Obama's duplicitous foreign policy

yeah, no shit...

jeremy scahill via the nation...

On the campaign trail, Obama promised an end to torture, extraordinary rendition and secret prisons. But since taking office he has in fact doubled-down on some of the more insidious policies he inherited from the Bush administration. As Nation correspondent Jeremy Scahill explains, Obama has surrounded himself with war hawks, relied on targeted killing and acted unilaterally to defend US interests. Instead of drawing down the two major ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has shifted combat to special operations units, prolonging US engagement and fighting a "dirty" war.

and to think how much i railed against george bush...

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Guantánamo detainees drugged and then interrogated

it's not like this is so damn surprising given what we already know about what's gone on in gitmo but what we only suspect vs. what is revealed as fact is a big difference...


jeffrey kaye and jason leopold posting at truthout...

Detainees in custody of the US military were interrogated while drugged with powerful antipsychotic and other medications that "could impair an individual's ability to provide accurate information," according to a declassified Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general's report that probed the alleged use of "mind altering drugs" during interrogations.

In addition, detainees were subjected to "chemical restraints," hydrated with intravenous (IV) fluids while they were being interrogated and, in what appears to be a form of psychological manipulation, the inspector general's probe confirmed at least one detainee - convicted "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla - was the subject of a "deliberate ruse" in which his interrogator led him to believe he was given an injection of "truth serum."

Truthout obtained a copy of the report - "Investigation of Allegations of the Use of Mind-Altering Drugs to Facilitate Interrogations of Detainees" - prepared by the DoD's deputy inspector general for intelligence in September 2009, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we filed nearly two years ago.

[Leonard Rubenstein, a medical ethicist at Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights and the former president of Physicians for Human Rights] said the failure to inform prisoners what drugs they were given means "some basic principles of medical ethics were cast aside, especially those requiring a doctor to explain his or her recommendation and seek consent for it as an affirmation of the dignity and autonomy of the patient."

"Even where consent is not forthcoming and involuntary medication is allowed after voluntary medication is not accepted, it should never take place unless this process is followed," Rubenstein said.

The cumulative effects of indefinite detention, interrogations, use of drugs, and other conditions of confinement also appear to have taken a toll on the detainees' mental state and impacted the DoD watchdog's ability to conduct a thorough investigation.

Indeed, when the inspector general sought to interview the attorney representing one detainee who claimed he was given mind-altering drugs during interrogations, the attorney responded, "at this state of his incarceration, [redacted] memory is severely compromised and, unfortunately, we are skeptical that he can provide you with any further details ..."

The investigation also found instances where "chemical restraints" were used on detainees "that posed a threat to themselves or others," which Rubenstein said, "is contrary to US Bureau of Prison regulations, decisions of the US Supreme Court and to medical ethics principles that forbid subordinating the patient's medical interests to prison security."

[...]

The inspector general's yearlong probe was launched in June 2008, two months after the publication of a Washington Post report in which some detainees claimed they were forcibly drugged and coerced into making confessions.

One of the detainees at the center of The Washington Post report, Adel al-Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman who was imprisoned at Guantanamo from 2002 to 2005, is prominently featured in the inspector general's report and identified as "IG-02."

According to his attorney's notes cited in The Washington Post, al-Nusairi claimed he was injected with an unknown medication that made him extremely sleepy just before he was interrogated in 2002. When his captors awakened him, he fabricated a confession for US interrogators in hopes they would leave him alone so he could sleep.

"I was completely gone," al-Nusairi told his attorney, Anant Raut. "I said, 'Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I'm a member of al-Qaeda, I will.'"

and you can be sure, if it happened at guantánamo, it also took place at bagram and all the other black sites...

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Information about the CIA black sites continues to trickle in

i've posted extensively on the cia black sites, particularly the ones in poland, lithuania and diego garcia... here's some fresh information on the site in romania, dug up, no surprise, by a non-u.s. news organization, in this case, the german network ard...

The existence of a CIA prison in Romania has been widely reported, but its location has never been made public. The Associated Press and German public television ARD located the former prison and learned details of the facility where harsh interrogation tactics were used. ARD's program on the CIA prison is set to air Thursday.

The Romanian prison was part of a network of so-called black sites that the CIA operated and controlled overseas in Thailand, Lithuania and Poland. All the prisons were closed by May 2006, and the CIA's detention and interrogation program ended in 2009.

