Render unto Caesar
The Observer: Rice rejects EU protests over secret terror prisons
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will inflame the transatlantic row over America’s alleged torture of terror suspects in secret jails by telling Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and other European officials to ‘back off’.
Condi knows best and uppity Old Worlders should know their place. America doesn’t “do torture” and “does not allow rights abuses”. All this cloak and dagger stuff is no doubt just to give what is otherwise a routine and mundane job a little frisson. It probably makes the workers’ lives a bit more exciting, like being able to wear jeans on a Friday.
In other news…
Washington Post - Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake
In May 2004, the White House dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to that country’s interior minister. Ambassador Daniel R. Coats carried instructions from the State Department transmitted via the CIA’s Berlin station because they were too sensitive and highly classified for regular diplomatic channels, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation.
Coats informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Masri and others with similar allegations.
Posted on December 4th, 2005 at 11:20 am
| See also • Moral flexibility • IRANWATCH: Condie takes a backseat… • Now watch very carefully. Try not to blink |
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Filed under Human rights, T.W.A.T. |
Simply go to http://www.postmanpatel.blogspot.com for an explanation “SECRET of the secret flights etc.,
Simply the “ghost” (guest) prisoners were equipped with diplomatic passports.
Go to site for more details
Allegations made by US interrogator Tony Lagouranis are also matter of concern.
He is either a deranged liar ( in which case he was unsuitable for employment as an interrogator)or he has exposed the most disturbing scandal I can recall in my life. I do not know for sure.
We certainly need transparency. It is right to resist terorism which is a modern day cancer but it is worrying if it becomes the catalyst or even the cover for our jumping in the sewer as well.
“… the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said.”
Well yes they did release him although from this report in today’s Times it appears that he was “… but he was held for two more months before being flown to Albania and dumped in a wood.”
Another example of the humane and benificent ways of Uncle Sam.