HometownSource Blogs

Left-wing ideologues recently gathered at the Humphrey Institute to, you’ll never guess, blast their country. Concern over our “human rights reputation” didn’t seem to be mitigated at all by the fact that we recently freed 30 million people from a cruel dictator, giving an entire nation a chance at self-rule. Instead, Harold Koh calls us a “soulless superpower.” Koh, Yale’s “liberal lion,” is exceptionally dishonest in his criticism:

…Koh argues the Iraqi prison scandal at Abu Ghraib– the image of the hooded prisoners with outstretched arms — symbolizes a shift in U.S. foreign policy. The shift took the nation from a zero tolerance of torture to one of zero accountability, he argued. Lesser figures, such as soldiers, have been held accountable. But the policy makers who unleashed the mentality the soldiers picked up on have not, argued Koh.

Talk about singling out the exception over the rule. One might expect that if Abu Ghraib was a “shift in policy,” reports of prisoner abuse would be commonplace, and Koh wouldn’t have to use an example three years old.

Of course, Abu Ghraib remains a singular incident in which the actual perpetrators (irregardless of Koh’s “lesser figures” terminology) were tried and convicted. To disregard the overwhelmingly positive affect American troops are having on the everyday lives of millions of Iraqis in favor or harping on a single example of an atrocity, makes Koh little more than a partisan sock puppet.

Koh’s misinformation continues:

Koh also criticized newly confirmed U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s refusal to define water boarding — simulated drowning — as torture. He styled the refusal a “grotesque disaster.”