Prison ships, torture claims, and missing detainees (Guardian 2 Jun 08)

[struggle4progress]

America may have held terror suspects in British territory, despite UK denials
Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian
Monday June 2 2008

... The CIA is also believed to have run prisons in countries in almost every continent, including Thailand, Afghanistan (at Bagram, near the military airport, north of Kabul), Poland, Romania, and Djibouti, the former French colony at the southern end of the Red Sea, as well as at Guantánamo Bay ...

According to a US Congress report, up to 14,000 people may have been victims of rendition and secret detention since 2001. Some reports estimate there have been twice as many. The US admits to have captured more than 80,000 prisoners in its "war on terror".

The human rights group, Reprieve, points to a statement by Bush on September 6 2006 that "the secret prisons are now empty". Reprieve says this is not the case.

Over the past six months alone, Reprieve and other human rights groups have uncovered over 200 new cases of rendition and secret detention. Many prisoners remain unaccounted for, held without any legal protection ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/02/terrorism.terrorism

[democrank]

1. George Bush....war criminal

Majority of the Congress....spineless.

[Peace Patriot]

2. My first reaction to this story was simple horror! Prison ships, my God!

Is there no bottom to Bushite depravity?

But recovering my rational mind just a bit (one not drenched in sorrow for my country, and outrage for the thousands of tortured and horribly detained prisoners), I know that all the things our Founders warned us about, and tried so hard to prevent in their legal structure for our country--an out-of-control executive, presidential war, excessive secrecy, massive theft of the federal treasury, controlled news media, the failure of the two other supposedly equal branches of government, the failure of checks and balances, the evil of corporate cabals, cruel and unusual punishment, detention without trial, the mixing of church and state--lead directly to this: bottomless horror. They had seen it all in the history of Europe. They tried to prevent it here. They damned well knew it could happen, and built every structure they could think of into the Constitution and early policy to preserve us from this. And here it is. Tyranny.

We have now been given the historic task of re-creating American democracy from the ashes of the Old Republic. But first, we must face all of what these Bushites (and collusive Democrats) have done, and it is going to take a strong stomach. For I fear that the depravity and horror are far worse than we know. What are these thousands of secret prisoners for? If they have committed crimes against us, why can't we know what they are? Why is there no daylight in this prisoner system? What is the real purpose of these secret detentions, tortures and deaths? What have they been after? I don't for a minute believe that the Bush Junta has done anything whatever to "keep us safe." Some of the military and other personnel may have been led to believe that, but I don't believe it of the architects of these crimes. So--why? Were they tracking down and neutralizing all potential witnesses to their own crimes (say, the 9/11 money trail)? Were there particular Bushite business interests involved--banking, oil, weapons, drugs, human trafficking? Were they making snuff videos for Bushite pals? Were they doing favors for the Saudis?

I think this junta has been a cauldron of such stinking corruption, crime, greed and depravity that we would reel at the full truth. But--as with the Nuremberg trials, and the on-going trials in Argentina and other places where rampant brutality has been unleashed--we must know all of what the Bushites have done, and their victims have a right to disclosure and restitution.

I am more and more convinced that our nation has been in such peril from this junta, that certain people and groups, working for what they considered our best interest, made a bargain with these criminals: No impeachment if they would go peacefully when the time comes (and perhaps also, refrain from nuking Iran). I think this may have happened around the time of Donald Rumsfeld's resignation (the worst of the criminals) just after the '06 elections. The '06 elections showed that it was possible to at least shift the power structure a bit, with sufficient outrage by the people, in the form of angry voters--and many new voters. The voters' main thrust (stop the war) was defeated, by placing "Blue Dog" Democrats on the ballots, and by Diebold & brethren and their magic code--but the outcry was so strong that, given time, it was clear that a revolution was coming.

This event--the awakening of the citizenry (starting in '04, but really gathering steam by '06)--occurred around the same time that something else was going on in the inner sanctums of our government, or that's how it feels to me. Some earth-shaking insider disclosure became known--perhaps people in the military, or the FBI, or the CIA, finally got the goods on Donald Rumsfeld, and forced him out. (I've always thought he did 9/11--could be that; could be a number of things.) It's like a secret "good guy" cabal has been at work to get these people cornered, to hem them in, to de-fang them, and remove them, while avoiding a major blood-curdling disclosure that might shatter the nation. Among these "good guys" (and I use the term advisedly--I mean relatively "good") are those who want to protect the "military-industrial complex" and Corporate Rule from citizen outrage, and there are those with purer motives. But one and all fear destabilization of the country, for whatever reasons (good, bad, mixed), and (for whatever reasons) loathe and fear this junta, and have acted to get them out. And if this is true--that the danger is that the Bush Junta wouldn't leave, because they couldn't afford to yield the reins of power (too many crimes piled up against them), and we were looking at a full-on nazi state (cancelled election, martial law), then the "bargain" (if this is true) is probably a good one, or the best that this "good guy" cabal could do.

I actually think it may go back to Katrina--a moment at which I felt something "break," behind the scenes, in the Bush White House. What was likely going on, behind the scenes, at that time, was finger-pointing and back-stabbing regarding the Plame/Brewster-Jennings outings under pressure of the Fitzgerald prosecution. The Bush mask was about to come off. Libby ended up taking the fall. Rove was another candidate for taking the fall, but managed to worm and backstab his way out of it. Cheney vs. Bush (or Bush Cartel). But what is interesting is that, of the three main visible powers--Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush--it was Rumsfeld who ultimately exited. The deeper story of the Plame/B-J outings may be what the "good guy" cabal got on Rumsfeld. I tend to think that Rumsfeld was the main architect of whatever that was, as well. He was in charge of the Office of Special Plans--the spying/black ops division of this foul regime. Personally, I think it was a Rumsfeld team that murdered David Kelly, in England, the same week they outed Plame, and for the same reason--the foiling of their scheme to plant nuclear weapons or components in Iraq, to be "found" by the U.S. troops who were "hunting" for the non-existent weapons that summer. Thus to fool the world. This would provide the adequate motive for both events--the Plame outings, and Kelly's murder--that is missing from both stories, as known. I don't think Rumsfeld's resignation had anything to do with the disastrous war itself. What has changed? Nothing. We're still there, pursuing the same course. If anything, it more likely had to do with Iran (possibly the U.S. military revolt against nuking Iran). But I don't think anything could have dislodged Rumsfeld but hard evidence of the highest "crimes and misdemeanors," brought to him on the quiet.

So, if this is what has occurred--a QUIET "good guy" coup against these monsters--where does that leave us--we, the people--as these bits and pieces keep coming out? Torture. Prison ships. 80,000 'disappeareds.' Out-of-control mercenaries and contractors in Iraq. 1.2 million dead, millions displaced, on-going murder and torture. Mind-boggling corruption. Spying invasions of our correspondence, our phone calls, our lives--and probably against every politician in the country. Political dirty tricks in the Dept. of so-called Justice.

I guess we just hold our breaths and wait. Can they be removed? Will they leave the White House? And if the "good guys" have won, then we will be able to take up the battle against their insufferable secrecy. Our country may well be shocked by the truth, but it will not be shattered by it. And the "military-industrial complex" and the Corporate Rulers need and deserve a thorough raking over by the People. We may need to dismantle it all, if we are ever to be a free people again. We have that right.