{"id":3518,"date":"2005-02-09T10:59:44","date_gmt":"2005-02-09T15:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3518.html"},"modified":"2005-02-09T10:59:44","modified_gmt":"2005-02-09T15:59:44","slug":"only-half-of-the-bush-administrations-complaint-makes-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/only-half-of-the-bush-administrations-complaint-makes-sense\/","title":{"rendered":"Only half of the Bush administration’s complaint makes sense"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know this is a terribly rare occurrence, but I think the Bush administration is right to complain<\/a> about the newest members having input on the United Nations commission on human rights. (Don’t worry; there’s a catch.)<\/p>\n

The State Department denounced on Tuesday the selection of Cuba and Zimbabwe for a panel that will decide on the agenda for a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission next month.<\/p>\n

“The United States believes that countries that routinely and systematically violate the rights of their citizens should not be selected to review the human rights performance of other countries,” State Department press office Tom Casey said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So far, so good. In fact, I completely agree and believe the administration’s concerns make a lot of sense. I’m anything but a U.N.-basher, but it’s hard to take a Human Rights Commission seriously when the governments of Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe will be helping set the panel’s agenda.<\/p>\n

Where’s the catch? The administration was fairly selective<\/a> in its criticisms.<\/p>\n

The other members of the panel are Hungary, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, it’s the firm belief of the Bush administration that countries that “routinely and systematically violate the rights of their citizens should not be selected to review the human rights performance of other countries,” but in the same context, Saudi Arabia is just fine by the administration’s standards.<\/p>\n

We’re dealing with an administration guided by principles — weak, malleable, vacuous principles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know this is a terribly rare occurrence, but I think the Bush administration is right to complain about the newest members having input on the United Nations commission on human rights. (Don’t worry; there’s a catch.) The State Department denounced on Tuesday the selection of Cuba and Zimbabwe for a panel that will decide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}