Unlike the CIA's facility in Lithuania's countryside or the one hidden in a Polish military installation, the CIA's prison in Romania was not in a remote location. It was hidden in plain sight, a couple blocks off a major boulevard on a street lined with trees and homes, along busy train tracks.

here it is, "hidden in plain sight"...


The National Registry Office for Classified Information, also known
as ORNISS, sits in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from
the center of Romania’s capital city of Bucharest in this recent photo.
Between 2003 and 2006, the CIA operated a secret prison from the
building's basement, bringing in high-value terror suspects for
interrogation and detention. A joint AP-ARD Panorama investigation
revealed the exact location of the prison. (AP Photo)

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Yet another CIA "black site"?

i've posted extensively on the existence of cia "black sites" in locations from poland to the indian ocean island of diego garcia (see here)... here's some current info from the wapo about another possible site in lithuania...


People in Antaviliai were suspicious of this building,
originally windowless, that may have housed a CIA
secret prison.
(Craig Whitlock/the Washington Post)

Residents of this village were mystified five years ago when tight-lipped American construction workers suddenly appeared at a mothballed riding stable here and built a large, two-story building without windows, ringed by a metal fence and security cameras.

Today, a Lithuanian parliamentary committee is investigating whether the CIA operated a secret prison for terrorism suspects on the plot of land at the edge of a thick forest for more than a year, from 2004 until late 2005.

Lithuanian land registry documents reviewed by The Washington Post show the property was bought in March 2004 by Elite LLC, an unincorporated U.S. firm registered in the District.

Records in Lithuania and Washington do not reveal the names of individual officers for Elite but identify its sole shareholder as Star Finance Group and Holdings Inc., a Panamanian corporation. There is no record of Elite owning other property in Lithuania.

The company, which has since had its registration revoked by D.C. authorities, in turn sold the property to the Lithuanian government in 2007, two years after the existence of the CIA's overseas network of secret prisons known as black sites -- including some in Eastern Europe -- was first revealed by The Washington Post.

so, naturally enough, the whole project was done by a cia "cutout" company as a way to shield the responsible parties but also to sidestep any and all accountability...

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At least ONE country believes in accountability and the rule of law - too bad it's not the U.S.

let's get this party started...

scott horton in the daily beast...

The Bush Six to Be Indicted

Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national-security affairs for Harper's magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.

Spanish prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo, several reliable sources close to the investigation have told The Daily Beast. Their decision is expected to be announced on Tuesday before the Spanish central criminal court, the Audencia Nacional, in Madrid. But the decision is likely to raise concerns with the human-rights community on other points: They will seek to have the case referred to a different judge.

Both Washington and Madrid appear determined not to allow the pending criminal investigation to get in the way of improved relations.

The six defendants - in addition to Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith - are accused of having given the green light to the torture and mistreatment of prisoners held in U.S. detention in "the war on terror." The case arises in the context of a pending proceeding before the court involving terrorism charges against five Spaniards formerly held at Guantánamo. A group of human-rights lawyers originally filed a criminal complaint asking the court to look at the possibility of charges against the six American lawyers. Baltasar Garzón Real, the investigating judge, accepted the complaint and referred it to Spanish prosecutors for a view as to whether they would accept the case and press it forward. "The evidence provided was more than sufficient to justify a more comprehensive investigation," one of the lawyers associated with the prosecution stated.

But prosecutors will also ask that Judge Garzón, an internationally known figure due to his management of the case against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and other high-profile cases, step aside. The case originally came to Garzón because he presided over efforts to bring terrorism charges against the five Spaniards previously held at Guantánamo. Spanish prosecutors consider it "awkward" for the same judge to have both the case against former U.S. officials based on the possible torture of the five Spaniards at Guantánamo and the case against those very same Spaniards. A source close to the prosecution also noted that there was concern about the reaction to the case in some parts of the U.S. media, where it had been viewed, incorrectly, as a sort of personal frolic of Judge Garzón. Instead, the prosecutors will ask Garzón to transfer the case to Judge Ismail Moreno, who is currently handling an investigation into kidnapping charges surrounding the CIA's use of facilities as a safe harbor in connection with the seizure of Khalid el-Masri, a German greengrocer who was seized and held at various CIA blacksites for about half a year as a result of mistaken identity. The decision on the transfer will be up to Judge Garzón in the first instance, and he is expected to make a quick ruling. If he denies the request, it may be appealed.

i'm happy to take accountability and the rule of law where and when i can get it, even if it's spain picking up the baton to indict officials from my country...

