In the face of all this evidence, to try to dismiss this with a wave of the hand is really to fail in one's public duty," Bill Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in response to Bush's comments.

The president's stepped-up schedule of televised appearances also comes as his job approval is slipping in recent opinion polls. In the newest Gallup Poll, released last week, 46 percent of Americans surveyed on May 20-22 voiced approval for Bush's job performance - close to the lowest rating of his term, 45 percent, in March.

Yet the president expressed unbending optimism that his troubled second-term agenda - ranging from an overhaul of Social Security to the securing of a government in Iraq that is able to defend itself against a deadly insurgency - eventually will succeed.





"I don't worry about anything here in Washington, D.C," Bush said.



"I mean, I feel comfortable in my role as the president, and my role as the president is to push for reform. The American people appreciate a president who sees a problem and is willing to put it on the table."

The president called on Congress to advance his domestic agenda and repeatedly insisted that he is undaunted by lack of support for his Social Security plans.

"It's like water cutting through a rock," Bush said. "It's just a matter of time."

At the same time, he accused Senate Democrats of "another stall tactic" in the delayed confirmation vote on John Bolton, Bush's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations.

"I'd call it - thus far, it's a stall - stall headed toward filibuster, I guess."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid voiced willingness to work on the president's energy bill and other goals but attempted to turn the blame on Republicans for the rifts plaguing Congress.

"For months, Washington Republicans have used their power to pursue the goals of right-wing activists, while Democrats have focused on a reform agenda that meets the challenges facing the American people," said Reid, D-Nev., citing a higher minimum wage, lower prescription drug costs and stem cell research as planks of the Democratic agenda.

Bush saved his testiest objections for Amnesty International's attack on the Guantanamo operation and other American-run detention camps.

Allegations relayed by American lawyers who have interviewed detainees at Guantanamo include reports of mistreatment of the Quran, Islam's holy book, as a tactic in interrogation, reports which the military dismisses as unsubstantiated and which the White House has blamed for inciting deadly protests in Afghanistan.

In a telephone interview, Amnesty International's Schulz defended his organization's methodology for human rights monitoring.

"The administration has never found Amnesty International absurd when we have exposed Saddam Hussein's violations," Schulz said. "And they have never found us absurd when we criticized Cuba, North Korea or China.

"I don't want to get into a semantic argument with the president about the use of the word `gulag,' but the truth is, there is an archipelago of detention facilities being used by the U.S. from Guantanamo to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. In those facilities, detainees are being detained without access to lawyers. ... And they are in some cases being mistreated."

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an interview on CBS News' Face the Nation on Sunday, said, "We've had about 68,000 detainees. We've had 325 investigations into allegations of mistreatment of detainees. One hundred of those have come back substantiated. ... And action has been taken in 100 cases where people have either been court-martialed, if it's been very serious, like death, or if it's minor, then it may be a (lesser) punishment."

Bush said that "it seemed like to me (Amnesty International) based some of their decisions on the word of - and the allegations - by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to dissemble - that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report."

Amnesty International's Schulz replied: "Amnesty always looks for patterns of behavior. We never take the word of one or two people, and when we receive independent reports from dozens of people or their families or their representatives. ... When all of this fits a pattern, then Amnesty believes it can reach some reasonable conclusions."

---

© 2005, Chicago Tribune.

Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.


email this print this







News | Business | Sports | Entertainment | Living/FYI | Shop Local | Classifieds | Jobs | Cars | Homes
About KansasCity.com | About the Real Cities Network | Terms of Use & Privacy Statement | About Knight Ridder | Copyright

"I don't worry about anything here in Washington, D.C," Bush said.