Trouble for Bush's Ally

Guest: cntodd

My fellow guest blogger Hilzoy noted earlier the violent government crackdown on protestors in Uzbekistan. The situation is horrific.

President Islam Karimov is of course one of President Bush’s allies in the so-called “war on terror.” Yet since the uprising on Wednesday, Karimov has run his own campaign of terror.

Karimov branded the protestors as “criminals” and “extremists,” sending his military out to suppress them. The government’s own media/propaganda machine started broadcasting false reports that that these “extremist” protestors were using women and children as “human shields” when in fact Karimov’s military was actually massacring women and children in the street.

And in order to prevent reports from getting out, Karimov blocked international television signals of CNN and the BBC.

The situation is atrocious, but President Bush knew all along that Karimov did not respect human rights. The former British ambassador to Uzbekistan testified that the Uzbek interrogation process included downing, rape, suffocation, and yes, the boiling of victims. Yet the CIA and the U.S. military have special permission to take prisoners of the “war on terror” to Uzbekistan precisely because such methods are used. And Karomov’s autocratic government receives hundreds of millions of dollars each year in U.S. tax payer money.

Enough is enough.

Also, read an eye-witness report of the government violence.

[X-posted at Freiheit und Wissen]

Comments

[revere]

And after you read Hilzoy's post and Charles's, take a look at your leaders cavorting with Herr Karimov here.

[The Green Knight]

Karimov is a freak and a megalomaniac. He's a far scarier dictator than Saddam Hussein ever was, yet Dubya thinks he's just dandy. Feh.

[Troutsky]

Bush and Condi prance around the globe stirring up passions and promising support with no clue of the tragic consequences.Students were gunned down in Afgahnistan and we are told it is a great example of democracy at work. Their hypocracy and irresposibility know no bounds.When capital penetration (and Condi in her black spike heels is the perfect metaphore)runs up against democracy, capital trumps every time.

[vanmojo]

Show of hands... who here is honestly surprised and shocked that the current administration has dealings with this guy?

There have been reports floating around for at least a year that Karimov was some kind of low-rent James Bond villian. There were some pictures that made the rounds of the internet not long back purporting to be of victims of Karimov's cooperation in the War-On-Terror® including really horriific images that seem to be of people boiled to death during interrogation.

Who's side are we on again?

mojo sends

[Alex]

I know I am going to get beat on for this...

Interrogation is a fact of conflict, knowledge is power, and must be exploited. Until there is a drug that causes no harm, and makes someone talk, we are stuck with the fact that interrogations will happen.

http://www.nationalreview.com/babbin/babbin200312040845.asp

Seeing as I have no clue as to how to link, copy, paste, and please read the above incident. Lt. Col. West's Interrogation, and the results, and lives saved...

Would you have done it, or let the assassinations continue? How many of your own people can you let die before you ask with the aid of fear?