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Hague warns Bush over US 'moral defeat' as Tories seek to mend ties
By Alec Russell in Washington (Filed: 17/02/2006)
William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, made a calculated critique of United States foreign policy last night, saying Washington and its allies faced a "critical erosion" of their moral authority across the globe.
In a speech in Washington, he warned the White House that loss of international goodwill over the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandals and Guantanamo Bay could prove as costly as a battlefield defeat.
(snip)
"This has resulted in a loss of goodwill towards America which could be as serious in the long term as the sharpest of military defeats."
Mr Hague's address to the Johns Hopkins Centre for Transatlantic Relations was the centrepiece of a two-day visit by leading Tories to re-establish relations with the Republicans after the former leader, Michael Howard, fell out with the White House over the Iraq war.
His language was not what President George W Bush has come to expect from allies. But it reflects the challenge the Conservatives face as they try to restore ties while not alienating the many British voters deeply hostile to the Bush administration.
(snip/...)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/20...
=The Abu Ghraib photos and the anti-Muslim "free speech" fraud The release of more horrifying photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib prison sheds a revealing light on the hypocritical and genuinely sinister character of the supposed "free speech" campaign surrounding the publication of anti-Muslim cartoons in the European and international press.
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Salon's Mark Benjamin explains that the material includes an investigative report summarizing the contents, which reads in part: "A review of all the computer media... revealed a total of 1,325 images of suspected detainee abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult pornography, 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between his eyes, 37 images of Military Working dogs being used in abuse of detainees and 125 images of questionable acts."
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What was it New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote last week, in response to the protests over the racist Danish cartoons? "We in the West were born into a world that reflects the legacy of Socrates and the agora... We believe in progress and in personal growth. By swimming in this flurry of perspectives, by facing unpleasant facts, we try to come closer and closer to understanding... Our mind-set is progressive and rational. Your mind-set is pre-Enlightenment and mythological."
Brooks simply put the most unctuous face on the argument, repeated endlessly in the media and the political establishment over the past few weeks, that an insuperable chasm separates "Western values" and the fanatical, barbaric Muslim world. Fred Barnes of the right-wing Weekly Standard was more blunt, informing viewers on the Fox News Channel that the cartoon controversy "tells us that our enemy... is not just Al Qaeda... That Muslims all over Europe and all over the world are certainly enemies of Western civilization... We see the Muslims' contempt for democracy, for freedom of speech, for freedom of the press, and particularly, for freedom of religion."
WSWS
It ain't the things you don't know that gets you, it's the things you know that ain't so.
= Bushco desires authority across the globe. If it is "moral authority" so much the better but make no mistake authority is what they're after. I am always astounded to see the minions of Bushco claim the moral high ground in the face of their extrordinary renditions, prisoner abuses and willingness to torture.
Maybe this is one sign that things are changing for the better.
==junior & Blair are starting to receive the notoriety they rightfully deser
More from the same article...
"Reports of prisoner abuse by British and American troops, however isolated, and accounts, accurate or not, of the mistreatment of detainees at Guantanamo, and 'extraordinary rendition' flights leading to the torture of suspects, have led to a critical erosion in our moral authority.
"This has resulted in a loss of goodwill towards America which could be as serious in the long term as the sharpest of military defeats."
Mr Hague's address to the Johns Hopkins Centre for Transatlantic Relations was the centrepiece of a two-day visit by leading Tories to re-establish relations with the Republicans after the former leader, Michael Howard, fell out with the White House over the Iraq war.
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