Free Iraq

Rice's answers on secret CIA flights "unsatisfactory": Dutch FM


QUOTE from "America can't take it anymore": "It's all over Iraq. ... The worst stuff I saw was from the detaining units who would torture people in their homes. They were using things like ... burns. They would smash people's feet with the back of an axe-head. They would break bones, ribs."
 

War Crimes, USA: Interview: Could administration officials be called to account?
 

Steve Perry, The American Way of Torture: (Local physician and author Steve Miles examines the forensic record of U.S. abuses in Iraqi prisons)

"The range of interrogation techniques, or abuse techniques, is pretty much the whole array of usual stuff that happens in countries that torture. It includes beatings, suspension, near-asphyxia, chemical burns--there were instances of burns with lighter fluid--kicks, slamming against the wall. There was at least one thumbscrew I saw. Electrical shocks with, in our case, external electrodes. I did not see any internal electrodes. There were instances of asphyxiation, food and water deprivation, deprivation of access to toilets, deprivation of access to medical care, forcing people to urinate on themselves, forcing people to masturbate, to renounce their religion, to put the urine or feces of other people on themselves, other forms of nudity, forced fondling, verbal abuse, threats against family, mock executions, forcing the victims to watch other family members being abused."
 

Chris Floyd, Brass in Pocket, Blood on the Tracks: "The only defense for the indefensible is to be offensive, it seems. The Bush Faction has obviously decided to stop refuting allegations about torture and just openly embrace the heinous practice instead. You've got Bush vowing to veto torture restrictions, you've got Cheney twisting arms on Capitol Hill to preserve the Faction's inalienable right to beat people to death -- and now you've got Condi Rice traipsing off to Europe to tell America's allies to stop all their whining about extraordinary rendition, secret prisons and the CIA kidnapping people in their countries.

"In a remarkable display of brass, Rice tried to have it both ways, both denying that the U.S. tortures anyone then saying that American 'interrogation techniques' have saved European lives by thwarting terrorist plots."
 

This dog needs a pet psychiatrist.
Video

Wait a minute, isn't that Bush with Iraq's oil bone?

He needs a dog catcher.
Sic 'im B L
 

Paul Craig Roberts, Condi to Europe: Trust Me
 

Condi's evil eye.

From above Comment by Evelyn:

"Who will trust this woman who, as President Bush's National Security Advisor, said that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction capable of producing a "mushroom cloud" over an American city?

Who will trust this woman who, as National Security Advisor, said Saddam Hussein sheltered al Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad and helped train some in chemical weapons development (CNN report, Sept. 26, 2002, 1:28 PM EDT)?

Who will trust this woman who won't answer a question but says "trust me"? "
 

Secret CIA Detentions Challenged: ACLU Law Suit against former CIA Director George Tenet
 

CIA 'emptied secret jails' before Rice Europe trip: QUESTION: What did they do with these dangerous people?
- Send them home to their families?
- Relocate, away from Europe?
- Bullet to the head?
 

Torture Inc. comes under siege: "In light of the wealth of evidence illuminating America's illegal practices on European soil (and elsewhere), European governments must take a stand and remember that they were elected to serve their peoples who should not be used as sacrificial lambs on the altar of transatlantic relations and American hegemony. If they aren't willing or able to protect their own nationals then who will?"
 

"I Am Sullied" - Suicide Before Dishonor in Occupied Iraq: "I cannot support a mission that leads to corruption, human rights abuse, and liars. I am sullied. I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. Death before being dishonored any more." - Col. Ted S. Westhusing, June 5, 2005
 

Break in, bind, torture, or kill the occupants, then search for opportunities . . .
US millionaire linked to looted relics
 

Wayne Madsen Report, December 7, 2005 -- More CIA contractor aircraft involved in prisoner flights identified: According to informed sources in Florida, two Lockheed L-100-30 Hercules (C-130) -- N2189M and N8183J -- owned by CIA contractor Tepper Aviation, are involved in prisoner transport in Europe. [ . . . ]

