It hasn’t been a week since President Bush signed a law passed by the GOP Congress legalizing torture of suspects. Now Jordan is claiming the right to torture its people because the United States is doing it:

Some countries try to rebut criticism of how they treat prisoners by saying they are only following the U.S. example on handling terrorism suspects, a U.N. human rights expert said Monday.

Manfred Nowak, the United Nations investigator on torture, told a news conference that “all too frequently” governments responded to criticism about their jails by saying they handled detainees the same way the United States did.

“The United States has been the pioneer of human rights and is a country that has a high reputation in the world,” Nowak said. “Today, other governments are kind of saying, ‘But why are you criticizing us; we are not doing something different than what the United States is doing.’ ”

He said nations such as Jordan tell him, “We are collaborating with the United States, so it can’t be wrong if it is also done by the United States.”

Other similarities: Jordan has a dictator, lacks free elections and is a de facto theocracy.