US Answers To UN On Torture
The US has defended its treatment of suspects detained in its "war on terror", telling a UN committee that it considers the use of torture as wrong.
US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Barry Lowenkron told the Committee Against Torture in Geneva that US law prohibited such practices.
Senior US officials are testifying before the committee for the first time since the 11 September 2001 attacks.
Rights groups accuse the US of flouting the UN Convention against Torture.
They say the US allows the torture and inhumane treatment of foreign terror suspects at their detention centres around the world, including Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
This's all well and good. It'll be great if the US honestly responds to the requests for information about secret prisons and who're being held and where. These are things many people have wanted to know ever since info about the secret prisons was first uncovered.
However, I'd like to know why the UN needs to do this. Why is Bushco answering these questions in Geneva and not Washington DC? Once the reports started appearing about secret prisons, rendition and kidnapping, Congress should have initiated inquiries. We should have cleaned up our own house and not forced the UN to get involved.