Hussein Enters Post-9/11 Web of US Prisons (MUST READ)

[barbaraann]

JAMES RISEN and THOM SHANKER The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) is now prisoner No. 1 in what has developed into a global detention system run by the Pentagon (news - web sites) and the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites), according to government officials.

It is a secretive universe, they said, made up of large and small facilities scattered throughout the world that have sprouted up to handle the hundreds of suspected terrorists of Al Qaeda, Taliban warlords and former officials of the Iraqi government arrested by the United States and its allies since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the war in Iraq (news - web sites).
...

http://news.yahoo.com/?tmpl=story&cid=68&e=10&u=/nyt/husseinenterspost911webofusprisons

God help us all.

[impeach the gop]

1. Amen

n/t

[Robb]

2. Good Lord

This is the most disturbing thing I've read for quite awhile.

[tom_paine]

3. God will not help us.

If She didn't stop Hitler, She won't stop Bush.

It's as simple as that.

Also as simple as the fact that Imperial Detention will be coming eventaully tro within the shores of the Empire itself, as people get poorer and angrier.

[BigDaddyLove]

4. So much for any thought of Saddam.................

actually making it to trial.

[tlcandie]

5. Just think .. it's even worse than this story describes.. it is SECRET!

We have no way to know how many are there or who they are and if they have died or been killed where they are buried. They just vanish!

Like Germany, but now you have no clue where the location is and they are populated ALL over the earth!

Merry Christmas!!! :puke:

[Stephanie]

6. I couldn't believe this when I read it in the NY Times today -

Original Times story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/middleeast/18SADD.html

<excerpt>

The C.I.A. has quietly established its own detention system to handle especially important prisoners. The most important Qaeda leaders are held in small groups in undisclosed locations in friendly countries in the developing world, where they face long interrogations with no promise of ever gaining release. For example, at least two of the top Qaeda figures captured since the Sept. 11 attacks — Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh — were held for a time in a secure location in Thailand. They were later moved to another country, officials said.

<snip>

In dealing with its captives, the C.I.A. has the advantage of almost complete isolation. Officials say that allows the agency's interrogators to alter the physical surroundings of the Qaeda detainees to try to disorient them and also convince them that they are being held by Arab security services feared for their use of torture. Guards are sometimes dressed in the uniforms of the native countries of the detainees, a technique that may be particularly effective on captives who have experienced jail time back home. Officials said the C.I.A. might not be able to use the full range of interrogation techniques on Mr. Hussein that have been employed with Qaeda leaders. Unlike Qaeda operatives, Mr. Hussein seems destined to face some sort of public judicial review, either through an international war crimes tribunal or other trial, and so the agency's handling of him may eventually come under scrutiny.

Pentagon and C.I.A. officials have denied that they use torture against detainees captured in either Iraq or the wider campaign against terror. The agency's officials have declined to comment on the techniques they use with detainees, but a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday that interrogations conducted by the Pentagon followed "well-established techniques" that do not violate the human rights of the detainees.

<snip>

One military officer said the use of sleep deprivation, for example, must be approved by senior Pentagon officials.

Didn't Rummy just snipe at a reporter the other day for asking whether any torture techniques, such as sleep deprivation, might be used on Hussein? I heard it but I don't remember where...

[Dirk39]

11. Am I living in a "friendly" country?

Where should my friends look for me?
I always asked myself, where the iconography of bags-above-heads did origin.



Publisher: US Office of War Information
Print: US Govermnent Printing Office
Offsetdruck
95,5 x 73 cm
Washington, 1942


Just change a few words or leave it as it is:
Joseph Goebbels, Communism with the Mask Off, 1935
This text is taken from the English translation published by the Nazis in 1935.

"There is no longer any political question at issue here. This thing cannot be judged or estimated by political rules or principles. It is iniquity under a political mask. It is not something to be brought before the bar of world history but rather something that has to be dealt with by the judicial administration of each country. It must be met with the same ruthless and even brutal means with which it strives to usurp power or hold power in its hands. Here there can be no barganing; because the danger that threatens Europe is acute. Overnight it might break in among the civilised nations of the world and spread universal catastrophe. Those States that make peace with it will soon learn from experience that it is not they who will tame Bolshevism but that Bolshevism will bring them under its heel. It cannot be said that the Komintern has changed its practices. It is and remains what it always was-the propagandist and revolutionary machinery which is avowedly intended to bring about the downfall of the West.

Nothing could be farther from our minds than the wish to prescribe for other nations and their governments or even to counsel them. We do not mix up in their domestic affairs. We only see the dangers that threaten Europe and we raise our voices in warning, so that the magnitude of those dangers may be recognised.

As far as we ourselves are concerned, we have completely overcome this menace. Indeed perhaps, outside of his work in Germany, the greatest service which our Führer has rendered the world is that here in Germany he has set up a barrier against world Bolshevism against which the waves of this vile Asiatic-Jewish flood break in vain. He has taught us not only to recognise Bolshevism as the world's greatest enemy but also to meet it face to face and crush it. Instead of this teaching he has supplied a new and better and nobler ideal for the liberation of a whole nation. In the Sign of this Idea we have fought our battles and brought our banners to victory. This ideal has enabled us to free Germany from the menace of Bolshevism and banish it once and for all from the German nation. Today we know how to cope with these insidious forces.

The nation has been rendered immune against the poison of the red anarchy. It has repudiated the false and hollow catch-words of the communistic world propaganda. Seriously and industriously and with patience and discipline it has given itself to the solution of problems which arise out of its own destiny. History will one day give due credit to the Führer for having saved Germany from the most acute and deadly peril by overthrowing Bolshevism and thereby saving the whole civilisation of the West from the abyss that yawned before it.

I hope that it will not be left to posterity to recognise the greatness of this historic mission, but that it will acknowledged by our contemporaries and that they will decide to act upon the truth of its teachings. As the true and loyal Old Guard of the Führer and the Party, we rejoice that we are standing under his banners in this most decisive struggle that the history of the world has experienced."
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb58.htm

Not so hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Voltaire99]

7. The world is our oyster -- er, Big House!

Send us your poor, your tired, your permanently detained.

[NNN0LHI]

8. This must be the next step after 1st amendment zones? n/t

[Tinoire]

9. This sent shivers down my spine- PNAC has won.

Where the dollar failed, we sent in the armies. Our own little gulags all over the world.

Whoops, silly me, I forgot. Saddaam is the most evil man on the face of the earth and the boys at Carlyle are angels pursuing peace and justice for all. How dare I be so ungrateful?

[opihimoimoi]

10. The Gulag Lives, how exciting to learn. damn.

Where is Dave when we need him?