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Date Posted: 16:07:05 02/04/03 Tue
Author: Mt. Healthy Mountaineer
Subject: my comments (parenthetically highlighted) for fun and profit!
In reply to: mvd 's message, "I see your post and raise you..." on 16:03:56 02/03/03 Mon

1. The aforementioned ABM treaty.

(yep - that's true. Personally, I have no problems with any country developing Anti-Ballisitic Missle technology. The treaty is kind of like outlawing castles in Medieval times.)

2. The United States in 2000 submitted reports on its compliance with two international human rights treaties-the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment-to the respective treaty monitoring bodies. Both reports acknowledged significant abuses of the rights affirmed in those treaties.

(These would all be Death Penalty statutes. The Supreme Court has ruled that states get to decide whether to have it or not - so about 35 have opted for it. The Federal Government cannot outlaw them since it has been forbidden by the Supreme Court to do so. I sympathize with the anti-death penalty folks, but I have more sympathy to the Federalist characterisics of our government)

3. Not a broken one, but...

Mr. Bush disavowed a claim made by President Clinton that the United States would comply by 2006 to the Land Mine Treaty (banning land mines) which was signed in Ottawa in December 1997 by 122 nations.

(Interesting that Clinton makes a promise to be fulfilled 6 years after leaving office, when he could have done it with the stroke of a pen immediately as Commander-in-Chief. No one can expect a different president to keep the promise that Clinton himself would not keep.)

4. Another interesting tidbit:

In April, the United States failed to be reelected to the UN Human Rights Commission.

(Not a treaty - but here's the background on that. Sudan was elected to take our place by a coalition of Muslim and African countries. Why? To rub our face in the fact that they can be independent. Let's take a look at Sudan. It was the home of Ossama Bin Laden for several years and a terrorist training area. It is the only country that sanctions slavery - as long as you are a Muslim from the North enslaving a Christian from the South. The US encouraged Western countries to speak up against it and we were "embarrassed" for our trouble.)

5. By November, the Bush administration's disdain for humanity became obvious when it forced a vote in the UN Committee on Disarmament and Security to demonstrate its opposition to the Comprehensive [Nuclear] Test Ban Treaty. This Treaty was signed by 164 nations and ratified by 89, including France, Great Britain and Russia. Continuing on in December, the US Senate again added an amendment to a military appropriation bill that would keep US military personnel from obeying the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Treaty, which would be to set up in The Hague to try political leaders and military personnel charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC was signed in Rome in 1998 and approved by 120 countries, with seven opposed (including the US).

(This is really two so here's #1:

OK - so the US is bad because we refuse to vote for a treaty that 75 out of 164 countries that signed it refuse to ratify. Looks to me like we're avoiding being two-faced.

#2 Do you understand what the ICC treaty actually means? It means that the US would be leading all of these attempts to go out and depose and nab every criminal leader of every crackpot dictatorship in the world - the very thing you are decrying in Iraq. When the UN wants military action you can be sure it will be mostly US soldiers carrying the burden. Also, do you actually want US troops to be compelled to follow the dictates of foreign powers? It really went so well for us with the Human Rights Commission vote on #4, didn't it?)

6. More than two years after the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, making available billions of dollars for toxic cleanup along the border with Mexico, not one environmental project has been launched with those funds, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.

(So, the funds are available - the US part of the treaty has been fulfilled. Should we take over Mexico at the border and make them clean up? Isn't that bullying? Another comment - in Mexico, there is true environmental ANARCHY. The laws are haphazard at best and easily got around. Are you sure you want to go in and stop this? Someone once told me that eventually things will settle down in anarchy.)

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