Tepper was registered in Florida in 1989 in Crestview, Florida and its principals reportedly have close ties to Gov. Jeb Bush and other Bush cartel figures.* On November 27, 1989, a Tepper L-100-30 Hercules (N9205T) crashed in Jamba, Angola, the jungle headquarters for the right-wing UNITA guerrillas, ferrying arms from Papua New Guinea. At the time of the Tepper crash, UNITA was being backed by Republican operative Jack Abramoff and his International Freedom Foundation. Abramoff organized an expensive anti-communist summit in Jamba that also attracted Nicaraguan contras, Indochinese guerrillas, and Afghan mujaheddin. Some of the mujaheddin later become members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.*

Abramoff also produced a pro-UNITA propaganda movie titled "Red Scorpion." GOP operative and close Karl Rove friend Grover Norquist served as an economic adviser to UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi. Abramoff is currently embroiled in a major GOP money laundering scandal also involving Tom DeLay.

Tepper C-130s were involved in supplying weapons to Bosnian Muslims during the Bosnian war, the funds for the arms gathered from various Muslim nations and deposited in the Bosnian Defense Fund, held by Riggs Bank and run by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith from the Feith & Zell law firm in Washington, DC.

Other CIA and private mercenary contractor planes that overflew Denmark (including Greenland) and are suspected of being CIA transports include:

[Loooooooooong list follows.]

Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot warned today that the Bush administration was "hiding" information about secret prisoners, flights, and prisons. Also comes word that Condoleezza Rice is denying that she told new German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the U.S. made a "mistake" in the kidnapping of German citizen Khaled el-Masri from Macedonia. Because of Rice's lies, hopes for a new era in German-U.S. relations are plummeting with Rice suggesting that it is Merkel, the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, who is twisting the truth. This will now turn many Christian Democratic colleagues of Merkel to the anti-U.S. camp, long dominated by Merkel's Social Democratic coalition partners.

* Emphasis added.
 

Extract -
Robert Parry, Consortium News, Will the Lying Ever Stop?: Having already destroyed the credibility of his first Secretary of State, George W. Bush has now eviscerated whatever trust the world might have placed in his second Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

By sending Colin Powell to the United Nations to pitch a dubious – and ultimately bogus – case for war against Iraq in 2003, Bush unmasked the warrior diplomat as a rank opportunist who put his career and loyalty to his superiors ahead of truthfulness and the welfare of American soldiers. Powell later called the U.N. speech a “blot” on his record.

Now, Rice has suffered a similar fate, appearing before European leaders and making assertions that were known to be lies as they passed her lips.

For decades, the neocons have followed the approach that when lacking the facts, simply lie. Then, count on your allies in the media to browbeat the doubters by impugning their patriotism. Also, recognize that America’s weakened checks and balances will seldom hold you accountable. ...

... [T]here is no vested interest in the United States for teaching critical thinking.

Indeed, the nation’s march to war in Iraq put on display nearly every classic example of irrational arguments, from false dichotomies (“who are you going to believe, this mad dictator or the president of the United States?”) to ad hominem attacks on critics (“Saddam sympathizers! Why don’t you move to France!”). ...

In the absence of reasoned discourse, the key to winning a political fight is to deploy more media artillery and propaganda firepower than your opponent. That has been a strategy followed for three decades by American conservatives who built up their own media apparatus and financed attack groups to go after mainstream reporters.

At some point, international credibility – or the lack of it – may emerge as a national security problem. In all likelihood, there will come a time when a truly dangerous threat to the United States will arise and will require a multilateral response.

If that happens, the American people might wish for a Secretary of State who is not viewed around the world as a liar.
 

A fitting salute . . .
Courage In Their Coverage: "The best of the Arab journalists are my heroes. They are risking imprisonment and death to tell the truth. At a time when U.S. media are having an identity crisis, they remind me what the news business is all about.

"Against this background of courageous Arab reporters risking everything for their journalism, what do I see? The U.S. government has been bribing Iraqi newspapers to run "good news" stories about the American occupation of Iraq. This at a time when real Iraqi reporters are risking their lives to work for The Post and other news organizations in Baghdad because they believe in honest journalism. Here's a thought for an administration that claims to love freedom and democracy: Let's try living our values, rather than just talking about them."
 

