They just got a different tool to use than we do: They kill innocent lives to achieve objectives. That's what they do. And they're good. They get on the TV screens and they get people to ask questions about, well, you know, this, that or the other. I mean, they're able to kind of say to people: Don't come and bother us, because we will kill you. Bush - Joint News Conference with Blair - 28 July '06

Saturday, March 05, 2005

China's report attacks US record in Iraq, Afghanistan

XINHUAonline: The atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the infringement of human rights of foreign nationals by the United States, according to the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2004.

The report, released by the Information Office of China's State Council on Thursday, said that according to US media like the Newsweek and the Washington Post, as early as several years ago, in US forces' prisons in Afghanistan, interrogators used various kinds of torture tools for acquiring confession, causing many deaths.

.....The report said, to avoid international scrutiny, the United States keeps under wraps half of its 20-odd detention centers worldwide which are holding terrorist suspects. And at least seven US-controlled clandestine prisons, one of which dubbed "inferno," in Afghanistan, have not been kept within the bounds of law.

In a report by the Human Rights First on 24 US secret interrogation centers, these secret facilities are believed to "make inappropriate detention and abuse not only likely but virtually inevitable," the report quoted a British newspaper, the Times, as saying.

The US military spending has kept shooting up, with its fiscal 2005 defense budget hitting a historical high of 422 billion US dollars, an increase of 21 billion dollars over fiscal 2004, according to the report.

As the biggest arms dealer in the world, the United States has made a fortune out of war. Its transactions of conventional weapons exceeded 14.5 billion dollars in 2003, up 900 million dollars year-on-year and accounting for 56.7 percent of the total sales worldwide. The Iraq War has been "a helping straw" to the US economic development, the report said.

The report points out that the United States frequently commits wanton slaughters during external invasions and military attacks. Statistics from the health department of the interim Iraqi government show 3,487 people, including 328 women and children, have been killed and another 13,720 injured in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces between April 15 and Sept. 19 in 2004. Link