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"The End of America" - 4th of July food for thought from Scott Ritter

points to ponder as you watch and listen to scott ritter...

• Iraq
• Afghanistan
• War on terror
• U.S. Constitution
• Bill of Rights
• 4th Amendment
• Geneva Convention
• U.N. Convention against Torture
• Guantánamo
• Abu Ghraib
• Bagram
• Extraordinary rendition
• Warrantless domestic wiretapping
• Patriot Act
• Military Commissions Act
• CIA black sites
• Presidential signing statements
• Executive privilege
• Unitary executive
• Telecom immunity

from brasscheck tv...

Spoken before the US invaded Iraq

"We can call ouselves Americans. We can fly the American flag, but unless we stand up and defend the values that define us as Americans, we will cease being Americans."

Scott Ritter gave this talk before the US invaded Iraq. As a former US Marine Corps officer, UN weapons inspector and expert on the armaments of Iraq, he very publicly disputed the Bush adminstration's claim that Iraq was a threat to the US.

Now the US is on the same path with regards to war against Iran.

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Floating U.S. black-site prisons and more on Diego Garcia

i posted just the other day on the possible existence of u.s. prison ships...

here's some more from the guardian...

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

diego garcia is a busy little place with a lot of covert activity... it's also about as far away from nosy reporters and prying eyes as it's possible to get (with the possible exception of antarctica, where i fully expect there's some pretty black stuff going on as well)...

here are some google earth shots of and a bit of background on diego garcia... note the ships in the harbor...


The above shows the entire Diego Garcia
atoll surrounding the lagoon. Although
you can't see them very well in this shot,
there are 7 ships in the lagoon and 2
in port.


The above is a closer-in shot of the
airbase. The port is in the middle left
and the housing area is on the extreme
upper left.

from wikipedia... i've highlighted particularly interesting facts in bold...

Diego Garcia (-7.317, 72.417) is an atoll located in the heart of the Indian Ocean, some 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south off Colombo, Sri Lanka's southern coast. Diego Garcia is the largest atoll by land area of the Chagos Archipelago. It is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), a British overseas territory.

Since the enforced depopulation of Diego Garcia in the years leading up to 1973, it has been used as a military base by the United States and the United Kingdom. Diego Garcia hosts one of three ground antennas (others are on Kwajalein and Ascension Island) that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system. GEODSS that tracks satellites optically along with the other GEODSS sites at White Sands Missle Range and on top of Mt. Kilauea in Hawaii. The Scripps Institute maintains Project IDA/IRIS sesmic montitors used there to correlate worldwide sesmic events for locating and underground nuclear testing for the US Govenment. Project ECHELON is also hosted there to provide worldwide reception of electronic signals. SNOOPY planes out of Offut AFB in Omaha regularly stop there as they skirted foreign countries intercepting SIGNET from their borders. The Anotonov-225 jet flys there providing cargo heavy lift for the island. B-1's from Ellsworth AFB still launch daily from there for OIF and OEF, as well as B-2's, and formerly B-52's were launched from there against Iraq during the Gulf War. To this day Navy P-3 Orion Subhunters operate out of there. The Navy Submarine Warfare Center is located there. The island is outfitted with sonophone microphones capable of detecting ship Screws turning 5000 miles away. The SR-71 Blackbird flew out of BIOT during the Cold War. The island's shape (similar to that of a human footprint) has led the US Navy to refer to Diego Garcia as "The Footprint of Freedom." You must have a US security clearance to even visit the island. Flights are provided by AMC out of Paya Lebar AB in Singapore.

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The U.S. prisons, prison ships and proxy prison sites - Guantánamo, Bagram, Diego Garcia, Camp Lemonier, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and, yes, Abu Ghraib

monday, 19 may, democracy now...

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviewing Clive Stafford Smith, a British attorney who represents more than fifty of the prisoners at Guantanamo, legal director of the UK charity Reprieve and author of Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay. He is testifying on Tuesday before the House Committee on Foreign Relations about Guantanamo Bay.