????? . . . . . .
78 Journalists Die in Iran Plane Crash
 

Kurt Nimmo, Pollard: Prisoner of Zion for Stealing U.S. Secrets: "Marwan Barghouti, on the other hand, is not a treacherous spy. He was a leader of the Fatah movement of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. As a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Barghouti was marked for targeted assassination by Israel. ...

"As an example of how biased the government of Israel is, consider that they have demanded for years that Pollard be released—since Zionists believe America’s secrets are Israel’s to peruse—and yet Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli former nuclear technician who revealed details of Israel’s nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986 (while Israel lied and told the world it didn’t have nukes), went to prison for 18 years, more than 11 years of which were served in solitary confinement. Interesting Israelis consider him a traitor and Pollard a hero, demonstrating how self-serving and corrupt the Israeli people are, or those who think Pollard should go free and Vanunu should stay in prison."
 

The Independent, MPs dismiss Rice denials as 'disingenuous' and 'beyond belief'
 

VIDEO clip, "NO Plane Hit the Pentagon."
 

Speaking of Condi . . .
Germany's Merkel under pressure after Rice debacle: While Merkel told reporters Washington had acknowledged it made a mistake in detaining him, a senior U.S. official said Rice had said no such thing.

"We are not quite sure what was in her head," he said, referring to Merkel.

German media seized on the embarrassing contradiction.

"CIA Affair: Chancellor Merkel angers the USA," headlined the Berliner Morgenpost.

The Financial Times Deutschland said: "Not only is there no apology, but even the word 'mistake' is too much for the United States when it comes to a concrete case*."

* Emphasis added.
 

Extract -
Asia Times, Disappearing tricks: According to his memoirs, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel considered the secret abduction and rendition to Germany of suspected Resistance members - otherwise known as the Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) Decree - to be the worst of all of the orders issued by Adolf Hitler for the Western-occupied territories of the Third Reich during World War II.

But the fuehrer thought it would be effective in deterring sabotage, which often claimed innocent civilian lives, as well as those of German soldiers, officers and civilian occupation officials. So he decreed that, with the exception of those cases where guilt could be established beyond a doubt, presumably through torture, anyone arrested on suspicion of "endangering German security" was to be transferred to Germany under "cover of night".

"The prisoners are to be transported to Germany secretly ...," according to the directive issued in February 1942 by Keitel, then chief of the German High Command. "These measures will have a deterrent effect because [a] the prisoners will vanish without leaving a trace, [and] [b] no information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate."

"Effective intimidation," Keitel, who would be executed for war crimes in 1946, had written in an earlier directive, "can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminal and the population do not know his fate."

... Nacht und Nebel was the earliest known 20th century precursor of what the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) refers to as "renditions".*

The US "has fully respected the sovereignty of other countries that cooperate in these matters", Rice noted on Monday. Intelligence cooperation between the US and Europe, she stressed, has "helped protect European countries from attack, helping save European lives".

... US officials have based their insistence that they have done nothing that violates US or international law - assertions that cause nothing but consternation among human rights experts - on carefully constructed sentences that, on close examination, appear designed to mislead, rather than to outright lie.

Thus, Rice stressed on Monday that the US government had not transported detainees to other countries "for the purpose" of interrogation using torture, as opposed, for example, to transporting to them to other countries where torture is commonplace.

Such assertions may now be tested in a court of law by Khaled el-Masri who, according to the Washington Post, was detained by local authorities while on holiday in Macedonia in 2003, beaten, drugged and flown by a CIA rendition group to a secret prison in Afghanistan.

He says he underwent coercive interrogation and confinement for five months before being released, two months after the CIA concluded it was a case of mistaken identity. Such cases no doubt also plagued the German occupation in the Western sector and Condor's overseers.

El-Masri, who is, perhaps ironically, a citizen of Germany, is suing former CIA director George Tenet with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. In filing the suit in Washington on Tuesday, the group said it was seeking to "reaffirm that the rule of law is central to our identity as a nation".

