Today Dubya has finally admitted that the Central Intelligence Agency has some high value prisoners in custody at various places around the world. In an afternoon press conference a fartcatcher for Dubya said that he will announce that high-value detainees now being held at secret CIA prisons will be transferred to the Department of Defense and granted protections under the 1949 Geneva Conventions. It has been rumoured that the CIA was operating what they call “rendition” flights using private aircraft to ship captured Al Qaeda prisoners around the world in a global shell game.
The reason for the off shore jails are simple enough. If the captured folks, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, were put in American or Department of Defense prisons, the CIA would be forced to play by the commonly accepted rules of international behavior. Off shore, the CIA can use the rules of “whatever works” to get confessions and information from the persons in question, or the local legal rules, whichever is harsher.
As an example, Romania has a simple human rights charter: You Ain’t Got None, Now Shut Up. Consequently the CIA folks could start their questioning with simple concepts like: “How many of your fingers will I have to cut off with these here bolt cutters before you tell me everything I want to know?” or “Would you like 90 volts or 120 volts applied to your balls in the next 30 seconds? Concepts like evidence, innocent until proven guilty, rights to legal counsel and the right to not self-incriminate go out the window. However, Khallid Sheikh Mohammed never gave the people in the World Trade Centre or in the airplanes that crashed into it, a warning that bad things were about to happen, so I am of two minds here.
The interesting part is that Dubya is now admitting that these kinds of things have gone on and are going on. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have kept the pressure on the US, resulting in the CIA closing down their little off shore hideaways in Poland and Romania back in December. Now it is rumoured the detainees are treated to the hospitality of some small Pacific Rim countries and a resort or two in Afghanistan.
The black-helicopter brigade are all a-twitter about it. The general plot-line being if the CIA is now being caught at (well, let’s call it what it is) prisoner torture in 2006, how long has it really been going on? Since the Bay of Pigs? Since Watergate? Since the Second World War? I hate to fan the flames of the black-helicopter fires, but the kidnapping and torture of suspected spies, terrorists and assorted other bad guys has been going at least since the American Revolutionary War.
My family originally lived in Brockton, Massachusetts and were prosperous textile merchants. The Smiths were on the boat that followed the Mayflower. One night a small group of armed and very angry men came to the house and invited the family to leave immediately or die in a horrible fire. The family, having a lick of sense, packed up what they could carry and headed for Canada the next day, abandoning the textile mill and all their possessions that wouldn’t fit on a wagon.
This happened in 1775. The original Smith clan were what were called Loyalists. Upper Canada welcomed them with open arms and they settled in what is now Brockville, Ontario to become drunkards, gamblers, thieves and reprobates.
During the Second World War, the Allies had a couple of facilities near Liverpool that obtained information from downed German airmen and any spies that were captured. The methods were, um, effective. The Germans did the same thing. So did the Russians, the Japanese and the Americans. For that matter Canada had a place near Oshawa that was used for all kinds of things including ‘special detention’ facilities.
At least Dubya has admitted it has been going on and now detainees will be treated ‘humanely’. The out is the pronouncement only applies to those detainees in the custody of the Military. CIA detainees are excluded and the real number in CIA custody is somewhere from a dozen to two dozen. Fourteen have been admitted to by Dubya. As for how many will survive long enough to be turned over to the military is anyone’s guess. Oooopsie. There was a terrible accident and, well, you know. Business as Usual.
RoadDave 