[A]ccording to the most recent official figures, the United States is currently holding 27,000 secret prisoners around the world. So that means that 99 percent of these folk are not in Guantanamo Bay. Now they’re in other prisons elsewhere. And as you mentioned, Bagram has 680. But there’s a huge number of people being held in Iraq, and one of the intriguing aspects of this that doesn’t get much reporting is that the US is bringing people into Iraq from elsewhere to hold them there, simply because that keeps rather annoying people like you, Amy—I mean the media—and also annoying people like me, lawyers, away from the prisoners so they can’t get any sort of legal rights.

And when you look around the world, there’s a huge camp, Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, where a lot of people are being held. Diego Garcia, contrary to the past analysis of the British government, in the Indian Ocean has been used, in my belief, to hold people. And we’ve identified thirty-two prison ships, sort of prison hulks you used to read about in Victorian England, which have been converted to hold prisoners, and we’ve got pictures of them in Lisbon Harbor, for example. And these are holding prisoners around the world, as well. And there’s a bunch of proxy prisons—Morocco, Egypt and Jordan—where this stuff is going on. And this is a huge concern, because the world focus is on Guantanamo Bay, which really is a diversionary tactic in the whole war of terror or war on terror, whatever you’d like to call it. And actually, most of these people who have been severed from their legal rights are in these other secret prisons around the world.

it's becoming increasingly apparent that guantánamo is a diversionary tactic... i speculated the other day that the announcement of the new prison to be built at bagram in afghanistan is a signal that guantánamo will indeed be closed... this will precipitate a victory chant from human rights activists who will fail to note that all of these other sites are still out there, just much less visible and a whole lot easier to shield from prying eyes...

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Clive, did you say that you—that the US is taking prisoners to Iraq?

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Oh, yes, they are. I mean, the US is taking an estimated forty to sixty, on average, prisoners a day around the world. And it doesn’t take a lot of arithmetic to tell you how many people that is each month. And people are being taken to Iraq to be held in Abu Ghraib, even today, and also in other camps in Iraq.

mark my words... we will see guantánamo closed about the time the new facility at bagram opens...

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Seems like we've heard rumors about closing Guantánamo before

what i'd like to know is what about bagram (see below) and the other cia black sites...?

The Bush administration could announce plans by the end of its term in January to close Guantánamo prison and an upcoming Supreme Court ruling might be the impetus for this, senior U.S. officials and experts say.

The government is under international and domestic pressure to close the prison, which opened at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay on Cuba in January 2002 to house terrorism suspects caught after the invasion of Afghanistan.

"A decision could be made in this administration to announce the closure of Guantanamo. It is unlikely in the next nine months that Guantánamo could be physically (closed) but it is possible the policy decision could be taken to close it," said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition he was not identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Officials say planning and debate has intensified in recent months over how to deal with Guantánamo, which President George W. Bush acknowledges has tarnished America's image and human rights advocates say has damaged U.S credibility. prison and an upcoming Supreme Court ruling might be the impetus for this, senior U.S. officials and experts say.

The government is under international and domestic pressure to close the prison, which opened at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay on Cuba in January 2002 to house terrorism suspects caught after the invasion of Afghanistan.

"A decision could be made in this administration to announce the closure of Guantánamo. It is unlikely in the next nine months that Guantánamo could be physically (closed) but it is possible the policy decision could be taken to close it," said a senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition he was not identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Officials say planning and debate has intensified in recent months over how to deal with Guantánamo, which President George W. Bush acknowledges has tarnished America's image and human rights advocates say has damaged U.S credibility.

This photo is said to be the first to be distributed taken from within the Bagram facility. Conditions at Bagram have been reported to have been far more brutal, and primitive, than those at the more well-known Guantánamo Bay detention camp.

first of all, i don't believe for one second that the bush administration intends to close guantánamo... this rumor has surfaced repeatedly and has repeatedly been squashed... besides, even if guantánamo is closed, that doesn't take care of bagram and those other sites where the united states violates the geneva and the u.n. convention against torture... closing guantánamo would only be symbolic and wouldn't at all get to the heart of the matter...

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And we should not find anything suspicious about this because...?

isn't it just so very interesting how so very many of those who question things they aren't supposed to question end up this way...?

UK Top Cop Who Led CIA Probe Found Dead

A city police chief who led an investigation into charges that Britain cooperated with secret CIA flights to transport terrorism suspects without formal proceedings has been found dead, his deputy said Tuesday.

Manchester Chief Constable Michael Todd, 50, was found dead in Snowdonia, about 240 miles northwest of London, Deputy Chief Constable Dave Whatton said. He had been missing since going out for a walk Monday during his day off.