* Emphasis added.
 

VIDEO, 9/11 Dutch TV documentary (23 min): In this documentary Michael Meacher - former British Minister for the Environment, and Andreas von Bulow - former German Secretary of Defense - express grave doubts about the official version of 9/11.

Specific reference is made to PNAC and the "Rebuilding America's Defenses" call for a "New Pearl Harbor".

(The above found at WhatReallyHappened.com)
 

CNN Vitually Ignores Pearl Harbor Anniversary. Hiding the PNAC - 9/11 Connection?
 

WhatReallyHappened, PEARL HARBOR - MOTHER OF ALL CONSPIRACIES
(Highly recommended: At least scroll down the page!)
 

U.S. gives Israel a large new camp: (This report passed the Israeli military censor)
 

Torture Is an American Value: Reality vs. the Rhetoric
 

Keepers at the Gate: "He Who Controls Television Controls the Masses"
 

Iraqi oil industry in crisis: Two-and-a-half years after the US invasion of Iraq, the country's oil industry is still in disarray. An official of the Oil Ministry in Baghdad told ISN Security Watch, on condition of anonymity: “We do not know the exact quantity of oil we are exporting, we do not exactly know the prices we are selling it for, and we do not know where the oil revenue is going to."*
* Emphasis added.
 

Christian Science Monitor, Abuse 'widespread' in Iraqi prisons: "Privately, half a dozen US officers have acknowledged to the Monitor that prisoner abuse by Iraqi police* is common.

"Coalition troops, fighting a deadly insurgency, say they don't have the manpower to compel better behavior from their Iraqi partners, and that to do so would require them to court frequent conflict with their closest allies inside the country."

* No abuse from the more civilized coalition forces.
 

"Iraqis are beginning to see that a free life will be a better life. Reconstruction has not always gone as well as we had hoped, primarily because of the security challenges on the ground. Rebuilding a nation devastated by a dictator is a large undertaking." — President Bush
 

Bush Admits 'Fits and Starts' in Iraq Plan ". . . but asserted that economic progress is lifting hopes for a democratic future."
 

Iraqi group extends deadline for Western hostages
 

War Crimes Under the Cover of Empire; Rendition, Torture and Democracy: "What about crimes against humanity? How many people must be killed before there is such an event? Or does it make a different how they are killed? ...

What of Bush's use of weapons of mass destruction? Isn't a cruise missile or a 500-2,000 lb bomb a weapon of mass destruction? Ask an Iraqi who survived one of them and/or knows people who did not. Does it really make any difference whether hundreds died from a cruise missile or from poison gas? Is the fact that you didn't die from poison gas more excusable or acceptable? That someone who carried out an attack killing hundreds of people was or was not the subject of an assassination attempt? Or his father was the victim of such an attempt.

Is the fact that you died from an attack by the political leader of a democracy more acceptable than if you died from an attack by an acknowledged dictator*?

*Emphasis added.
 

WEBSITE - Witness Against Torture; Witness Against Torture Group Statement: The detention center at the United States (US) Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba was made for the purposes of secrecy, unaccountability and impunity. The few reports that do reach us tell of prisoners - men who are fathers, sons and brothers - without contact with their families, with very little or no contact with attorneys, of interminable detention without legal charge, of rendition, of kidnapping and the sale of prisoners to US authorities, of the desecration of the Qur’an, and of unconscionable prisoner humiliation and abuse. These reports have put the base with its counterpart in Iraq, Abu Ghraib prison, at the center of serious charges of US torture. Despite US government and media attempts to hide it, there is every reason to believe such horrific practices are routine there and in other facilities around the world.
[ . . . ]

We come with a simple request coming from the mandate to Christians to perform the Works of Mercy: we come to visit the prisoners. As people of faith, we believe our own dignity and humanity are bound up undeniably with the dignity and humanity of all other people. We are driven by faith and conscience to respond to this humanity. We hear the cry of the prisoners when we read of hunger strikes and are compelled to do what little we can, to answer: you are not forgotten.
[ . . . ]
 

A Citizen of Mosul, Unbelievably strange followed on by "Freedom and democracy in the American way."

