Land of the Free?

Not to get too doom-and-gloomy here but a pair of reports seem to be telling us that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. About a month ago Freedom House issued a press release on their recent study of freedom of the press across the world. Care to guess where the US fell in? I'll give you a hint: we beat out Australia, France and the UK BUT Germany, Portugal, Ireland, New Zealand, and all of Scandanavia were ranked above us. In all 28 other countries were deemed to have a freer press then the United States. That's right, the country who's birth was midwived by Thomas Payne's Common Sense is number 29 in the world.

How did we fall from greatness? Freedom House explains in their press release:

While the United States remained one of the strongest performers in the survey, its numerical score declined due to a number of legal cases in which prosecutors sought to compel journalists to reveal sources or turn over notes or other material they had gathered in the course of investigations. Additionally, doubts concerning official influence over media content emerged with the disclosures that several political commentators received grants from federal agencies, and that the Bush administration had significantly increased the practice of distributing government-produced news segments.

Well, we're still considered "free" but it is clear that we've moved in the wrong direction and should expect better of ourselves.

But we're still the standard bearer of human rights in the world, right? Well...once again we see some "slippage". Amnesty International cites a decline of human rights worldwide and the US (perhaps, again, because we have so far to fall) is leading the charge. In a CNN.com article today, AI's Secretary General Irene Khan said in the foreword to their 2005 annual report,
"When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity." Additionally, she noted, "The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law."

According to the CNN.com article, the report declares, "U.S. President George W. Bush often said his country was founded on and dedicated to the cause of human dignity -- but there was a gulf between rhetoric and reality." A gulf between rhetoric and reality? Isn't that the motto of the neo-cons?

The Other Shoe Goes Kerplop

File this one under "See? I told you so!" That tired, last line of defense of the Bushies that their intel on Iraq's weapons program was bad finally falls by the wayside thanks to the The Sunday Times of Britain. Last week they printed a secret memo by Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide to Tony Blair. The smoke from this "gun" looks something like this...

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
[emphasis mine]

This memo is dated July 23, 2002. You may recall that the Iraq War, Part II, started in March 2003. So, for over six months before Bush issued his ultimatum he had already decided to go to war. He had been sworn in office just six months prior. Apparently the Project for the New American Century folks (at the time Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz) had attached their strings to Puppet Bush. Giving lip service to peaceable solutions was part of the plan to maneuver support for force.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.
[again, emphasis mine]

Yeah, I know: what else is new, huh? But it is not so much that this is really news to those of us left in the reign of Bush II. The point is that now we have concrete support to knock down the last pillar of "justification" for the US Invasion of Iraq used by our right-leaning friends. Long before the war began we knew, we knew Saddam did not have WMDs and was not a belligerant threat to his neighbors, but the neo-cons weren't going to let a little thing like facts and legality stop them.
And now over 1500 American soldiers are dead (I don't have the numbers on lost mercenaries contractors) along with over ten times that number of Iraqis. America's stature in the world has plumetted to the point where even our friends often shun us and Tony Blair took a domestic political hit for his support of the US. The national debt, which was a surplus when W took office, has been and is being pissed away at a rate of hundreds of millions each day.
All this...and for what? For what? It was a sham to begin with but to what end? Oil? There's no more oil flowing out of the MidEast that before. Stability? Don't make me laugh. Removing a potential threat from the northern border of our "friends" the Saudis? Hmm...

Is Your Democracy in Trouble?

Freedom House is a well-respected worldwide democracy watchdog. Founded by Eleanor Roosevelt among others it describes itself as

Non-partisan and broad-based, Freedom House is led by a Board of Trustees composed of leading Democrats, Republicans, and independents; business and labor leaders; former senior government officials; scholars; writers; and journalists. All are united in the view that American leadership in international affairs is essential to the cause of human rights and freedom.
...It has championed the rights of democratic activists, religious believers, trade unionists, journalists, and proponents of free markets.

...Today, Freedom House is a leading advocate of the world's young democracies, which are coping with the debilitating legacy of statism, dictatorship, and political repression. It conducts an array of U.S. and overseas research, advocacy, education, and training initiatives that promote human rights, democracy, free market economics, the rule of law, independent media, and U.S. engagement in international affairs.

Sounds like a nice bunch of kids. In a recent report which warns us about the collapse of freedoms in Russia, they outlined six warning signs that give them cause for their concern:

The latest reports detail:
• The concentration of political and economic power in the hands of a corrupt elite that puts personal gain above the public good.
  
• The elimination of genuine political competition in the country's electoral processes.
  
• The creation of an atmosphere of fear in which the media and civil society risk reprisals for independent actions and unsanctioned attitudes.
  
• The entrenchment of a judicial and law enforcement system that is rife with political manipulation and corruption.
  
• The stifling of entrepreneurialism and foreign investment in the face of weak enforcement of contracts and property rights.
  
• The failure to achieve a political resolution to the war in Chechnya and the resulting escalation of terrorism and extremism.

Hmm..."concentration of political and economic power"?...like say Dick Cheney & Haliburton?...Duke Energy, Enron and the Bush Administration?...the GOP & Diebold?...
Hmm..."creation of an atmosphere of fear in which the media...risk reprisals for...unsanctioned attitudes"?...like when members of the White House Press Corps lose their priveleges after asking the President difficult or politically embarrassing questions?...conversely "Jeff Gannon" being given extraordinary access in order to pitch softballs...
Hmm..."entrenchment of a judicial...system that is rife with political manipulation and corruption"?...anyone remember the unprecidented ruling of the Supreme Court in a little case known as Gore v Bush? Since when does the SC say essentially "this is our ruling for this case alone but don't base any future rulings upon this"?...the Administration trying to force through unqualified jurists into federal judgeships...
Hmm..."stifling of entrepreneurialism and foreign investment"...now just who was and was not allowed to bid on contracts to help rebuild Iraq?...
Hmm..."failure to achieve a political resolution to the war in Chechnya and the resulting escalation of terrorism and extremism."...meanwhile Iraq is just peachy, isn't it?

Now, in no way would I ever say that freedom in the US is any near as curtailed as in Russia. But, isn't it sadly telling that we even see so many parallels? Shouldn't we be practically polar opposites to the currupt Putin government in Russia? And if this is the direction countries take as the Ship of Democracy heads for the rocks, then we need some different folks up on the bridge.