U.S. won't seek seat on Human Rights Council; afraid we'd would be rejected

By Lee Russ

Thursday, April 06, 2006 at 05:31 PM

The U.S. announced today that it will not seek a seat on the UN's revamped Human Rights Council.

We opposed the revamping, and the publicly proffered reason for not wanting to be on the Council is that countries who supported the revamping should take a shot at it first.

Citing anonymous sources, however, the AP report offers another, far less altruistic motive:

People with knowledge of the decision-making process that led to Thursday's announcement said the Bush administration, criticized for alleged abuses in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, also feared it would not get the necessary 96 votes to win a seat.

U.S. officials had raised the possibility of U.S. defeat during a confidential U.S. National Security Council meeting earlier this week, said one person who was at the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the closed session.

Is this a sorry day, or what?  You can't look at this in a good way.  If you believe the anonymous sources, we've gone from moral beacon to immoral pariah.  Even if you don't believe the anonymous sources, we're acting like a petulant kid who didn't get his way so we're not going to play the game any more.