inside the glass house

And what will the US say about human rights now?

NEW YORK - A joke doing the rounds in Washington is that Saddam Hussein's once notorious torture chamber in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad -- once held up as a symbol of barbarity -- was never shut down. An American signboard outside the prison chamber now reads: "Under New Management". That is, US management.

The torturers may be different but the instruments of torture are perhaps the same -- and maybe more refined.

The harrowing television images of US soldiers brutalizing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners -- aired worldwide last week -- have triggered outrage not only in the Middle East but also throughout the far corners of the world.

The US, which actively participates in an annual ritual bashing countries like Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, Sudan and Myanmar at the Human Rights Commission in Geneva and at the General Assembly sessions in New York, has lost its moral authority to point an accusing finger at miscreants when its own backyard is stinking to high heaven.

The extent of the Bush administration's embarrassment is evident in the fact that it was forced to postpone the release of the State Department's annual report on country-by-country human rights abuses.

The report takes virtually every country -- including Sri Lanka -- to task for human rights violations while keeping its own abuses outside its pages.

No one is jumping to the defence of serial human rights violators -- be it North Korea or Myanmar-- but the question now being asked is: Can the US afford to take a holier-than-thou attitude when it beats up the rest of the world every year in its annual State Department report?

Even the New York Times was constrained to admit in its editorial Friday that "the United States has been humiliated to a point where government officials could not release this year's international human rights report this week for fear of being scoffed at by the rest of the world."

"Being scoffed at" is perhaps an understatement. For the State Department, the timing could not have been worse, lest the Bush administration be rightfully accused of not practising what it preaches to the outside world.

The photographs and television images, that have triggered outrage around the world, include those of young Iraqis stripped naked and forced to pile-up in a pyramid formation while US soldiers were seen grinning at the hideous spectacle.

According to published reports, Iraqi detainees were also beaten up, tortured, threatened with rape and victimized by ferocious guard dogs. Even bodies are now being exhumed to ascertain the cause of death either at the hands of military or CIA interrogators.

Although the Human Rights Commission holds its major session only once a year, the Third Committee and the General Assembly take up the question of human rights violations in individual countries every year.

Since there are no Western nations singled out for attack, these year-end resolutions have been described as exercises in "third world bashing."

Even if no country dares to sponsor a resolution challenging US human rights violations in Iraq, Washington's usual criticism of violators may be scaled down by the fact that its own hands are soiled.

Speaking to UN reporters last week, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the photos of US atrocities had "stunned every American". "It showed acts that are despicable," he added.

Bush, who publicly apologized for the growing scandal, went on several Arabic television networks to say he was "appalled" by the abuses.

But the US president was momentarily taken aback when one of the Arab interviewers told him that many Arabs believe that the Bush administration is no better than the government of former President Saddam Hussein, which it reviled.

"I think the people in the Middle East who want to dislike America will use this as an excuse to remind people about their dislike," Bush said.

"Internationally, there is little US credibility on human rights issues," says Phyllis Bennis of the Institute of Policy Studies in Washington.

She attributes the lack of US credibility to two primary factors: "the blatantly political motives of human rights criticisms (largely ignoring abuses in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and especially protecting Israel from the consequences of its human rights violations), and because of US denials in the past of its own human rights abuses".

The atrocities committed in Iraq would usually warrant charges of war crimes against the US in the newly-created International Criminal Court in the Hague.

But perhaps sensing such a problem -- and conscious of the tactics of US forces abroad -- the Bush administration took the precautionary step of refusing to be a party to the treaty that created the criminal court. And so, for all intents and purposes, it goes scot-free.

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