the good terrorist
Bush Administration officials, so strident when promoting liberation through regime change in Iraq, Ukraine and, ironically, when Islamists overthrew the democratically-elected Kyrgyz president–have downplayed the Uzbek massacre. “After 9/11,” explains Newsweek, “the Bush administration established a strategic partnership with Karimov, plunking down $500 million for a military base in southern Uzbekistan in preparation for operations in Afghanistan and paying $60 million or more a year in military aid and training.”
The Bushies were aware of Karimov’s horrific record back in 2001. That year’s Human Rights Watch report on Uzbekistan put its “conservative estimate” of Uzbek political prisoners at 7,000. According to HRW: “Prison guards systematically beat prisoners with wooden and rubber truncheons and exacted particularly harsh punishment on those convicted on religious charges, subjecting them to additional beatings…Torture remained endemic in pretrial custody as well.” George W. Bush didn’t mind. He accorded Karimov all the honors of a full state visit to the White House shortly thereafter.
How can the United States claim to be fighting a war on terrorism when its biggest allies are terrorists themselves?
Ted Rall, Yahoo (read more. . .)