Upyernoz takes issue with my statement that George Bush could stop torture “with a phonecall to the Uzbek government” :

the u.s. and uzbekistan had a major falling out after uzbek security forces open fired and killed hundreds of civilians in andijon last may. the bush administration (to their credit, IMHO) called for an investigation which the karimov government in uzbekistan did not want. the u.s. insisted, and relations between the two countries have gone downhill since then. in july, uzbekistan announced that it was evicting u.s. forces from its territory. notably that meant the loss of american access to the karshi-khanabad airbase–a major staging ground for operations in afghanistan. the u.s. scrambled to find a replacement, later getting assurances from kyrgyzstan and tajikistan that the u.s. could use bases there to replace K2 (as karshi-khanabad is called). since then u.s.-uzbek relations have been quite different. these days, the bush administration regularly criticizes uzbekistan over human rights issues. at best, relations between the two countries are called “strained.” uzbekistan simply is not the close bush ally it once was.
. . .
while i am always happy to consider the timeless “idiot or asshole” question, sanders [By the way, it’s Saunders with a “u”.] is simply wrong about the present state of u.s.-uzbek relations. bush has made that phone call to the uzbek government, or at least members of his administration have. it has threatened cuts in foreign aid and other punitive steps since the andijon massacre.

obviously i am a big critic of the bush administration. but i’m not against everything they do simply because they are the bush administration. on those occasions that they get things more right than wrong, we should give the administration credit. when it came to uzbekistan after the andijon massacre, the administration surprised me, and i really do think they deserve credit for the pressure they have put on uzbekistan since then.

Not to be dismissive of the great post by Upyernoz, this doesn’t really change much. The Bush Administration is still complicit in the torture of children or too dumb to know it happened. Uzbekistan is still a human rights violator that the U.S. government sold its soul to work with. But that particular relationship isn’t as strong as it once was. For anyone who would take solace in the revelation that Uzbekistan is no longer on the list of countries to which we outsource torture (like Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Afghanistan…), there you go.