'The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees
and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the
International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a
Senate committee released Tuesday."We may need to curb
the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose
them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a
military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002
meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation
techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were
recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At
that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials
at another detention facility -- Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan -- were
using sleep deprivation to "break" detainees well before then-Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. "True, but
officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said.A
third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for
the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved
routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on
prisoners in conflicts around the world."
This jives with what I reported about the temporary black sites in my Poland piece:
"Former European and US intelligence officials indicate that the
secret prisons across the European Union, first identified by the Washington Post, are likely not permanent locations, making them difficult to identify.What some believe was a network of secret prisons was most probably
a series of facilities used temporarily by the United States when
needed, officials say. Interim "black sites" - secret facilities used
for covert activities - can be as small as a room in a government
building, which only becomes a black site when a prisoner is brought in
for short-term detainment and interrogation.For example, detainees could be shuffled from a temporary black site
in one country to a temporary black site in another country, never
staying long enough at either to attract notice. Such an arrangement,
sources say, would allow plausible deniability by the host country as
well as the US. Investigators looking for a permanent facility would
never find one. Such a site, sources say, would have to be near an
airport.Washington-based security expert and president of Global Security
John Pike says short-term detention in already existing facilities
would be "sensible tradecraft" and a more likely scenario than a
network of specific, long term prisons."A short-term operation does not develop a big signature and you
don't have a continual parade of people," said Pike. "When it becomes
noticeable, they move it all.""It's a shell game," he added."
What the McClatchy article shows is that not only did the Bush administration violate Geneva Conventions, domestic and international laws, but they knew what they were doing was illegal-so much so, that they hid their crimes from human rights investigators, all the while claiming "we don't torture." They lied to us and to the world all the while moving prisoners around like pieces of garbage, so that no one would know the crimes the Bush administration and their proxies were committing
We learned from the Nuremberg trials that people are accountable for what their government does in their name.
Yes, we will be judged by history and in the harshest possible light.
Moreover, we now know that Bush administration proxies essentially held mostly innocent people, whom they tortured and who subsequently after their release became radicalized.
In other words, they built Manchurian candidates- terrorists- either knowingly or as a symptom of their illegal torture program. However you choose to view this staggering revelation it does not change the reality we are now faced with. Namely, the Bush administration has created the very monsters they claimed to be fighting against. They created an enemy, a global enemy, that did not exist in such numbers and across so many geographical boundaries. They have put us in danger and they have made this country less safe than it has ever been.
Consider this too, that if the cabal that has taken over our government did indeed knowingly create a program in which they manufactured terrorists to go along with their faux war on terror, then this would be a whole new level of evil that I have no words left through which to vent my anger. There are not enough words, not in any language, to explain or justify or likely even deal with this possibility. But it is a possibility that should nevertheless be considered, given what we now know about the people of the Bush regime.
For me, the only question left is this: now what?