NYTimes -- The Selective Conscience

Officials at Amnesty International, grow indignant when they hear their exposés repeated by George Bush or Tony Blair, men whose motives they regard as impure.

"This selective attention to human rights is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists," declared Irene Kahn, the secretary general of Amnesty, among whose worldwide membership humanism coexists with a considerable pacifism.

Saddam's mistreatment of his people is an important factor, too, because it has helped confound liberals who otherwise have doubts about the war. Caution on Iraq puts liberals in the "unsettling position of defending a status quo they despise."

...Promoting freedom abroad will ring a little false as long as the administration is so often, so instinctively, scornful of freedom at home. The automatic recourse to preventive lockup, the lack of confidence in the criminal justice system, the casual regard for privacy and presumption of innocence, the obsessive secrecy — you don't have to be a libertarian to wonder how dearly this administration cherishes the values it promises to export.