THE United States of America has long been served by administrations in Washington that see no sins of their own but plenty in other nations. Just follow their rhetoric on human rights and democracy and self-serving judgements.

In the case of the George W Bush presidency, this attitude is being institutionalised as a fine art, thanks to the preponderance of right-wing conservatives excitedly serving an administration whose leader swaggers around speechifying as if he has a divine mandate to reshape the world into his Republican image and likeness.

There really seems to be no limit to the arrogance and hypocrisy of this Bush Administration when it comes to lecturing the world on human rights and democracy - in complete disregard for America's own human rights violations at home and abroad.

The latest example of this came with the release earlier this month of the US State Department's global human rights survey that freely knocks at the doors of all considered guilty without any evidence of remorse over its own record of violations.

This, mind you, in the face of rebukes that have been increasingly forthcoming from internationally-recognised human rights organisations like the London-based Amnesty International (AI) and US-headquartered Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Caribbean governments and civil society organisations have long been accustomed to the selective ratings in US State Department "country reports" that comprise the annual global survey, and which could be either harsh or complimentary, based on the perspectives of those compiling them and passing judgements.

Taking the moral high ground as the "mother of democracy" on human rights observance has long been the posture of the USA. But after the horrendous 9/11 terrorist strikes, the brazen arrogance of the Bush Administration has become quite difficult to ignore in the face of its warmongering politics, gross human rights violations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and the erosion of civil liberties of Americans at home.

Wherever they occur, in our Caribbean region or elsewhere, crooked elections, police brutality, unlawful executions, degrading prison conditions, denial of press freedom, human trafficking or right of association must be exposed and unequivocally denounced, based on evidence.

In such a context, the US global human rights survey could be a useful tool to whip defaulters and encourage observance of internationally recognised human rights standards. If only the USA could be humble enough - a quality not associated with the current Bush Administration - to also engage in self-examination of its record. Particularly as it dares to assume the role of the world's chief cop and a very anxious "enforcer" against states unilaterally deemed "dictatorships" and "exporters of terrorism".

For all the commendable features of the American people and the inspiring examples from sections of the mainstream media and judicial system, the USA today is also very much a country where political interferences with freedom of the media, manipulations of the judiciary, ghastly crimes, deplorable prison conditions, political and racial discrimination and the erosion of civil liberties continue to be regular occurrences.

In January this year, at least six weeks before the release of the State Department's latest annual human rights survey, Human Rights Watch, in criticising Washington's policies that undermine global human rights, said the USA "can no longer claim the moral high ground and lead by example".

Identifying gross human rights violations by US forces at detention centres in places like Iraq (Abu Ghraib) and Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights Watch said: "Its (the US') embrace of coercive interrogation is part of a broader betrayal of human rights principles in the name of combating terrorism..."

Even now, as it demands the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, following the murder of a former Lebanese prime minister that remains a matter of United Nations investigation, President Bush is finding it quite uncomfortable to dismiss exposures of a US policy of "outsourcing torture".

As detailed in a comprehensive article last month in The New Yorker, a highly credible news magazine, suspected "evil" collaborators have been secretly dispatched to Syria, Egypt, Morocco and Jordan, according to a penetrating analysis by Jane Mayer on "the secret history of America's extraordinary 'rendition' programme".

The fact that Lebanon still faces aggression from Israel, which is anxious for Syria to be treated as a pariah state; or that Iran and Syria are accused of capabilities to produce weapons of mass destruction, while Israel fully enjoys protection of its arsenal of WMDs, is all part of the hypocrisy that characterises US foreign policy. This moreso under George Bush's watch.

In seeking to escalate pressures against Syria, Bush is happy to be singing from the same hymn sheet of France's Jacques Chirac, whom he (Bush) was deriding right up to last November's presidential election.

But, as was the case in their military intervention in Haiti that coincided with the coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, there is a convergence of American and French interest to now force Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon.

In Haiti, at the moment, a US-installed interim regime has been holding for months, among its political prisoners, a former prime minister and an ex-interior minister of the deposed Aristide Government in complete defiance of the rule of law that requires those accused of serious crimes, like murder, to be charged and placed before the courts.

Countries like the People's Republic of China and Cuba that frequently come in for official US human rights bashing, have gone on the offensive against the latest State Department global survey.
In its own assessment, China points to significant levels of poverty and crime in the USA; gross abuses abroad by its military and intelligence forces; and has dismissed America's electoral system as "a contest of money".

China claims that Washington was "consistent in its hypocrisy" in condemning human rights conditions in other nations while keeping silent on its own sins. For its part, Cuba has documented numerous instances of US violations of its sovereignty and gross human rights abuses by America at home and abroad.

Last week, Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said in London that the Bush Administration "has no moral authority" to judge the human rights record of other nations after the scandals over treatment of its war prisoners, such as those at Guantanamo Bay.

Yesterday in New York, representatives of various US associations were scheduled to meet to express their condemnation of the new restrictions on travel by Americans to Cuba as imposed in 2004 by the Bush Administration.