Whatton said the body, which was found Tuesday afternoon, had not yet been formally identified but he believed it was Todd.

He said a coroner's inquest would investigate the cause of death and did not give any further details.

Todd was elected vice president of the Association of Chief Police Officers of England and Wales in 2006, according to a biography on his Web site.

The association gave him the task of looking into accusations that Britain allowed the CIA to use the country's airports to fly terrorism suspects to other countries without any extradition hearings, a clandestine procedure known as "extraordinary rendition."

Todd's investigation concluded last June that there was no evidence to back the claim. Last month, however, Britain admitted one of its remote outposts in the Indian Ocean had twice been used by the United States as a refueling stop for the secret transfer of two terrorism suspects.

that "remote outpost" would be the indian ocean island of diego garcia about which i've posted numerous times...

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Still more on the CIA "black site" at Diego Garcia

i've had two posts on diego garcia over the past five months, one in october and the second just last month...

here's more, as the truth slowly trickles out...

Britain's denials that its territories have been used for 'extraordinary rendition' were dramatically undermined last night after the United Nations claimed that Diego Garcia has been used as a detention centre to hold US suspects.

Manfred Novak, the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture, who is charged with investigating human rights abuses, said he had received credible evidence from well-placed sources familiar with the situation on the island that detainees were held on Diego Garcia between 2002 and 2003.

Novak pledged he would consider a request by the UK government to share his information. 'I spoke to my sources on condition of anonymity and it would take time to trace them; I couldn't do it [brief the UK government] without the explicit authorisation of these people,' Novak said. 'But under this caveat, I could share more information.'

Novak said he had spoken to people who had been held on the atoll, situated in the Indian Ocean and home to a large US naval base. They had been treated well in comparison with the regime some endured at places such as Guantánamo Bay. 'There were only a few of them and they were not held for a long time,' he said.

In 2004, the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, confirmed to parliament that there was a detention centre on Diego Garcia. Planning documents show it was 'upgraded' in December 2001. Ships operating offshore have also been used as floating 'black sites' to hold detainees, according to human rights groups.

eventually, i suppose, we will find out where all of the cia black sites are located...

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The truth continues to trickle out: Britain connects Diego Garcia with extraordinary rendition flights

i posted back in mid-october on the possibility that diego garcia is a cia black site... it looks like, ever-so-slowly, the truth is coming out...

Two U.S. planes carrying terrorism suspects refueled at a U.S. base on British-ruled Diego Garcia in 2002, Britain said on Thursday, contradicting earlier assurances.

"Contrary to earlier explicit assurances that Diego Garcia had not been used for rendition flights, recent U.S. investigations have now revealed two occasions, both in 2002, when this had in fact occurred," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told parliament. Diego Garcia is an Indian Ocean island.

given the island's extreme isolation from just about anywhere, what do you think the likelihood is that they were "JUST" refueling stops for extraordinary rendition flights...?

here are some google earth shots of diego garcia...


The above shows the entire Diego Garcia
atoll surrounding the lagoon. Although
you can't see them very well in this shot,
there are 7 ships in the lagoon and 2
in port.


The above is a closer-in shot of the
airbase. The port is in the middle left
and the housing area is on the extreme
upper left.

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Questions for Iowa caucus winner Barack Obama

yep, yep, and yep...

Will you appoint an independent investigator to hunt down and expose the evidence of wrongdoing by your predecessor?

Will you roll back the Unitary Executive powers that Bush has claimed?

Will you take the necessary steps to restore Habeas Corpus?

Will you restore the Fourth Amendment so that citizens will be safe in their homes from their own government?

Will you close Gitmo and the Secret Prisons?

Will you launch FULL investigations into the politicization and subversion of the DOJ and the intelligence agencies?

When you take office, will you remove all remnants of "The Bushies" in the DOJ and instruct your newly staffed Department of Justice to vigorously pursue investigations in to the many and various....and many....criminal and suspect activities of the Bush Administration?

OR...

Or will you announce, as so may others have done before you, on so many occasions that the "past is past" and that we "must move on" and let the outrages and illegalities of the previous eight years fade away?

keep in mind, senator (and presidential candidate) obama...

Please remember that many of the perpetrators of todays injustices were also involved in Watergate, were involved in Iran Contra and the Death Squads in Central America. That these people have continued in power, continued to pursue their own agendas out of their twisted ideologies, that these in fact are the very people that have CAUSED the disunity in America that you decry.

