AMNESTY INTL. OPPOSES STOPPING TERRORISM

Once again, Amnesty International shows why it's otherwise just a criminal organization that tolerates crime:

LONDON (AP) - The United States is treating the globe like a giant battlefield in its war on terrorism, eroding rights worldwide, a leading human rights group said Wednesday.

Amnesty International's Secretary-General Irene Khan said the United States and its allies' behavior was setting a destructive example for other nations, and that other countries were using the war on terror as an excuse to violate human rights and stifle dissent.

"One of the biggest blows to human rights has been the attempt of Western democratic states to roll back some fundamental principles of human rights - like the prohibition of torture," Khan told The Associated Press, speaking before the launch of her organization's annual report on the global state of human rights.

While Amnesty International has highlighted rights issues that have erupted since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, little of the 337-page report dealt with the terrorist threat itself or attacks linked to the al-Qaida terror network.

The report condemned the United States' response to international terrorism, saying it had done little to reduce the threat, while deepening mistrust between Muslims and non-Muslims and undermining the rule of law. The Bush administration's policy of extraordinary rendition - the alleged practice of secretly flying terror suspects to countries where they could be tortured - came in for particularly scathing condemnation.

"The U.S. administration's double speak has been breathtakingly shameless," the report said. "It is unrepentant about the global web of abuse it has spun in the name of counterterrorism."

In Washington, Deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the report reads more like a political document than an honest review of human rights around the world.

"It's pretty clear that Amnesty International thought that we'd make a convenient ideological punching bag," he said.

Yeah, and look who's crying "double-speak", none other than Amnesty! They also make no distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims, voicing endless moral equivalence, and they should be shunned as the phonies they are.