In recent years, the United States has been practicing unilateralism in the international arena, indulging itself in military aggression around the world, brutal violation of sovereign rights of other nations. Its image has been tarnished bynumerous misdeeds of human rights infringement in other countries.

The United States tops the world in terms of military expenditure, and is the largest exporter of arms. Its military spendings for the 2004 fiscal year reaches 400.5 billion US dollars, exceeding the total amount of defense budgets of all other countries in the world in summation. The New York Times reported on September 25, 2003, that the United States export of conventional arms accounted for 45.5 percent of the world's arms trade volume in 2002, ranking the first in the world. And according to a Capitol report, the United States sold 8.6 billion US dollars worth of conventional arms to the developing nations, or 48.6 percent of all the arms procured by the developing world in 2002.

The United States has been active in sabre-rattling and launching wars. It is the No. One in terms of gross violation of other countries' sovereign rights and other people's human rights.The United States has resorted to the use of force against other countries 40 times since 1990s. Well-known US journalist and writer William Blum said in his recent book "Rouge State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" that since 1945, the United Stateshas attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, suppressed over 30 national movements, in which millions of peoplehave lost their precious lives and many more people been plunged into misery and despair.

In March 2003, without authorization by the United Nations, the United States unilaterally waged a large-scale war on Iraq based on its claim that the Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In its wanton and indiscriminate bombing of Iraq, many bombsof the US army were dropped on residential areas, shopping malls and civilian vehicles.

According to an article carried by Britain's Independent newspaper in January 2004 titled "George W. Bush and the real state of the Union," in the war on Iraq by then, more than 16,000 Iraqis had been killed, of which 10,000 were civilians (see the edition of Britain's Independent on Jan. 20, 2004). On April 2, 2003, the US armed forces attacked a Baghdad maternity hospital installed by the Red Crescent, a local market and other adjacent buildings for civilian use, claiming a lot of human lives and injured at least 25 people. Five cars were bombed and drivers were burned to death inside their cars (see the edition of San Diego Union-Tribune, U.S. on Aug. 5, 2003).

Based on a report by Britain's Independent newspaper on Feb. 8,2004, more than 13,000 civilians, many of them women and children,have been killed so far by the US army and its allied forces in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the wake of Sept. 11 incident in 2001, "making the continuing conflicts the most deadly wars for non-combatants waged by the West since the Vietnam War more than 30 years ago." Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to former US President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, said "it is a serious matter when the world's Number One superpower undertakes awar claiming a causus belli that turns out to have been false." (Washington Post on Feb. 2, 2004).

Depleted uranium (DU) shells and cluster bombs were used recklessly during wars in violation of international laws. In December 2003, the Human Rights Watch disclosed in a report that the 13,000 cluster bombs US troops used in Iraq contained nearly 2 million bomblets, which have caused causalities of over 1,000 people. The "dub" cluster bombs that did not blast on the spot continued to menace the lives of innocent people. The US troops also used large quantities of depleted uranium shells during theirmilitary operations in Iraq. The quantity and residue of pollutants from these bombs far exceeded those of the Gulf War in 1991. Through a spokesman for the Central Command, the Pentagon acknowledged that ammunition containing depleted uranium was used during the Iraq war. Indeed, Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project, former professor of environmental science and onetime US army colonel, said after the Iraq War that the willful use of DU bombs to contaminate any other nation and b ring harms to the people and their environment is a crime against humanity (see Spain's Uprising newspaper on June 2, 2003).

Another investigation report said that in the Iraqi capital Baghdad alone, numerous places were found to have the amount of radioactive materials that exceeded the normal level by 1,000 times. The US troops also used "Mark-77" napalm, a kind of bomb banned by the United Nations, in Iraq, which negatively impacted on environment there. On July 7, 2003, Dato'Param Cumaraswamy of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, openly voiced his shock at the fact that the US Government did not abide by international human rights rules and humanism in its counter-terrorism military actions. (United Nations Rights Expert "Alarmed" over United States Implementation of Military Order, United Nations Press Release, July 7, 2003, www.un.org)

The United States put behind bars 3,000 Taliban and Al-Qaida inmates in Afghanistan, 680 alleged die-hard Al-Qaida elements from 40-odd countries in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and an undefined number of prisoners in the US army base on Diego Garcia island on the India Ocean leased from Britain. All these prisoners locked upby the U.S. were not indicted officially (Britain's Independent newspaper on June 26, 2004). The New York Times quoted a high-ranking official from the US Department of Defense on February 13,2003 as saying that the United States planned to jail most of the prisoners currently in Guantanamo for a long time or indefinitely.The US Government said the detainees in Guantanamo were not "prisoners of war" and therefore not subjected to the protection ofthe Geneva Conventions.

"The main concern for us is the US authorities ... have effectively placed them beyond the law," said Amanda Williamson, spokeswoman for the Washington office of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross. (Overseas Chinese newspaper in U.S., Oct. 11, 2003). A report entitled People the Law Forgot, carried on the British Guardian in Dec. 2003, depictedthe plight of the 600-odd foreigners detained by the US in Guantanamo Bay. These people had been detained in Guantanamo Bay since January 2002, where they were tortured both mentally and physically (Britain's Guardian newspaper on Dec. 3, 2003). The detainees were given only one minute a week for taking shower and only through a hunger strike did they win the weekly five-minute shower time and the weekly ten-minute break for physical exercises.At a clandestine interrogation center of the US troops in Bagram of Afghanistan, prisoners were even more tortured. They were forced to stand or kneel down for hours in varied awkward positions while wearing hoods over their heads or colored glasses.Exposed to strong light 24 hours a day, they could not go to sleep(Britain's Independent newspaper on June 26, 2003).

The U.S. is the nation with the most troops stationed overseas,about 364,000 troops in over 130 countries and regions. The violations of human rights against local people frequently occurred. In 2003, the US military authority received 88 reports about "misbehavior" of its overseas troops. On May 25, 2003, a soldier of the US Marine Corps in Okinawa of Japan wounded and raped a 19-year-old Japanese girl. The soldier was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. In the past dozen years, such cases occurred frequently in Okinawa and up to 100 US soldiers have been reported of committing crimes. On February 7, 2004, Australian police detained three soldiers of the US Marine Corps suspected of committing sexual harassment of two Australian women.In September 2003, three officers and soldiers from the US Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier robbed and seriously wounded a taxi driver in Kanagawa-Ken of Japan. The three officers and soldiers were sentenced to four years in prison. In October 2002, a female engineer in Baghdad of Iraq was handcuffed and made to stand in the scorching sun for one hour because she refused to be snuffed at by police dogs as she was taking a copy of Alcoran with her. The case sparked large-scale protest and demonstration in Iraq.

For a long time, the US State Department has been publishing "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" every year. It presumes to be the "Judge of Human Rights in the World" and, regardless of the differences and disparities among different countries in politics, economy, history, culture and social development and strong opposition from other countries, denounces other countries unreasonably for their human rights status in compliance with its own ideology, value and human rights model. Meanwhile, it has turned a blind eye to its own human rights problems. This fully exposed the dual standards of the U.S. on human rights and its hegemonism. The human rights record of the U.S. is absolutely not in accord with its position as a world power,which constitutes a strong irony against its self-granted title ofa big power in human rights. The United States should take its ownhuman rights problems seriously, reflect on its erroneous positionand behavior on human rights, and stop its unpopular interference with other countries' internal affairs under the pretext of promoting human rights. (End)