The People of America and the world simply cannot unite and heal our differences while these cancers on real democracy exist in our midst, unexposed and unpunished. In order to unite us into a new and healthy nation and restore our role as a world leader, this cancer must be excised.

once again, my deepest wish is that bush and his criminal compadres will be removed from office prior to the end of his term, and, preferably, before the november election... that would give us an opportunity to roll back those abuses and to officially and forcefully repudiate them BEFORE the next president is elected and takes the oath of office on 20 january 2009...

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Sold down the river by Congress since 2002 and we would be suprised by this because?

these aren't the rightful leaders of the legislative branch of our government... they are treasonous traitors, every bit as complicit in the destruction of our constitution and the abrogation of the rule of law as the criminals in the executive branch...

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

and this is supposed to make everything all right...?

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Extraordinary Rendition - watch it tonight on PBS

check here for local listings...

FRONTLINE/World begins a new season of investigations this November with a story about the CIA's controversial rendition program. Five years ago, award-winning journalist Stephen Grey left his job at The Sunday Times in London to investigate one of the darkest sides of the Bush Administration’s war on terror. Beginning with the mysterious flight logs of secret CIA flights, Grey and others uncovered a secret CIA prison system involving countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, and the CIA's own "black sites," where the White House authorized "enhanced interrogation techniques," which critics say amount to torture.

In "Extraordinary Rendition," Grey sets out to find the CIA'S "ghost prisoners" themselves -- some confirmed as high-value al Qaeda members, others unwittingly caught and released months or years later without charge. He also questions former CIA and FBI officials as the debate grows in Washington over the effectiveness and legality of extrajudicial detention and interrogation. "There aren’t many enthusiasts now inside the CIA who want to round up dozens of people anymore. But the threat is still there," says Grey. "The key thing is that until Congress and the American people decide on a way of dealing with prisoners in the courtroom according to the rule of law, the CIA probably hasn’t got any alternative but to either hold prisoners secretly in their own detention system, or to render them to countries that will do the CIA bidding."

abc's blotter has some fairly explosive coverage on info contained in this documentary here...

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A possible CIA "black site" on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean

for some reason, diego garcia has always fascinated me... it's extremely remote, lying some 1000 miles off the southern coast of sri lanka... a friend from a previous life was a u.s. air force navigator who told me tales of flying in and out of diego garcia... what a perfect spot (terrible choice of words, i know) for a cia "black site" prison...

Allegations that the CIA held al-Qaida suspects for interrogation at a secret prison on sovereign British territory are to be investigated by MPs, the Guardian has learned. The all-party foreign affairs committee is to examine long-standing suspicions that the agency has operated one of its so-called "black site" prisons on Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean that is home to a large US military base.

Lawyers from Reprieve, a legal charity that represents a number of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, including several former British residents, are calling on the committee to question US and British officials about the allegations. According to the organisation's submission to the committee, the UK government is "potentially systematically complicit in the most serious crimes against humanity of disappearance, torture and prolonged incommunicado detention"

[...]

Clive Stafford Smith, the charity's legal director, said he was "absolutely and categorically certain" that prisoners have been held on the island. "If the foreign affairs committee approaches this thoroughly, they will get to the bottom of it," he said.

[...]

Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general who is professor of international security studies at the West Point military academy, has twice spoken publicly about the use of Diego Garcia to detain suspects. In May 2004 he said: "We're probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq." In December last year he repeated the claim: "They're behind bars...we've got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram air field, in Guantánamo."

MPs on the committee may inquire into a Gulfstream executive jet which has been linked by its registration number to several CIA prisoner operations - known as extraordinary renditions - and which flew from Washington to Diego Garcia, via Athens, on September 11 2002, soon after the capture of Ramzi Binalshibh, a suspected planner of the September 11 attacks the previous year.

A prison of some sort is known to exist on Diego Garcia: in 1984, a review by the US government's general accounting office of construction work on the island reported that a "detention facility" had been completed the previous December.

[...]

One possibility which the foreign affairs committee may explore is that suspects have been held on a prison ship off the coast of Diego Garcia. The UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, has said that he has heard from reliable sources that the US has held prisoners on ships in the Indian Ocean. There have also been second-hand accounts from detainees at Guantánamo of prisoners being held on US naval vessels.

