War on Terror Is Now War on Human Rights, Says Group

The head of an international human rights group recently charged that the war against terror had transformed itself into a war against human rights. Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International, blasted the labeling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other clandestine sites around the world, as enemy combatants and holding these individuals without charging them with a specific crime or prosecution. He said the detainees at Guantanamo are being held in conditions that can lead to mental illness, that the inmates are possibly being tortured, but "exactly what happens to these people is kept a secret from all of us." He added that with the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Congress condoned these practices and "took bad policy and turned it into bad law." "With this act, the U.S. Congress officially, in the name of all of us, carried out an assault on the core idea of human rights - on the idea that there are certain rights that belong to all human beings without exception, even those we have labeled enemy combatants," Cox said.