(I can only begin to imagine the furore, should such an event occur in my own home town where, to date, no invader has set foot. And we wonder why Iraqis are angry.)
 

Fireside Crap (The title says it all.)
 

Extract -
Harold Pinter – NOBEL LECTURE, "Blatant state terrorism": Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. ...*

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. ...

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? ...

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort – all other justifications having failed to justify themselves – as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought.* Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at?* Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

* Emphasis added.
 

"Our Brethren: The Chaldo-Assyrians" which was posted yesterday on the blog site "Iraqi Shalsh" is yet another stellar piece of Iraqi humor accented with poignant satire. A link to this blog, which is in standard Arabic & colloquial Iraqi, is provided above. Read, laugh, and enjoy.
 

Imad

Did you have a look at Condi Rice's body language during her speeches at several stops in her recent tour of Europe, while she was painfully trying to claim that "we don't torture people" -- my 7 year old daughter could easily see how obviously she was lying.

("Daddy, why is that lady wringing her hands like that, every time she says something?")

Problem is, most Americans don't have the intelligence of my 7 year old daughter, they never have and they never will.

Being well informed, after all, is a liability in America -- the land of the ignoramus -- not an asset.
 

MadAsHell,
Being an American - and an ignoramus - I am (near) speechless!
 

Gabriele Zamparini, Watching Human Rights Watch - Open Letter to Kenneth Roth, Executive Director Human Rights Watch: ...I have now decided to write you an open letter to reiterate my questions and also to ask you if someone who “recommended thousands of aimpoints on hundreds of targets during operations in Iraq and Serbia [and who] also participated in over 50 interrogations as a subject matter expert” fits a senior position at Human Rights Watch.

Mr. Garlasco’s biography reads:

Before coming to HRW, Marc spent seven years in the Pentagon as a senior intelligence analyst covering Iraq. His last position there was chief of high-value targeting during the Iraq War in 2003. ...
 

Hostile fire brought down Hercules, says Reid: "The RAF Hercules plane that crashed in Iraq in January was shot down by insurgents, the defence secretary told the House of Commons today.

"John Reid said the crash, which killed 10 service personnel, was the 'biggest loss of life in a single incident to enemy action in Iraq'. "
 

Acts of defiance against war turned ordinary people into criminals
* Maya Evans, 25, convicted for reading out names of 97 British soldiers killed in Iraq at unauthorised protest.
* Douglas Barker, 72, threatened with jail for withholding part of his tax payment in protest at the Iraq conflict.
* Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a 37-year-old RAF medical officer, facing court-martial for refusing to serve in Iraq
 

Wayne Madsen Report, December 8, 2005 -- North African nation hosting secret prisoners identified: According to informed intelligence sources, the country that is hosting most of the U.S. terrorist suspects moved from Eastern European secret prisons in advance of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent European visit is Morocco.

Many of the prisoners are being held at remote prisons established by former King Hassan II to torture political prisoners. Many of these prisons are in located high in the Atlas Mountains and are so remote, they can only be easily reached by helicopter.

The deal with Morocco was reached as a result of the close relations between Morocco's King Mohammed VI and former Secretary of State and UN Special Envoy for Western Sahara James Baker, Baker's Special Envoy assistant John Bolton, and former US ambassador to Morocco Margaret Tutwiler. Western Sahara is illegally occupied by Morocco but the Bush administration supports the continued Moroccan occupation of the oil and mineral rich territory. In return, Morocco has supported the holding of "Al Qaeda" suspects, interrogations by its security services, and close liaison with Israeli intelligence and military personnel.


Wayne Madsen Report, December 8, 2005 -- There is evidence that CIA air contractors ferrying prisoners and Arabic-speaking interrogators are taping over the tail numbers (N-XXXX) of their planes and painting false tail numbers over the painted tape. This reportedly is being done to confuse those who are trying to track CIA aircraft movements. However, this practice is also confusing Homeland Security Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who track the movements of suspected drug planes in and out of the United States.