.
here are some google earth shots of diego garcia...


The above shows the entire Diego Garcia
atoll surrounding the lagoon. Although
you can't see them very well in this shot,
there are 7 ships in the lagoon and 2
in port.


The above is a closer-in shot of the
airbase. The port is in the middle left
and the housing area is on the extreme
upper left.

from wikipedia... i've highlighted particularly interesting facts in bold...

Diego Garcia (-7.317, 72.417) is an atoll located in the heart of the Indian Ocean, some 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south off Colombo, Sri Lanka's southern coast. Diego Garcia is the largest atoll by land area of the Chagos Archipelago. It is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), a British overseas territory.

Since the enforced depopulation of Diego Garcia in the years leading up to 1973, it has been used as a military base by the United States and the United Kingdom. Diego Garcia hosts one of three ground antennas (others are on Kwajalein and Ascension Island) that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system. GEODSS that tracks satellites optically along with the other GEODSS sites at White Sands Missle Range and on top of Mt. Kilauea in Hawaii. The Scripps Institute maintains Project IDA/IRIS sesmic montitors used there to correlate worldwide sesmic events for locating and underground nuclear testing for the US Govenment. Project ECHELON is also hosted there to provide worldwide reception of electronic signals. SNOOPY planes out of Offut AFB in Omaha regularly stop there as they skirted foreign countries intercepting SIGNET from their borders. The Anotonov-225 jet flys there providing cargo heavy lift for the island. B-1's from Ellsworth AFB still launch daily from there for OIF and OEF, as well as B-2's, and formerly B-52's were launched from there against Iraq during the Gulf War. To this day Navy P-3 Orion Subhunters operate out of there. The Navy Submarine Warfare Center is located there. The island is outfitted with sonophone microphones capable of detecting ship Screws turning 5000 miles away. The SR-71 Blackbird flew out of BIOT during the Cold War. The island's shape (similar to that of a human footprint) has led the US Navy to refer to Diego Garcia as "The Footprint of Freedom." You must have a US security clearance to even visit the island. Flights are provided by AMC out of Paya Lebar AB in Singapore.

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The do-it-yourself interrogation and torture kit, ready to be used at your very own black site

i confess, i haven't gone and read jane mayer's new yorker article on the cia's black sites simply because i haven't wanted to soil my mental and emotional state with any more of the bushco nightmare than has already been sprinkled around my neural synapses... i was just following a link from kos to digby and found myself reading this...

The C.I.A.’s interrogation program is remarkable for its mechanistic aura. "It’s one of the most sophisticated, refined programs of torture ever," an outside expert familiar with the protocol said. "At every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail. Procedure was adhered to almost to the letter. There was top-down quality control, and such a set routine that you get to the point where you know what each detainee is going to say, because you’ve heard it before. It was almost automated. People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling."

the do-it-yourself torture kit... just follow the easy, illustrated instructions...

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Are extraordinary rendition flights continuing, operated by Blackwater?

A CASA-212 Aviocar, registration number N964BW,
owned by Blackwater, lands at the RAF Mildenhall airbase in
Suffolk, United Kingdom, a week ago Saturday

when i was working for united airlines, i discovered that there's an entire sub-culture out there of "plane-spotters," no doubt genetically linked to that other genre, train-spotters... at heart, i suppose i'm one myself, although not nearly passionate enough to devote any serious time to it... anywayz, plane-spotters around the world have been doing a great service to all of us by identifying, tracking, monitoring, and photographing cia flights... this story would not have surfaced had it not been for their diligent efforts...

from the uk daily mail...

The row over CIA 'torture flights' using British airports has deepened following fresh evidence that a plane repeatedly linked to the controversial programme landed in the UK just days ago.

The plane was logged arriving at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk last weekend, and watching aviation experts said the aircraft, piloted by crew clad in desert fatigues, was immediately surrounded on the runway by armed American security forces.

Its registration number, clearly visible on the fuselage, identifies it as a plane which the European Parliament says has been involved in 'ghost flights' to smuggle terrorist suspects to shadowy interrogation centres abroad.

Records show the plane is owned by Blackwater USA, a CIA contractor described as "the most secretive and powerful mercenary army on the planet". An eyewitness, who previously worked as an RAF electronic warfare expert, said that as the plane - a CASA-212 Aviocar - taxied to a stop on the runway it was met by a US military Humvee.

