When it's so bad, the bad guys look okay

So the Human Rights Watch organization released its 2006 report. The U.S., incidentally, figures so prominently on so many HRW reports that it has earned its own place on the HRW web page apart from the rest of the Americas.

Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 (Human Rights Watch, 18-1-2006):

(Washington, D.C, January 18, 2006) – New evidence demonstrated in 2005 that torture and mistreatment have been a deliberate part of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism strategy, undermining the global defense of human rights, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2006

Nothing new there. Everyone's saying that, except 36% of the Americans who still live int he Wally World of American beneficence.

Canada sought to dilute a new treaty outlawing enforced disappearances.

What the fuck? The quaint canucks got their hands bloody? That's not really all that nice of them, now, especially when usually the worst that HRW can say about the beaver-lovers is that they're still okay with slapping the yardapes when they become unruly. (Good on them!) Time to write the Prime Minister and maybe not mind my Ps and Qs. Anyway, back to bashing the States.

The best part isn't in the executive summary, so you'll have to buck up and read part of that 532-page monstrosity yourself for it. I'm just quoting someone else (who quoted someone else at the AP), because I'm lazy:

In a separate report, the organization strongly criticized three insurgent groups in Iraq - al-Qaida, Ansar al-Sunna and the Islamic Army - for targeting civilians with car bombs and suicide bombers in mosques, markets, bus stations.

However, the group said the abuses "took place in the context of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the ensuing military occupation that resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths and sparked the emergence of insurgent groups."

So. The U.S is so bad that, by comparison, fucking Terrorist Groups almost get a 'pass' on their conduct. What?!? What kinda crazy world do we live in, where the quiet, peaceful Americans are worse than the Terrorists they're protecting us against?

Oh. Right. These are the same guys who decided they really should own all of North American - it was their Manifest Destiny - and the ones who belligerently invaded a third-world country. More than a few, actually.

Bit of a hobby of theirs. That and the religious fundamentalism. Pilgrims and the Jevovahs and the Mor(m)ons and all that.

That and the torture of lesser humans not lucky enough to be American.