No Evidence

Yesterday, William Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, admitted that the organization has no real evidence to substantiate its leaders' outrageous accusations against the Bush administration. Despite that, he affirms that the US maintains a gulag archipelago, a network of secret detention centers around the world so secret no one has any evidence they exist but no one can disprove they don't.

Adding to his gulag metaphor, he equated the Bush administration to Latin American dictatorships and the tragedy of the "desaparecidos." Schulz, of course, has no substantiation for this either, nor does he recognize any difference between a regime oppressing its own people and a nation at war.

Having admitted he doesn't really know what is happening anywhere, he claims the whole point of his accusations is to force the administration to permit an independent investigation: "'We don't know for sure what all is happening at Guantanamo and our whole point is that the United States ought to allow independent human rights organizations to investigate,' Mr. Schulz said, adding that Amnesty International was careful to use the word 'alleged' when accusing high-level Bush administration officials." This, of course, has become the liberal Democratic strategy: make outrageous, unsubstantiated accusations to force an "investigation," a fishing expedition to land more "evidence" to feed the cycle of exagerration.

Shulz's claims of independence are not credible. Here are some highlights from his bio on the Amnesty International USA's web site.

"Dr. William F. Schulz was appointed Executive Director of Amnesty International (USA) in March, 1994. An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, he came to Amnesty after serving for fifteen years with the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (UUA), the last eight (1985-93) as President of the Association.

During his years with Amnesty he has traveled extensively, both in the US and abroad, including a 2004 trip to Cuba under the sponsorship of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

From 1985-93 he served on the Council of the International Association for Religious Freedom, the oldest international interfaith organization in the world. Throughout his career he has been outspoken in his opposition to the death penalty and his support for women's rights, gay and lesbian rights and racial justice, having organized, participated in demonstrations and written extensively on behalf of all four causes.

Dr. Schulz has served on the boards of People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Communitarian Network and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, among others."

He also contributed the maximum allowable to Bush's opponent, John Kerry, in the last presidential election.

Given this man's background, it would be hard not to conclude he has an anti-evangelical, anti-Republican, pro-abortion, pro-gay-lobby bias. This is yet another formerly-respectable organization I have to write off.