The vehicle contained four US security policemen armed with M16 assault rifles, who accompanied the camouflaged crew to the airport terminal.

this comes hard on the heels of last week's report confirming cia secret prisons... equally interesting is that a little digging turned up that the plane is listed in a report provided last november for the european parliament...


With a range of 2,000 miles, the flight was tracked
in U.S. airspace, and then likely refueled in Greenland,
the U.K., Malta, and the near Middle East, before heading
to Afghanistan or Iraq.

A report last November by a European Parliament committee placed the plane - registration number N964BW - on a list of "companies and aircraft used by the CIA for extraordinary rendition flights". The plane was previously registered with the Bolivian army, and has been pictured on the ground in the Afghan capital Kabul within the past year.

The American Federal Aviation Authority lists the plane as being operated by two companies, Aviation World Wide Services and a sister company, Presidential Airways.

The European Parliament report describes these as shell companies operating as subsidiaries of Blackwater USA, "an important contractor for the CIA and the US military" which bases the planes in Malta.

Research by a further group, The American Centre for Media and Democracy, claims that flight-tracking internet technology shows the plane landed at least twice in the first six months of 2006 at Camp Peary, the U.S. naval reservation in Virginia known as The Farm and widely alleged to be a CIA training facility.

Tracking technology shows that the plane was en route from Canada to Greenland two days before it was sighted at Mildenhall: the internet software does not extend beyond American airspace, but the expert explained that its route would be consistent with a refuelling stop in the Arctic - it only has a range of about 2,000 miles - followed by a further refuel in East Anglia, before heading to Malta.

From there it could 'leapfrog' from US bases in the former Soviet states bordering Afghanistan on to Kabul.

i can't imagine anyone so naive as to believe both that the cia secret prisons are not still in operation and that extraordinary rendition is not still underway... such naivete - or deliberate blindness - is equivalent to believing that domestic wiretapping is being conducted through fisa or that bush will dump alberto gonzales... as atrios says, na ga happen...

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Where are the 39 "ghost prisoners"?

bad, bad, bad business...

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, said they filed a U.S. federal lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act seeking information about the 39 people it terms "ghost prisoners" in the U.S. "war on terror."

Reuters

Six human rights groups urged the U.S. government on Thursday to name and explain the whereabouts of 39 people they said were believed to have been held in U.S. custody and "disappeared."

"Since the end of Latin America's dirty wars, the world has rejected the use of 'disappearances' as a fundamental violation of international law," Professor Meg Satterthwaite of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University's School of Law said in a statement.

The report said suspects' relatives, including children as young as seven, had been held in secret detention on occasion.

sometimes i have to stop and remind myself that i'm reading about my own country, not el salvador, chile, honduras, or argentina...

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Guantánamo: "When you can’t win a bet with loaded dice, something is wrong with the game"

yeah, i think that's safe to say...

Gitmo: A National Disgrace

[...]

It is time to get rid of it.

according to the nyt, the problems are...

• [T]he special detention system is ... fundamentally corrupt.

• The tribunals are, in fact, kangaroo courts that give the inmates no chance to defend themselves, allow evidence that was obtained through torture and can be repeated until one produces the answer the Pentagon wants.

• The Guantánamo camp was ... built on a lie — that the hundreds of detainees at Gitmo are all dangerous terrorists.

• Guantánamo ... was organized around a fiction — that Mr. Bush had the power to create this rogue system in the first place.

and the solutions are both simple and in keeping with the fundamental, historical principles of the u.s. justice system...

• Congress needs to restore the right of the inmates of Guantánamo Bay to challenge their detentions.

• Those who are truly illegal combatants would be sent to military or civilian jails in the United States, to be tried under time-tested American rules of justice, or sent to an international tribunal. Some would be returned to their native lands for trial, if warranted. The rest would be set free, as they should have been long ago.

• Congress should repeal the Military Commissions Act and start anew on a just system for determining whether prisoners are unlawful combatants. Among other things, evidence obtained through coercion and torture should be banned.

• Congress should shut down Guantánamo Bay.

our national self-respect has suffered tremendously under the lawless regime of george w. bush... not the least of that has been the condoning of such outrageous policies as torture enhanced interrogation techniques, secret detention in cia "black sites," extraordinary rendition, and the denial of access to the established judicial process in a timely manner, substituting instead what the nyt rightly calls kangaroo courts... it's not just time to get rid of it... it's WAY PAST time...

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