Intelligence sources also report that some of the CIA proprietary aircraft have transported Arabic-speaking interrogators who work for their respective national security services to Guantanamo Bay. The interrogators are seconded from the security services of Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.
 

Acquitted; Professor in Terror Case May Face Deportation to Middle East
 

Extract -
Robert Parry, Consortium News, Saddam & Secret Witnesses: Some of the worst journalistic abuses come when news organizations deal with accusations against a pariah. Normal standards of skepticism are set aside because the subject lacks influential defenders or is despised by those in power, so pretty much anything goes.

While the media coverage has focused on outbursts by Hussein and his co-defendants, much less attention has been given to the unorthodox procedure of allowing witnesses to testify without using their real names and with their faces and voices obscured.

The visceral response from many Americans, including journalists, is that Hussein so violated due-process rights of his own citizens, why should anyone care that he might get railroaded to execution himself? Plus, how can anyone question the emotional testimony of witnesses who may have suffered grievously at Hussein’s hand?

Instead of a requirement that Hussein’s guilt be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, there is an assumption of Hussein’s guilt that pervades the American press corps and the current U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

Concealing the identity of witnesses may reflect a reasonable concern for their safety, but it also is an invitation for exaggeration and even fabrication of evidence.* A fundamental right under U.S.-style criminal justice is the right to confront one’s accusers, especially in cases that carry possible death sentences.

If such basic legal standards can’t be met in today’s Iraq, Hussein’s trial could be moved to the International Criminal Court at the Hague. But the Bush administration and the current Iraqi government have favored trying Hussein and other former government officials in Iraq where they can then be executed.

On the journalistic front, the U.S. news media has continued its long collaboration with Bush’s anti-Hussein agenda by averting its eyes from the irregularity of having secret witnesses represent the bulk of this capital case.

* Emphasis added.
 

Musharraf calls for 'Muslim renaissance': "Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has urged the heads of 50 Muslim countries to work out a strategy for a Muslim renaissance. The Daily Times of Pakistan reports that Mr. Musharraf, who made the speech at the Third Extraordinary Summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Mecca, also called on Islamic countries to ban groups that preach violence* or commit terrorist acts in the name of Islam*."
----------------

* Dear Mr. Musharraf: How about banning countries that practice violence? Or perhaps banning individuals/groups/countries that commit terrorist acts in (or not in) the name of anything?
 

Israelis to be allowed euthanasia by machine: "Machines will perform euthanasia on terminally ill patients in Israel under legislation devised not to offend Jewish law, which forbids people taking human life*."

* Emphasis added
 

Spiegel, Rice Visit Fails to Build Bridges: "The question remains whether she means the same thing by torture as we do."
 

A msut read:

Harold Pinter – Nobel Lecture
Art, Truth & Politics

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html
 

Dahr Jamail & Harb al-Mukhtar, Iraq Dispatches, U.S. Helps Some Iran-Backed Terror: After the U.S. forces and the bombings, Iraqis are coming to fear those bands of men in masks who seem to operate with the Iraqi police.

Omar Ahmed's family learnt what it can mean to run into the police, their supposed protectors.

Omar was driving with two friends in the Adhamiya district of Baghdad at night Sep. 1 when they were stopped at a police checkpoint. [ . . . ]

"Five days after they were arrested we found Omar's body in the freezer in a morgue, with holes in the side of his head* and shoulders," a friend of the family told IPS.

"We don't know if the other two men are dead or alive," he said. "But we know these men were guilty of nothing other than driving their car at night. We have no security and the problem is that police are killing and disappearing the Iraqi people every day now." [ . . . ]

"The Badr Army is conducting a campaign to destroy other political parties and their electoral advertisements," said Saleh Hassir, a doctor at a Baghdad medical centre. "We see black paint and tears on ex-prime minister Allawi's posters and those of the Sunni groups, but pictures of al-Hakim remain unaffected."

The doctor says the Americans have helped bring in new Iran-backed terror.

"So many of us are against Iraq being controlled by these fundamental Islamic Iranian loyalists like al-Hakim," the doctor told IPS. "Now we are seeing the suffering and ultimate dictatorship they have brought us here with the help of the Americans."

