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There is psychological projection in this kind of thinking about the US War On Terror. The extreme irony is that the US is justifying killing of innocent civilians by the thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq, the use of torture in interrogations, unending imprisonment without access to courts, etc., as "human rights activities justified and acceptable," while we wage our war against terrorists. We are doing the very activities we condemn "terrorists" for promoting. And of course it will immediately be asserted that the difference between the US abuses against and killing of innocent civilians, and the terrorist's killing of innocents, is that the terrorists target civilians deliberately, while the US sponsored war activities that result in the death or abuse of civilians are "collateral" or "accidental." <BR>
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But in fact, because we have removed many of the human rights protections that the Geneva convention and other international agreements outline, we are killing or abusing innocents with more deliberate intentionality, and with more horrific methods, than is usually portrayed by US propaganda. You can't engage in the military actions, the broad roundups and imprisonment of civilians to catch "insurgents," conducted in Iraq, without sufficient human rights protections, and not know that you are hurting a lot of innocent people. Many Iraqis imprisoned and abused at Abu Ghraib were innocent civilians.<BR>
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Another example of US human rights abuses is the US use of napalm against human beings, banned by international agreement, in the prosecution of the war in Iraq. We hardly hear any comment about this in the media, but it is well documented we have used napalm against human beings in the invasion, and perhaps even during the recent siege of Fallujah. If you think burning someone to death using a weapon that is so horrible it has been banned, is not a human rights violation, then discussions of "human rights" have broken down pitiably.<BR>
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<A HREF="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4395.htm">http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4395.htm</A><BR>
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<A HREF="http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=14920109&method=full&siteid=106694&headline=fallujah-napalmed-name_page.html">http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=14920109&method=full&siteid=106694&headline=fallujah-napalmed-name_page.html</A><BR>
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Ted Moffett </FONT></HTML>