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Article--Political Commentary (12-10-2005)
The CIA Prisoner Shuttle Game
(or "torture, what torture?")
Is the US hiding prisoners from the International Red Cross? The answer is "yes" according to an admission from the US State Department. How many invisible prisoners are we talking about? 150 since 9-11 according to one report but I suspect that number is seriously low. What does Condi Rice have to say on the subject?
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The United States does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances. The United States does not transport and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture. The United States does not use the airspace or the airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country where he or she will be tortured. Link.
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At one time, I thought Ms. Rice lacked even a single attribute of a US President but she has proven me wrong. This lady is a world-class, bald faced liar.
This practice of invisible prisoners in hidden camps has a name: "extraordinary rendition". What happens is that a supposed terrorism suspect is abducted off the streets of another country and removed to countries where they can be interrogated outside the protection of US law and not have their presence reported to the Red Cross. Why? Hell, the only reason to go through all this trouble is so you can torture them! One only hides from the law when one is breaking the law, any child can add 2+2. The US has acknowledged that 108 prisoners have died while in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 (anybody's guess as to the true number). At least 26 of the 108 were classified as homicides by the US itself, including cases where people were tortured, beaten, frozen or suffocated to death. Link.
Forget for a second that extraordinary rendition violates international law and the laws of basic human dignity we owe to every person, torture doesn't work. John McCain, that arch liberal, had this to say about it: "Subjecting prisoners to abuse leads to bad intelligence, because under torture a detainee will tell his interrogator anything to make the pain stop." Ask any professional interrogator and he'll tell you the same thing--torture is not a useful technique to gather information from suspects. Here are the thoughts of Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a retired Army Reserve strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner interrogation and military law for 18 years, on the subject. See also, Washington Post article to same effect.
First it was Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. After world attention focused on those locations, the CIA prisons then, reportedly, moved to central Europe with Poland a leading destination. Now that the press is on to this location, the mobile gulags have apparently been shifted again to North Africa. The United States of America, founded on principles of justice and liberty for all, now runs every-moving, secret gulags whose express purpose is to torture prisoners beyond the reach of US and international law. The Bush Administration shames all of us who once proudly proclaimed ourselves to be Americans.
JJR
12-10-2005
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Update: Interesting article from CNN International on the subject posted today. 12-13-2005.
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