* Photo.
 

Kathy Kelly, Free the Christian Peacemaker Team - Blessed are the Mericful in Baghdad: Our friends in the CPT are learning first hand the agonizing experience of over 5,000 Iraqi families whose loved ones have been abducted over the past year. The lives of other westerners who've been abducted, a German archaeologist, a French engineer, and an American security contractor are also in jeopardy.

Throughout the past week, CPT made clear that their prayers include loving care and concern not only for their own team members but also for all of the people in Iraq afflicted by the sad and tragic realities of warfare, including those who call themselves Swords of Righteousness.

By living outside the Green Zone and traveling without armed guards, CPT has risked a great deal to educate us about the plight of people living through the strains of war and occupation. ...

To sign a petition on behalf of releasing the CPT members, visit www.freethecpt.org
 

Ban Torture or Protect Torturers?: "When Congress returns to Washington on Monday, a campaign will unfold in support of Senator John McCain's legislation banning torture, which is attached to a defense bill. But McCain's amendment is accompanied by one from Senator Lindsey Graham that bans the appeals that prisoners at Guantánamo have used to take their cases to civilian courts."
 

Lockheed L-100-30 Hercules N2189M had landed Helsinki in May 2003. When the CIA plane discussion started in Europe the Finnish government was fast to say that there are no flights to Finland that they know off. The next day there was a picture in a newspaper showing the Hercules N2189M landing to Helsinki and a real mess in shifting responsibility began. The Traffic ministry said that they do not know what was in the plane and why the plane was here. It was said by the air traffic administration that the Defence Ministry gives permission to foreign countries for these kinds of flights. Defence ministry said that they do not know anything about this plane. Some US represent said that the plane was bringing rations to the Embassy. Well a rather expensive way to transport Coca Cola and other US necessities to the Embassy. The Secret Service of Finland has made a formal demand to CIA to explain the flight.

Today Finland got its answer. The Foreign minister said that that the answer doesn’t answer to asked question and is obviously a copy of an explanation that has been send to several other countries asking the same questions.

In total this CIA plane incident has been a huge embarrassment for the Finnish political elite and the people see our own “independence” again in a little different light. It makes people in Europe angry that US seems to do what ever it wants on our soil and when the US geniuses are caught they do not even bother to give a proper explanation.

What has astonished me during this whole insane War against terrorism is that never there has been a real believable public trial. It would help believing in those “dangerous individuals” if there would be “little” more evidence of their dangerousness and their plans. Now there is only the US’s and. UK’s governments word – and that word has little weight after all the events in the Iraq saga.
 

Ray McGovern, Lies, Torture and the Six Blind Mice; Cheney and Rice in Hot Water: European reaction to visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's statements on torture can be summed up in lead commentary Wednesday in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, among the most widely respected German newspapers. Under the title "Justice à la Rice," the editor "translated" her message into these words: "The end justifies the means and terrorism can be fought with borderline methods on the outer edges of legality." He added: "Rice came to Germany to begin a new era. She has resoundingly failed to do so. Injustice remains injustice, and a wrong policy remains a wrong policy. On this basis you cannot re-launch the trans-Atlantic relationship."

Never in the sixty years since World War II has an American secretary of state been received with such hostility by our erstwhile friends in Europe. In one sense, it can be seen as poetic justice that Rice, who as national security adviser to the president never heard a Cheney suggestion she didn't like, is taking the heat, while the vice president hides behind her skirts. ...

It is no surprise that patriotic truth-tellers within the government have chosen to go to the fourth estate rather than to a Congress controlled by the president's party. Their choice reflects a realization that little but trouble can be expected in seeking recourse from those who have become known as "the six blind mice" - Senators Pat Roberts, John Warner, and Richard Lugar, who chair the committees with jurisdiction in the Senate; and Congressmen Pete Hoekstra, Duncan Hunter, and Henry Hyde in the House.
 

Aljazeera.com, The latest of U.S. scandals in Iraq: "The BUSH administration constructed many false pretexts and downright lies to justify its interference in the Middle East, region, among its claims was the mission to 'liberate women'."