With Obama in Cuba, Pro-Torture Pundits Suddenly Concerned With Human Rights
March 22, 2016
US President Barack Obama landed in Havana Sunday to great fanfare, both in Cuba and stateside. His visit marks a significant shift of the United States approach towards the socialist state, and the possibility of cooperation after decades of hostility. US media generally struck a hopeful tone, with a surprisingly nuanced mix of positive and critical stories about Cuba.
Some Cold War hold-outs in the media just werent having it, though, taking the occasion to feign outrage that Obama could visit a country with such a terrible human rights record. While American human-rights hypocrisy is nothing new, a string of Bush-era, pro-torture, pro-Guantánamo pundits expressing indignation at Cubas human rights failings was still remarkable.
Marc Thiessen. As a former Bush speechwriter, Thiessen helped shape the messaging around enhanced interrogation that provided the Orwellian phraseology the administration hid behind while torturing hundreds of detainees. He has since been a staunch defender not just of Guantánamo prison, but of force-feeding its prisoners and even expanding its use. The New York Times recapped his much-criticized defense of torture in 2010:
Mr. Thiessen, a practicing Roman Catholic, says that waterboarding suspected terrorists was not only useful and desirable, but permitted by the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Today, however, in the Washington Post opinion section, Thiessen suddenly discovered his inner human rights advocate, quoting an activist saying of Obamas trip:
This will prolong the life of the dictatorship, is worsening the human rights situation there, marginalizing the democratic opposition and compromising US national security.
Thiessen even had the gall to cite Amnesty International, which has roundly condemned the USs extrajudicial prison in Cuba that Thiessen loves to champion.
in full: http://fair.org/home/with-obama-in-cuba-pro-torture-pundits-suddenly-concerned-with-human-rights/