Final Four of evil

Now that the Florida Gators have chomped their way to a 2006 NCAA victory, America can snap back to reality and honor its international obligations toward global security. The struggle to combat tyranny, oppression and genocide took a monumental step forward this week as former Liberian President Charles Taylor faced a war tribunal for numerous crimes against humanity.\nTaylor, the first former African president to face responsibility for war crimes committed during an otherwise tyrannical rule, pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of international war crimes Monday, stemming from his 1997 to 2003 democratic presidency. He is reported to have campaigned on the slogan: "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him." \nTaylor is accused of orchestrating terror during Sierra Leone's 1991 to 2002 civil war and for destabilizing the west African region through his financial support and arming of so-called revolutionary rebels internationally known for maiming civilians by decapitation, rape and torture, kidnapping children for sex slavery and using children as soldiers. \n"Most definitely, your honor, I did not and could not have committed those acts against the sister republic of Sierra Leone," Taylor told Justice Richard Lussick, according to The Associated Press.\nDuring Taylor's bloody reign, more than 500,000 Sierra Leoneans were raped, maimed, mutilated or murdered, more than 2.5 million of our global neighbors were forced from their homes and Liberia was violently shredded to political shambles. He is also accused of offering a Liberian safe haven for al-Qaida suicide bombers who murdered 12 Americans and more than 200 Africans at two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. \nLiberia stands as Africa's first republic among a continent of impoverished and developing nations. Now that Taylor is in international custody, the global community is still seeking justice against other dictators and tyrants accused of some of the most heinous crimes imaginable. \nFormer Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was charged with genocide Tuesday for a 1980s extermination campaign of the Kurds that murdered an estimated 50,000 Iraqis, but the following Final Four of Evil are still free to roam the globe:\nFormer Indonesian dictator Suharto is accused of wiping out more than 500,000 of our global neighbors from countries like West Papua and East Timor during a brutal 30-year campaign. Ethiopian "Red Terror" rouser Mengistu Haile Mariam and former Chile dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet are also accused of terrorizing their fair share of the world's population. \nWorst of all, no Khmer Rouge official was ever charged for the genocide of 1.7 million Cambodians in the late 1970s. \nAll the above one-time global terrorists are either living free, living in exile or have died of otherwise natural causes.\nPresident Bush and Congress helped facilitate Taylor's fall in 2003, and America helped pave the international path toward justice for Sierra Leone. Might America make another giant leap forward for humanity by increasing international pressure to indict, arrest and convict other global terrorist-like dictators?