Posted May 6th, 2005 at 7:55AMU.S. Recruits a Rough Ally to Be a Jailer
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
Published: May 1, 2005Seven months before Sept. 11, 2001, the State Department issued a human rights report on Uzbekistan. It was a litany of horrors.
The police repeatedly tortured prisoners, State Department officials wrote, noting that the most common techniques were “beating, often with blunt weapons, and asphyxiation with a gas mask.” Separately, international human rights groups had reported that torture in Uzbek jails included boiling of body parts, using electroshock on genitals and plucking off fingernails and toenails with pliers. Two prisoners were boiled to death, the groups reported. The February 2001 State Department report stated bluntly, “Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights.”
Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, however, the Bush administration turned to Uzbekistan as a partner in fighting global terrorism. The nation, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, granted the United States the use of a military base for fighting the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan. President Bush welcomed President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan to the White House, and the United States has given Uzbekistan more than $500 million for border control and other security measures.
Now there is growing evidence that the United States has sent terror suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation, even as Uzbekistan’s treatment of its own prisoners continues to earn it admonishments from around the world, including from the State Department.
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??? That is fucked up! Although torture is good since it makes the prisoner admit to anything even if he didnt do it…
Which is a big plus for Bush, because he just grab any little arab man and make him guilty of “terrorising” America 
Richard Myers: “In my view, we shouldn’t let any single issue drive a relationship with any single country. It doesn’t seem to be good policy to me.”
What an idiot. Yes, if our tax codes are different from their tax codes there’s no reason not to have a decent relationship with that country. But Jesus Christ. So how they treat their people has no bearing on foreign policy? Why’d we invade Iraq then, huh? What was the initial operation called, again? Was it Operation Iraqi Freedom? So our goal (lol WMDs) was to “free” the Iraqi people from their oppressive, undemocratic government, correct? Yet you’re saying we should still support a country that is widely known for repeatedly torturing its prisoners and described by the State Department as “an authoritarian state with limited civil rights.”
>=(
I’m all for foreign aid. But we need to adjust our priorities. This article mentions $500 million to Uzbekistan since 9/11/01. In May of 2001, we provided the Taliban with $43 million for their success in lowering the amount of opium produced. Hindsight is 20/20, right? Then why aren’t we learning anything?