Hell, it violates our OWN laws.

From Yahoo News...
By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. human rights chief called on the United States on Friday to close down the Guantanamo prison camp, saying the indefinite imprisonment of many detainees without charge or trial violated international law.

Navi Pillay said the hunger strike being staged by some inmates at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in southeastern Cuba was a "desperate act" but "scarcely surprising".

"We must be clear about this: the United States is in clear breach not just of its own commitments but also of international laws and standards that it is obliged to uphold," the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement.

U.S. President Barack Obama pledged four years ago to close the controversial facility, opened by the Bush administration in January 2002 to hold men captured in counter-terrorism operations after the deadly September 11 attacks on America.

Pillay voiced deep disappointment at the U.S. government's failure to close Guantanamo despite its repeated commitments, but welcomed comments by a White House spokesman last week reiterating the intention to do so while citing congressional legislation as the prime obstacle.

About half of the current 166 detainees have been cleared for transfer either to home countries or third countries for resettlement, Pillay said. "As a first step, those who have been cleared for release must be released," she said.

Bush Would Sell Out Anyone

I just watched a swearing-in ceremony on CNN in which Barack Obama promised a greater openness and higher standards of honesty in his administration. Once again I felt renewed and fresh and hopeful about my government. Man, I do like this guy.

But just after that I arrived at the computer to continue making a few posts and I saw something else on Bush from a few days ago that just made me roll my eyes back into my head and offer a silent thank you that he's gone. He had no ethical standards - he'd sell out his mother to the devil if he thought it would further his own political ends.

Check this out, from Yahoo News...

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.

"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

Bush Speech

Not in this reality, but it is a speech you WISH you would hear from President Bush speaking in front of the UN General Assembly...

UN Bashing

These do not reflect my sentiments - I believe the world would be worse off without the UN - but someone felt that the following needed to be posted somewhere.

The UN on Iran

Foreign Policy Flow Chart

Bolton Re-Nominated

From JTA breaking news

President Bush re-nominated John Bolton, a strong supporter of Israel, as ambassador to the United Nations.

Bush submitted the nomination to the Senate on Thursday, two days after Bolton’s most serious opponent, Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), lost his re-election bid.

The nomination would have to be considered during the Senate’s lame duck session in December, when Chafee — a Republican who was strongly opposed to Israeli settlement policy and opposed Bolton because of the ambassador’s closeness to Israel — is still in the Senate.

Additionally, the Senate rarely considers nominations during lame duck sessions.

One can presume that President Bush, in continuing to push for Bolton's re-appointment to the position of U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. considered all of the following criteria...

1. John Bolton is certainly no more qualified than most of Bush's other appointees, for example, Michael Brown as head of FEMA. ; John should fit tight in with all of the other inept appointees connected to the Bush administration.

2. Bolton will not have any vested interest in the U.N., especially since he has proclaimed that he would like to see the organization dismantled.

3. In case of a world-wide famine brought on by global-warming that's not actually happening, Ambassador Bolton will be able to outlast most other ambassadors to the U.N. by storing vast quantities of food in his retro-moustache.

Good Christian That He Is

From the Delco Times - read more here...

For the fifth year in a row, President Bush has overruled Congress to withhold U.S. funding from UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. The reason this year is the charge from certain religious groups that the family planning agency is linked to coerced abortions in China. Action or inaction from the administration have now cost programs helping poor women around the world a total of $161 million.