We have documented the use of torture and mistreatment, widespread throughout the world. We have documented that the U.S. government is a leading purveyor and practitioner of the odious human rights violation.

The sexual abuse of women inmates is torture, plain and simple. Shackling and medical neglect of women in prison constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,

The U.S. is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons, into which people are being literally disappeared, held in indefinite, incommunicado detention without access to lawyers or a judicial system or to their families,

The assurances of known torturers, many of whom deny the use of torture even when it is widely documented, are not worth the paper they are written on.

Many of the countries highlighted in this report have absolutely abysmal records of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees. The United States government must do all it can to end the global culture of torture. But real change can only occur if the Bush Administration not only admits that its own policies perpetuate torture and ill treatment, but also cleans house and stops warehousing detainees in countries with shameful human rights records.

A pandemic influenza would mean widespread infection essentially throughout every region of the world.